Doors Open Toronto Illuminating the City's Great Spaces

Preface Toronto has more than its own fair share of intriguing stories that illuminate the past and explain the present, and many of those stories are in the city's structures. That's one of the key ideas behind Doors Open Toronto: those who look closely at the city's buildings will gain a better appreciation of the city itself. But maintaining the presence of the past is not easy. Little legislative protection is available for buildings, and it is a constant struggle to convince governments and building owners that structures should be enhanced and retained rather than demolished. The many individuals who stick up for existing buildings in the face of some new vision of a "better" future deserve our thanks and support. A walk down virtually any street will confirm that older buildings are usually more interesting and felicitous than newer ones. Not always, of course: Sometimes architects of our own time are given the scope of designing structures that are equal to the best of the past. But too often fine older buildings are demeaned by the inferior design and quality of what has arrived since they were built. The Doors Open idea came to Toronto in the simplest of ways. Catherine Nasmith, an architect with a serious interest in heritage issues, had had many discussions with a distant relative living in Edinburgh, Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith, CBE. Sir James was chair of the Scottish Civic Trust, and his involvement in the preservation movement meant he was part of the Doors Open idea, which Glasgow had latched on to in 1990, with Edinburgh joining the following year. Doors Open had started in a small town in France in 1984 and had been gathering momentum ever since. By 1991 it was a weekend event in 11 European cities. By 1998 some 19 million visitors had visited 28,000 sites in 44 countries, operating under the name European Heritage Days. The model was simple: Open buildings for a day or a weekend (never longer) and tell the public they're welcome to visit. Catherine Nasmith invited Sir James, who was in Toronto in August 1998 on a social visit, to speak about his experience with Doors Open. More than a hundred people attended what was to have been an informal event. Karen Black -- now of the City of Toronto Culture Division, then of Heritage Toronto -- was knocked out by the idea, and started the program here. Toronto became the first city in North America to launch Doors Open. In 1999 Catherine Nasmith was appointed to the board of Heritage Toronto, and the decision was made to send an exploratory group to Glasgow and Edinburgh. The group consisted of Karen Black and her colleague Jane French, Margie Zeidler, Catherine Nasmith, and Michael and Anne Tippin. On their return, the steering committee and City staff decided to hold the first Doors Open in Toronto in May 2000, with the theatre entrepreneur David Mirvish as the honorary patron. With nearly one hundred buildings participating and over seventy thousand visitors, it was an enormous success. To date it continues to attract many thousands of people. Doors Open Toronto has quickly grown into a popular event because people are curious about buildings and their history. This book makes a start in helping that process, trying to place buildings in a social, physical, and political context. The more people learn, the better they will understand why Toronto is not quite the same as other places but embodies its own set of values and styles. The more they discover about the city, the greater the chance they will participate in creating its future. What Toronto needs is a host of informed citizens ready to stand up for a vision of the city that brings into daily life more social equity, more beauty, and more sense of the past. That will come as people are given the opportunity to brush up against the past in their daily lives and as they connect with others to realize that acting together, they can have a serious and pSewell, John is the author of 'Doors Open Toronto Illuminating the City's Great Spaces' with ISBN 9780676974980 and ISBN 0676974988.