City council in Brantford, Ontario just voted 8-3 to demolish 42 heritage buildings, possibly the only pre-confederation cluster remaining in all of Ontario. Hard to believe they don’t see the tremendous potential there and would prefer to just get it out of sight and turn it into a lawn until someone comes up with an idea for the site. This situation is probably the dumbest anti-heritage concept in all of Canada. Just really makes me think that there must be some kind of behind the scenes plan going on because it just doesn’t make any sense. Is somebody’s brother-in-law just waiting for the red tape to clear? This is otherwise just really, really dumb. Look at this street.
Photo Denzel Gordon
A browse of the Brantford Wikipedia page and a few blogs reveals that Alexander Graham Bell had an office in one of those buildings, made the first distance call in Canada from Brantford (are these people crazy?). It is also an election year and it looks like council has decided to vote itself out of office prematurely, assuming of course that the rest of Brantford is sane people.
Most cities today are actively rebuilding and restoring the older areas of town with tremendous success, but Brantford seems to be stuck in some kind of 1950′s style perverted notion of progress that removed it’s streetcars, brought in freeways, encouraged shopping centers on the periphery, and tore down theaters so that folks could eat at some theme place called Crabby Ninja’s Happy Pirate Eatin’ Saloon. Oooooph!
There are many young creative types in Canada who would jump at the opportunity to restore that street while creating jobs and possibly turning Colborne street into one of the coolest urban stretches in the country! No need to think “world class” in this town because the word for your plan is dumb, Brantford, very dumb.
Facebook Group Save the South Side of Colborne Street
SCANDAL: Brantford demolishing entire street of 41 heritage buildings!
The Greenest Brick
Ripping Out Old Bones
P.S. Just saw some video on the Facebook group that shows the demolition began today. Not only are the city council dumb, but they were in a suspiciously quick rush to get this done. Will be interesting to see the election results in the fall. And it is Harper’s government that put up the money to demolish this heritage street!
