Unconscious City head in the stars, feet in the clay
urbanism | fort york by justin perdue
origins memory military history dignity urbanity
Some months ago I was standing with a colleague on the walls of Fort York in Toronto. It was a blustery day near the end of a long winter and we stood there, collars up and hands stuffed into the pockets of our overcoats, looking down the grassy incline outside the fort, trying to imagine what it must have looked like 200 years ago. This was made quite difficult by the elevated six-lane Gardiner Expressway, a roaring behemoth that soared over our heads, dominating our view of the fort. To make matters worse, the waves of Lake Ontario which, in the nineteenth century lapped at the base of the fort’s earthworks, could not be seen nor heard from our position on the wall, the intervening centuries having pushed the shoreline several hundred metres to the south, now hidden behind behind a zone of high-rise condominium developments. Fort York is surrounded on all sides by things bigger, newer and more powerful – even the Bathurst Streetcar looks down upon the fort as it rattles past. The city presses in on all sides, threatening to spill over and eradicate the last remnants of the tiny garrison that in 1793 was the first step in what eventually became Toronto. It seems that we have done everything but bulldoze the fort under – the question is, why? I happen to quite like Fort York. It is a quiet and simple place in the midst of our energetic city, a calm oasis in the heart of downtown. When I am there I feel the weight of history, and as I walk amongst the low, scattered buildings, for fleeting moments it seems as if I can almost hear the voices of those that lived and served there. Every weathered wall bears the marks of people and events of times past, their stories written, as Italo Calvino said, ‘like the lines upon a hand’. For me, the fort is a significant place, and this is why I find the city’s treatment of it to be so puzzling. Toronto has long aspired to greatness, and we often hear its politicians refer to it as a world class city. It has chased the Olympics several times and in the last decade has collected at least one building from each of the starchitects that have altered the skylines of the world’s major cities. The city craves recognition as a peer with Chicago and New York, and its towering downtown of glass and steel speaks to its colossal ambition. The fort, on the other hand, does not make a strong visual impression. This is partly due to the loss of its lake front, and the low earthwork walls that outline the Fort look neither securely comforting from within, nor intimi- dating from without. The blockhouses, though they sport rifle-slots, are constructed of timber, and look more like summer camp bunkhouses than strategic fortifications. The fort certainly does not fit our conception of a strong and defensible fortress in the sense of a European castle, or even Kingston’s Fort Henry with its Martello towers and fortified earthworks. Despite its critical role in the War of 1812, in Fort York we find a humble beginning for an ambitious city.
68 On Site review 22: WAR
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