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We’ve been looking at easements for heritage conservation purposes and how these evolved in Ontario.

Easements and their close cousin covenants — agreements conferring rights over another’s land or property for specific purposes — can be used by anyone for almost any (legal) end. But the only kind that beat the old common law limits and stick over the long haul are statutory easements — that is, agreements where the parties involved and the public policy objectives to be served are set out in statute.

By the early 1980s the Ontario Heritage Foundation’s easements program was well-established. But its scope, like the properties the Foundation owned and its other programs, was pretty much confined to cultural heritage. This was about to change.

One of the early heritage easements in Ontario protects Victoria Hall in Cobourg.

Portico of Victoria Hall, Cobourg

Writing about the Rockwood Academy a few posts back I mentioned my first job with the province — one with responsibility for the pioneering provincial heritage easements program.

Before that, in 1979, I spent a summer with the Stratford Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC). At some point my boss, the redoubtable city/county archivist Jim Anderson, brought to my attention a bill to amend the Ontario Heritage Act.

Quick question (okay, two): Who is the biggest landowner in Ontario?  Who is the second?

The provincial government owns by far the most land in Ontario. The province’s 36 conservation authorities are, collectively, the second largest owner.
 

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.