The Heritage Beat
By Elynn Wareham
The smell of freshly brewed coffee fills the air. Friends gather around tables, some play chess while others chat quietly.
The walls are decorated with bottles of wine that sit on corner shelves. The sound of music creeps in under the conversation.
This is a typical Sunday morning scene at Café Wim on Sussex Drive.
I wonder if any of the customers realize they’re in a heritage building.
The building that houses the cafe was designated as a heritage site in 1991, when the Byward Market Heritage Conservation District was established.
When I hear the term “heritage building,” the image that comes to mind is a museum-like place tourists visit for a dose of local history. A café, crowded with people, doesn’t.
It’s time to change my impression. It’s a little naive considering that all over the Ottawa, privately owned homes and business have gained heritage status.
In fact, the Ontario Municipal Board is presently considering the application made last month to declare the Centretown core a heritage district.
Heritage buildings have become a controversial issue in recent years. The controversy arises between those who feel these buildings are an important part of our past and those who feel the land they occupy could be put to better commercial use.
For example, back in 1996 a controversy arose over the former Woolworth and Kresge stores, both located on the Sparks Street.
The Bank of Nova Scotia owned the buildings and planned to have them demolished to make room for a parking lot.
Under the Ontario Heritage Act, Ottawa city council forced the bank to wait a mandatory 270 days in case it changed it’s mind about the demolishing.
It didn’t, and the buildings were destroyed.
Members of the community, including the executive director of the Sparks Street Management Board, at the time said they couldn’t see the historical value of the abandoned department stores.
Perhaps the stores didn’t have the same architectural merits as buildings such as the Bank of Montreal or what is now the Canadian Museum of Nature, but they still existed as part of our heritage.
One of the arguments against keeping those buildings on Sparks Street was that they hindered the city’s goal to improve the aesthetic image of the area.
But couldn’t the buildings have been incorporated into the new look? Café Wim is an example of a modern coffee house operating out of an older building.
There are scores of similar examples all over Ottawa.
The problem with demolishing heritage buildings is that, once they have been destroyed it’s impossible to reverse the damage.
We can all agree that sometimes the cost involved in maintaining an older home or office can be a burden but isn’t it worth it in order to preserve part of our history? Business can still be run out of heritage sites.
Heritage buildings are still commercially viable — the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Ottawa International Hostel, formally the Nicholas Street Jail — the site of Canada’s last public hanging are just two examples.
It is true that heritage status hinders the making of minor changes to the buildings’ structures, but many businesses have found ways around these inconveniences.
These minor inconveniences are certainly a small price to pay in order to preserve our heritage.
We should be blending the new with the old, not destroying the old to make room for the new.