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To recap from last time: the owner of Rondeau Provincial Park, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, appealed the designation of part of the park to the Ontario Municipal Board. The basis for the appeal was that the Municipality of Chatham-Kent had exceeded its jurisdiction in designating the historic cottage community in the park as a heritage conservation district under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act.^[1]

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date

- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

It’s high summer and those of us who aren’t would probably like to be at a cottage.

How about one like this?

Rear of the gymnasium wing, Rockwood Academy

I hadn’t been there for decades. Yet, when greeting Andy Drenters at the door of the Rockwood Academy, I said: “This is one of my favourite places in the world.”  On a beautiful day in May it was delightful to see how little things had changed

Rarely if ever in my life has there been a place like the Rockwood Academy that has brought together the personal and the professional.

I'm very excited to welcome the first guest on OHA+M: Michael McClelland.

To recap from last time: the Stratford White House is an 1860s Italianate mansion dressed up with a much later oversized portico (with 18 columns!) and boasts a landscaped front and semi-circular drive. Prominently located on St. David Street, one of the “best” streets in town, the house currently has three residential units and an events facility. The property is the subject of an intensification/infilling proposal that would keep the house but cram in three new building lots on the back and west side (Areas 'A', 'B' and 'C' on the plan below).

Sticking with Stratford, our local Architectural Conservancy Ontario branch has just heard that the branch’s nomination of the city of Stratford for induction into the North America Railway Hall of Fame has been accepted.  Hooray!

"What's past is prologue."^[1]

Picking up from last time… if we can — and do — have automatic protection for archaeological sites in Ontario, why not for other kinds of cultural heritage?

Let’s get back to the concept of automatic protection for cultural heritage resources — the idea that they get “instant” protection without going through some form of decision process.

I say “back” because perceptive readers may have noticed that the three shipwrecks we looked at last time are not automatically protected. Or rather, they get the same automatic protection in Ontario as archaeological sites on land, but the added protection they enjoy — the no-access zone surrounding them — is not automatic. Far from it!  As we saw it takes a regulation passed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council (aka Cabinet) to confer this special status.