Random Access

Let us pause for a moment today and consider them — the structures our forebears built and loved that we have allowed to vanish from the Mississauga landscape.
Here’s a roll call of headlines from The Mississauga News that tell the story best: City’s heritage stock dwindles as another old home burns (McCauley House on Eglinton Ave. 1995); Historic 140-year-old house wrecked by work of vandals (Irwin House, Second Line West, 1991), Development firm fined $2,000 for demolishing heritage home (Austin-Dell House, Eglinton and Hurontario St., 1990), Fate of Risch house hangs in the balance (1995), Historic building falls to wreckers’ ball (Harris House and Cooksville Methodist Church on Dundas St. in Cooksville, formerly called Harrisville, 1991).
There are many more, but you get the idea.
Flash forward to today and count the recent toll of houses all damaged by fire and potential candidates for “wreckers’ ball” headlines in the near future: the Asquith House (1760 Bristol Rd.), the Rae House (1480 Derry Rd. E. in the former village of Mount Charles) and (to a lesser extent because it was occupied) the Cerny House (Saxony Crt. off Mississauga Rd. near the historic Bickell estate, better known as the former home of Bruce McLaughlin.
Then on March 9 came the inevitable final, fatal fire at the one-time home of Victor and Agnes Sandford, the siblings who owned the farm at the southwest corner of Eglinton Ave. EW. and Mavis Rd. for decades. A few months after Vincent died aged 87 and Agnes moved into a nursing home in the late 1990s, a huge blaze consumed the cattle barn and the drive shed, which had a huge stone cold cellar.
The designated heritage home’s fate slow descent toward demolition really started then. It would soon fall victim to Abandoned Historic House Syndrome.
That typically starts with developers buying a property, renting it to irresponsible tenants who begin the destruction process, threats from municipal politicians who insist the house must be saved, pledges from developers to do their best for the property after they assess the rising costs, abandonment of the building, a series of attacks by vandals and arsonists and ultimately, destruction of the home once it is officially deemed a safety hazard.
It’s a sort of reality shame show you could call the heritage wheel of misfortune.
Tom Urbaniak, Mississauga heritage buff, author, university political science instructor and long-time local observer called it, “the heritage version of deferred maintenance” in an interview a couple of years ago. Much of the problem with the heritage review process is that it operates predominantly in crisis mode, according to Urbaniak. “By not being proactive, we get into all of these last-minute crises where one of the most important buildings in the City would be lost if we don’t act,” he said. “It would be a lot easier if it had been designated a decade ago but instead, the sky is falling. It just turns into a vicious circle and we’re always caught in reactive mode.”
Eric Rogers, a former Heritage Advisory Committee member, is one of many people thoroughly frustrated with the experience with the Sandford House. “If the fence had been put up after Sandford had initially transferred the property to developers it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble over the years. Why the City ever accepted a snow fence on the property is beyond me.”
“We have a heritage department and a property standards department. They both don’t seem to have done much in the past ten years in protecting this class of property,” adds Rogers. “People I’ve met on the site after the fire all wondered why the City hasn’t done anything to preserve it.”
New Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish is also wondering why vandals are all but invited to play in heritage structures. “They should be surrounded by firm, sturdy high fences, with huge ‘no trespassing’ signs posted,” she told News reporter Joe Chin this week. “Flood lights and cleaning up the grounds so they look maintained would also help.”
Stephen Wahl, who has been keeping an eagle eye on Sandford and the heritage process and planned to salvage much of the still-useable material from the house says that after this latest indignity, “the gloves are off.” He plans to press the City to follow up on the numerous work orders under its property standards bylaw which never seemed to be carried out by the owner.
By the way they fail to protect their own properties, many heritage building owners all but invite the ignoble fate they fall victim to, charges Wahl.
Somebody clearly has to draw a line in the sand or we are going to keep on playing heritage roulette forever in this town.
Yes, to be fair, we have saved many worthy properties over the years. But we have lost many, many more.
A 2002 study carried out by the University of Waterloo found Mississauga had the second-worst record of 22 municipalities surveyed in Ontario in saving candidate heritage buildings. From 1985 to 2001, Mississauga lost a total of 66 buildings that were either designated for preservation under the Heritage Act, or placed on the municipal inventory of buildings considered potentially worthy of designation. Only Richmond Hill, which lost 95 heritage properties, suffered more than Mississauga.
We have a new Heritage Act that supposedly includes real teeth the old one notoriously lacked.
Now, in the wake of yet-another landmark loss, we must somehow find the will to make sure that the Sandford House isn’t just another name on a future list of houses we didn’t-try-quite-hard-enough to preserve.