OF BRIDGES AND POEMS

Some reasons are advanced for the preservation of historic sites and districts.

 There is a bridge in England known to some and, certainly, to most conservationists.  It is the iron bridge located in Iron Bridge, Shropshire and its manufacture, using iron from the Abraham Darby’s seventeenth century iron works just down the road, is considered to mark the beginning of the Industrial Age.  Constructed of individual members formed into an arch, the design is based on bridges made of wood rather than iron.  The site is centred in the industrial valley which erupted into the production of manufactured goods such as clay tile and pottery, iron and steel, cast iron decorative ornament and utilitarian castings and a myriad of other products which expanded production out into the countryside and defined for the modern age the notions of the Black Country, Bedlam and the triumph of Methodist industry. It serves as a symbol for our now-waning industrial society.  Most of the valley is now a museum—a poignant end to the powerhouse that was England at the height of its military and industrial development.

 Symbolically, the notion of bridge is one which applies well to our current state as we make the transition between the industrial and communications ages.  The motif of river crossing is not new—it is more than likely a part of our Jungian Collective Unconscious as much as a part of our current culture. The image ranges from the crossing of the Rubicon, to the Stygian voyage of Dante and is seen in such lofty concepts as the Catholic Church’s adherence to its Pontiff (literally the Pope as a bridge to God).  The protection and preservation of the Iron Bridge Gorge in England can be seen as a maintenance of the philosophical bridge between the past and present—but a former past and present between pre-industrial and industrial societies. The goal of that preservation is to ensure the understanding of the impact of the industrial revolution on our present lives.

 In many instances the desire of historic and interpretive sites is to accurately convey the “true” sense of what it was like to live in an earlier era.  Visitors to such sites leave in the belief that they understand and have experienced the past. Yet how truthful is the understanding that is conveyed?  In conversation recently, I described to a friend my grandparents’ home on the Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia. We were talking about smell.  My grandfather smoked a pipe and fished lobster and cod. My grandparents lived in an arguably damp and cool climate, gathered in a kitchen warmed by a wood stove burning spruce logs stored in a box in the entrance just beside the kitchen and enjoyed the most amazing meals of fresh baked bread, boiled potatoes from their garden and tasty feeds of fresh fish and, frequently, corned beef and cabbage. In the fall, new smells would arise as clothes were brought out of cedar chests reeking of mothballs. Frequently the smell of salt air, black spruce forest and rotting seaweed at low tide would waft up the hill from the harbour on damp foggy mornings and mix with hints of generations of perked coffee and the sulphur smell of fresh-struck Eddie Sesqui matches as the pipe was tamped and lit and the bacon streaked dishes were put aside.  The smell of that place conjures up for me a world which is gone and which can never be recreated.  Few modern interpretations of historic sites smell right.   In his book “The Past is a Foreign Place”, the English writer David Lowenthal expounds on the impossibility of bringing the past back to life in the form of restoration of communities or the recreation of past locales.  Throughout Europe, as well as in North America, there are dozens of heritage sites offering experiences intended to recreate the life style of anything from the Vikings to the Victorians. Yet the presentation of each is guaranteed to be a pale imitation, at best, of the original.

 The reasons are not simply related to smell. It is virtually impossible, for instance, to duplicate the exact colour of an original paint system due to the variation in the size of original pigments and the oxidation of paint vehicles such as linseed oil.  Interpretation of colour is frequently up to the observer and is subject to influences outside of logic.  In my experience, the colour green for instance, is subject to the whim of fashion—many historical restorations of the 1960's,  for example, interpreted green as an “avocado” shade which was popular at the time but which arose more from the yellowing of the original finish than the intent of the original designer.

 And this discussion about colour and smell can be extended to one of meaning.  The complexity of our own civilization results in a belief by most of us that we know more than our ancestors. Collectively, perhaps, we do. Yet our individual knowledge may not be any greater in sum than that of any of our forefathers. As an example, we all know how to use a computer but how many of us know how to make one? My grandfather used to fish, and made his own boats. In an entry of  an older volume in my collection of encyclopedias, I read what must have been relatively common knowledge for a person in 1880 in that a wagon drawn by a horse might be described as a trap, a landau, a carriage, ___ .  The horse might be referred to as a roan, a mare, a pinto, a  ___. And the cart might have been making a delivery to a vessel that would have been called anything from a brig, to a barque, a barkentine, a sloop, a schooner, a scow, a lighter, or a ship. Any of these names might be used in place of the generic description as a form of shorthand to provide a comprehensive description with an economy of words.  The complexity of the descriptions for each of the above items or animals (and these are but a very few) are mirrored in our descriptions of modern objects, each of which will individually elicit a more detailed understanding of the object described than the more generic name.  Thus, Compaq, IBM and Hewlett Packard may provide more detailed descriptions than the generic word “computer” while “car” may be rendered as PT Cruiser, Beetle, or Mini Van.  Yet in acquiring our modern lexicon, we have generally lost our more descriptive words of the past—and by words I also mean the built vocabulary of our communities. Preservation of samples of at least some of these is important to allow us to describe our progress through time and to permit an understanding of the development of knowledge and our culture and of the sophistication of past society.  By understanding the roots of our traditions, we understand ourselves and can, hopefully, refine our approach to the future.  It may be trite but it is certainly true—societies which live in the present are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. I would add that by not seeing the positive elements of the past, we are condemned to make an environment which is more and more distant from the cultural and psychological needs of our people. 

 Beyond the lexicon, therefore, is the psychology (in fact some wonder which of these comes first in defining us as humans).  Lowenthal’s thesis includes an extensive discussion of the issue of mindset.  It was entirely possible, for instance for an eighteenth century settler to die of a disease known as homesickness or a broken heart.  The individual’s relationship to church and state has been in a constant state of flux—our attitudes today, when measured against attitudes of only a few decades ago, demonstrate the radical changes in perspective which can occur in a very short time. Consider the attitude to race until the mid-nineteen sixties as only one example of how attitudes can change within one lifetime. Or to patriotism as evidenced by attitudes of the first world war when hundreds of thousands willingly marched to their death.

 Yet why bother to preserve anything in Canada?  The loss of our immediate past has prompted much of the development of our own museums and interpretive sites, particularly since the 1960's.  Rapid urbanization and technological change prompted a strident effort by aging members of our society to preserve the memory of their own lives so that later generations could see how they lived.  Having developed as a colony, and having not removed ourselves forcibly from that status, our society has generally become imbued with the notion that nothing here is of historical value or importance—only sites in other parts of the world are worthy of our notice and of preservation or protection.  The best example of this attitude is playing itself out at the moment in the erection of high towers between Fort York, one of the major battle sites of the war of 1812,  and Lake Ontario in Toronto. Such a situation would be met with more restrictions in the US where notions of patriotism continue after 200 years in an effort to distance that country from its colonial past. There is, according to all too many politicians and community leaders in Canada (particularly Ontario in the past few years), nothing of historical merit—history happened somewhere else, of course—let the developers have free rein, only the future is important.

 Some perspective is useful although those with closed minds may not be willing to look at the true picture. It is not widely understood that over 80% of the structures in the UK are actually of the post 1800 period, and yet the perception here is that the UK has legitimate heritage monuments but we don’t.  In this fact alone, the parallels between the experience there and in Canada are relevant as it places our own development squarely within the time frame of much of the development of the “mother country”. A recent project with which I was involved, the restoration of a lighthouse on a remote promontory in Bonavista Newfoundland, was composed of parts cast in iron in England to the designs of the Stevensons, the great Engineer responsible for many of the early railways of the UK.  The lamp array, which had been in continuous use until the early 1960's, had been constructed to the designs of Argand in 1812—while Napoleon was still alive and running amok throughout continental Europe. Therefore, while there may be a feeling that technological advances in Europe were rarely transferred until years later to North America, is untrue.  As an example, within 3 years of the first steam-powered vessel being operated in the UK, there was a similar vessel operating on the Ottawa River.  Similarly, a steam locomotive was in operation in Nova Scotia only a few years after the first such engine in the U.K. A few years ago, I was involved in the analysis of the ruinous Fort Rodney complex on Pigeon Island in St. Lucia.  The fort had been built in two distinct stages in 1794 and in 1832.  The original lime kiln used for both stages revealed that modifications had been made between the first stage and the second to permit continuous charging of the kiln.  Such modifications, a stunning advance in the technology of lime manufacture for building mortars, had been proposed by Vicat in his book c1824, only a few years prior to the observed modifications at the fort.  There is no question that our own technological growth was as rapid as that of Europe (limited only by the month or two required to sail to this continent) and is as worthy of interpretation. Indeed, in several instances, we were there first—kerosene was invented in Nova Scotia, for instance.

 Arising from the understanding that our society advanced at the same pace as others must come a confidence in our own abilities.   By excising all reference to the past and ignoring our own contributions, we are condemning ourselves to perpetual subservience to the United States and to the rest of the world. We adopt a colonization of the mind. Preservation of our history is critical to our cultural and emotional survival. This fact is well known to Americans, and was also known to the communist regimes of Eastern Europe where vast resources were expended on the restoration of such communities as Danzig and Dresden after WWII. I have noted for years the difference between preservationists in the US and Canada which difference is most notable at annual meetings of the Association for Preservation Technology at various locations in both countries.  While not universally the case, the US delegates tend to be Republican and patriotic while their Canadian counterparts tend to be jean-clad activists.  In the US, preservation (which is also supported by a variety of healthy tax initiatives) is a patriotic calling meant to preserve the Republican separateness of the country from its colonial forebears.  In Canada, preservation is a matter of ecological activism guaranteed to offend the typically conservative operators of main street business. Inevitably, when issues of Heritage Districts arise, there is always the comment made by a local business owner to the effect that “no one is damn well going to tell me what colour to paint my windows!” 

 This attitude is not confined to Canada—it arises in most instances where private enterprise meets with the notion of collective good. And yet, the entrenched position in many parts of our business community is that heritage preservation makes no economic sense and is of no value to the community.  In recent years, studies conducted both in Canada and the United States have determined that even the economic argument is untrue, never mind the emotional one.  Notwithstanding local politicians insistence on the lack of need to control and protect historic districts, it is now known and backed by statistics that preservation of historic areas and buildings results in an increase in the value of these areas and places and attracts visitation by the public and, consequently, greater economic activity.  Preservation is labour intensive—equivalent dollar value of investment in preservation enhances a local economy to a greater degree. New construction involves the installation of materials and components which are made elsewhere using mass production techniques.

 And lest these arguments be countered with the notion that municipal arenas located in flattened historic cores provide greater economic stimulus, studies by the Canadian Conference of the Arts show that there is greater economic activity associated with cultural tourism such as ballet, orchestra, choir events, heritage and museums than sporting events and rock concerts held in arenas built over the ruins of viable city centres. It is perhaps a form of suburban revenge—of a view that is imposing itself on municipal cores—in London, Ontario and in Winnipeg to cite recent examples.

 Modern teams can build machines and buildings of great sophistication.  Much of these devices are constructed by a sequence ranging from initial designs by trained designers through the various production trades and thence to the end user.  Modern systems have developed from designs. Yet the empirical development of design over several thousand years has also developed structures and accommodations which are equally sophisticated and which border on the sublime.  I have a photograph of a builders mark faintly visible under the paint layers on the morticed horizontal of a half-timbered 16th century shop in Shrovesbury England, for instance, which is mirrored by an identical mark on the intersecting tenoned vertical member—the pieces were prefabricated and re-assembled in place rather than built on the site in sequence.  Much the same, St. Paul’s Church in Halifax was prefabricated in Boston, disassembled , shipped and re-erected in 1750.  The immediate successors to the iron bridge were disassembled and shipped around the world in wooden ships which soon after became iron ships.  We look down our noses at the genius of our ancestors at our own peril.  It is this need to deny ourselves the conceit of our own fabrications which requires us to preserve the past and celebrate not its primitive nature but its sophistication and intelligence.

 Certainly, this brings to mind the notion that most of our largest technological feats are managed by the engineering profession. A friend of mind once said that engineers are architects who weren’t required to read poetry. True enough, I suppose—I worked for a few years in two of the largest such firms in Canada and, well, most (but not all) of the engineers I met were wonderfully nice folks but somewhat unpoetic in nature. As nuclear physicists begin to speak like eastern mystics and as our cell phones take on the properties of laptop computers, we need to look beyond the immediately visible to see how sublime life can be.  As an example, the development and refinement of wooden vessels was an empirical process which extends back into pre-history. What is interesting was the means used to pass on the knowledge of ship construction from master to apprentice in a verbal society ( I do not wish to imply illiterate simply because there is a case to be made as to the literacy of verbal societies which has nothing to do with the implied ignorance of the term).  In any event, the means of passing down this knowledge—the ratios of mast height to beam width to keel depth to rudder size etc.—was in the form of a poem.  Once the poem was learned, the apprentice became a shipwright.  I am certain that the same form of poetry was at play in the training of other trades—including master builders.  With a poem, both the left an right brains are at play. If we destroy the past we destroy the basis of these great poems as surely as we would remove the roots of our language by burning all of the works of Shakespeare.

 The amenity and humanity of earlier communities can only be observed in those examples which remain.  Their loss will destroy our ability, not to get back to the past, but to understand and redevelop what was most humane about the past and to remember the environmental conditions that were lost.  We ignore these things at our peril.

 The purpose of preservation is therefore, in part, the exercise in the preservation of memory, both individual in the case of past life styles, and collective in the sense of past culture.

 While we cannot recapture the full essence of the past, we can at least gain an appreciation of the nature of the past and the roots of our existence.  Anyone who has read Margaret Vissar’s books can see how much we owe to the tradition and heritage of the past—even when we try to live in the present. Meaning arises from the layers of past use and association and cannot be escaped.  In attempting to escape such meaning, in the past several decades, we have despoiled our planet and brought ourselves perilously close to ecological and hence economic ruin.  We must revisit the past to determine the intersection where we went wrong.  Without a knowledge of the route taken to this point, we are lost.

 Witness to the more recent changes in the world order, empty factories still stand near where I live in small communities throughout southern Ontario.  Their workers have gone forever.  In Cape Breton, the last coal mines - active for over 300 years and prime suppliers of coal to the industrial development on two continents—have just closed. The twin symbols, pinnacles of international commerce and the late industrial era, have been destroyed in New York by the jet airliners which were another product of the latter period of the same period. A whole new paradigm for conducting business may now well emerge—lower buildings, dispersed work forces, more reliance on electronic devices and communications.  For just as the Iron Bridge meant a transition between ages, the computer on which I am writing this essay is a means to expedite our crossing into a new way of living.

 The past is a foreign place.  We cannot duplicate the memory of the lists of descriptions of horses or wagons or vessels.  Few now die of homesickness as they actually did in the eighteenth century. Our relationship with God, state and authority is a complex one which has shifted within our own lifetimes.  Yet the present is also a foreign place.  Physicists now believe that we interact with the universe in a direct manner through our consciousness.  It is the only explanation for the observations of subatomic particles which appear to change direction or status because they are being observed.  This suggests the extreme complexity of our current state and our need to find a level of comfort in familiar things. Indeed, the language of physics is beginning to merge with that of the great mystical traditions, the tantrics and Buddhists and Hindus.  There is convergence on all fronts in the communications world—TV, telephone, audio disks, work processing, entertainment are merging on our desktops and in our pockets.  We are increasingly connected as we become disconnected from our past and our communities.

 The preservation of our monuments, of our communities and of a sampling of our past lives is therefore not one of choice.  It is a matter of survival.  The survival

•  of our culture.

•  of our beliefs

•  of our standards and

•  of our poems. 

If we fail in this task and live in the present, we are condemned to a life of bleak subservience to commercial goals. An existence already described in the novel 1984. Of small minded thinking. Of purgatory.

 We can do better.

 

The Association of Friends of the Billings Estate Museum

L’association des amis du Musée du domaine Billings