 __ Whig 20070530(Updated: 2007.05.30 06:45:26 PM) |
Preserving our marine heritage; Museum's location and fate of Alexander Henry must be decided soon
Bill Glover
Forum - Wednesday, May 30, 2007 @ 07:00
Following is an edited excerpt from remarks delivered Sunday at the annual meeting of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes by Sydenham district councillor Bill Glover.
The devastating fire on board the Cutty Sark last week emphasizes for us all the fragility of even the highest-profile, well protected and funded marine museum and heritage site. I doubt I was the only one who went looking for their souvenir guide book to remember what had been and to speculate on what has been lost. I am sure we all wish the friends and staff of the Cutty Sark well as they begin their painful process of assessment. It gives us cause to reexamine where we stand at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston. We, too, have a ship. The Alexander Henry may also be considered a museum in her own right, showing us living and working conditions of her period and the state of naval architecture at the time of her building. But we are very fortunate to be the stewards of a larger collection. The library and archives includes the German and Milne papers - the naval architects who designed the ship. We also have the Port Arthur Shipbuilders collection - the yard where she was built. And, of course, we have the vessel as an artefact.
Please allow me, as a retired naval officer, to highlight another collection that is extremely important - the Grant MacDonald drawings and portraits. When that was opened in 1987, I seem to remember, every naval historian or embryonic naval historian in the country was here. That is how important that collection is.
While I was at the Directorate of History in Ottawa working on RCNVR officer training for the official history of the RCN, I had occasion to use not only that collection but also one of its supporting collections, the Wilfred Bark letters.
It is through its collections that any museum is able to interpret the past, how we got to where we are now, for a larger audience. I know the museum is already planning for 2010, the centenary of the RCN. We need to be reminded that in the shipyard on this site, nine corvettes were built for our navy and served in the Battle of the Atlantic. Two of them were sunk.
HMCS Charlottetown, built in 1941, was torpedoed in the St. Lawrence River on Sept. 11, 1942. Nine sailors were lost. HMCS Trentonian, built in 1943 and commissioned here in Kingston, was torpedoed on Feb. 12, 1945 and sunk with the loss of six lives. On Nov. 11 and Battle of Atlantic Sunday, we solemnly intone that "we will remember them," but we cannot remember what we do not know.
One of the roles of museums such as ours is to educate the public and succeeding generations using their collections. I believe the museum is also considering a major exhibition for next year in conjunction with an important international conference. The World Canals Conference will be meeting here in Kingston in September 2008. ... An exhibit about the canal could be a tremendous supporting and complimentary event. It could also tell us something about the early years of Kingston.
Who has stopped to think that the street layout of what is now the Parliament Hill and market area of Ottawa was done by Lieutenant Colonel John By ... An exhibit about the Rideau Canal mounted for next year's World Canals Conference here could tell us much about the men who built the canal and the influence they had in shaping and building Kingston.
Planning of such exhibitions requires institutional stability as a necessary precondition. Major funders want an institution to have at least a five-year window of stability, and in practice that means 10.
Professional staff - and a museum cannot really fulfil its mandate without them - need to be able to research and develop the storyline for an exhibit, collect the necessary materials, perhaps through loan arrangements, plan the display and write the supporting text without such distractions as having to plan for the dissolution or move of the institution. A community that does not ensure its museums have such security really does not appreciate, let alone understand, its museums and cultural heritage. They are not stewards of their inheritance.
Collections without physical security will perish. Whether it is by fire, as with the Cutty Sark, or through neglect is of little importance: the loss remains the same. We have two challenges before us - the permanence of the museum in this location, and the future of the Alexander Henry. Let me discuss first the lease arrangement and future museum location.
The bottom line, as described to me this past week by Glen Laubenstein, the city's chief administrative officer, is that both the city administration and the federal government want the museum to stay where it is. I would therefore conclude that the correspondence of last year that required the museum to prepare exit plans might be now described as an unfortunate wrong turn down a dead end. We must ensure there is not a similar false turn in the future.
As we all know, the federal government owns the building, the land and the adjacent water rights. For most of the time the museum has occupied this building, the property owner has not maintained it. A new owner would therefore be confronted with some considerable expenses for maintenance and repair. That is one problem.
A second problem is environmental. It is an anomaly that probably extends to most national governments that while they make the rules for their country, they do not always consider themselves bound by them. We all know that this was an industrial site and there are very real reasons to believe that it may be what we call a brownfield. The city administration has been unwilling, and I am sure you will say rightly so, to assume this property with the unfunded unlimited liability of an environmental cleanup. Simplistically, there are two options. Either the federal government cleans up the contamination or they make a commitment that once the property has changed hands, an arm of the federal government will not come after the city with an order to do that which the federal government did not.
There is one final complication. There are several agencies of the federal government involved. Public Works wants to dispose of the property in accordance with a recent policy that excess lands be disposed of at market value. Parks Canada, which includes the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board, has some interest in the future of a national historic site. And then the departments of the environment and of fisheries and oceans are "standing by" for the brownfields and water rights issues.
City staff have been asking that the government appoint one contact person with whom we deal who will co-ordinate all the federal concerns and be the person authorized to speak for the federal government on all issues. That request is seen to be reasonable. The delay has been personnel changes at senior levels of the federal civil service. Such an appointment is expected "soon," which I understand to mean a couple of weeks.
This week just past, Glen Laubenstein met in Ottawa with a Public Works ADM. He described the meeting to me as a "super meeting." The federal government understands our concerns about past maintenance and environment, and acknowledges that they are reasonable.
The current thinking is that the lease between the city and the federal government should be allowed to lapse. As the direct property owner, the federal government would then be able to use federal financial resources for building maintenance and repair. When those matters have been addressed, and there is resolution on the environmental concerns, the building would be leased back to the city for $1. In the meantime, the museum would remain here as a direct tenant of the federal government.
That seems to me to be a workable solution at the inter-government level. Now we need to identify what concerns the museum might have with that arrangement, and bring them to the table for discussion.
And then there is the Alexander Henry. She cannot remain where she is because the Block D development deflects the prevailing westerly winds, thus causing her to surge in her berth and chafe lines. She has to be moved, and the logical place is into the graving dock. That is not a new idea. It was part of the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Centre that the museum board considered about 10 years ago. ...
In January, we thought we had a tight timeline for the end of November lease expiry. Well, now we have a very tight timeline. If the Henry is to be moved into the dock this year, the water levels are such that it has to be done not later than the end of June. If that does not happen, as she cannot stay where she is, she will have to be moved to an interim berth with all the additional expenses and security risks. What are the problems? People who are paid to worry and to ask questions but not answer them fear that the dock might collapse, or that the ship might pull out the bollards.
Let's look at the structural integrity of the dock. We know that its age is not a contributing factor for its collapse. The graving dock at the naval dockyard in Esquimalt is older. The financing to complete it had been one of B.C.'s terms for entering Confederation. That dock is in constant use. A phone call to the appropriate people at CFB Esquimalt would, I am sure, provide much information about their structural concerns (if any) and how they have addressed them. I am, of course, assuming that the docks are sufficiently similar that the experience may be transferable. They are close in age, so I doubt the construction techniques were vastly different, and the same man, Henry Perley, built them both. His 1886 survey of the Esquimalt dock, extending to over 1,600 pages, is available at the McGill University archives.
...
At some future time the dock may be drained. Bureaucrats and their paid consultants are asking what effect that might have on the stability of the dock. Every winter the Rideau canal and all its locks, which are not dissimilar to a drydock, are drained. I am told this dock had been drained for extended periods of time over winters, and I believe the same is true of Esquimalt. But people seem to have overlooked the fact that drydocks are meant to be dry. They are flooded only to take a ship in or out. The evidence is there for those who want answers.
But best of all, with respect to concerns about liability, I am again advised that the museum's insurance would "save the crown liable" for moving the Henry.
I understand engineering opinion is divided. I think it is time to look to those who have not only engineering experience, but also marine dock experience. There comes a point when the museum, having done its due diligence, must look doubting Thomases in the eye and say, "Your questions are not good enough - here is our evidence. Show us yours. Time will not wait on your delays and vapours. The ship must move by the end of June, or are you going to pay for the costs of an interim move, and assume liability?"
Why is all of this important? It comes back to being stewards of our collections and of our maritime heritage. As a user of the library and archives, as a visitor to the museum, I am persuaded that the Great Lakes Heritage Centre idea of 10 or so years ago is a necessary plan for the future that allows the museum to grow and better fulfil its mandate to the community. That centre will be a tremendous asset for the City of Kingston. The plan calls for the ship to be in the dock. Recent waterfront developments are forcing the move of the ship. Moving the ship will also permit a future development of a pier for larger vessels, such as HMCS Halifax, that have to anchor off, and cruise ships. That is good for the City of Kingston as well. The museum has a long-term plan about which all of us - museum members and city - should be excited.speech