It probably doesn’t feel like a victory for parents in the McKellar Park area. Broadview Public School’s tower building (the two-storey collegiate gothic section of the school) was awarded a heritage designation from city council. The school is in wretched shape, and it is slated to be torn down in the coming years, after a new building is built next year, adjacent to the current building.
The province has promised money for a re-build, not a renovation. The school board has said they have no use for the tower building, and suggest that keeping the building will delay the re-build and reduce the size of the playground at the school. The kids are being set up to lose out.
Regardless, city council has made the right decision. The tower building warrants heritage designation. It deserves to be saved.
Questions will begin to crop up in the coming days. What will happen with the new school? What will happen with the playgrounds? What will anyone do with the tower building, if anything? Useful questions, all, but they miss the key political quandary; just how did we wind up in this mess?
Built in 1927 (after previous school buildings had were lost to fire, twice), the tower building has been a significant landmark in the neighbourhood for close to a century. The collegiate gothic style was quite popular at the time, giving the school building both historical, contextual and architectural value. The building meets all criteria for earning heritage designation.
But its significance does not mean that it was properly maintained. The school, both the tower building and the many additions, has been neglected in recent years. The tower building is not wheelchair accessible. Mould and asbestos have been discovered. The heating and cooling system is inefficient and ineffective. The facilities are just too lacking and too dilapidated to properly serve the needs of students. It has taken years, but the province and the school board have finally pledged the millions needed to build a new and proper school.
So we wound up in this mess because of neglect. The province and the school board (and the city) did not care enough about the building or the students to ensure that it was properly maintained (had they cared, they would have done something sooner). This political negligence has resulted in one of our historic buildings falling into severe disrepair.
The province and the school board should not be allowed to raze a landmark because they failed to maintain it.
Of course, it is easy to make this argument when it is not your kid who is shuffled off to an inadequate facility. It is understandable that parents would rather tear the building down than risk scuttling the entire re-build. In the short-term, that may seem like a wise trade-off.
But the province and the OCDSB should not be let off the hook. We shouldn’t allow their mismanagement to force this false dichotomy. Ottawa can have heritage buildings and good schools. We can build a new school, with a proper playground, without destroying our history. Even if the tower building cannot be part of the school anymore, it can be re-purposed. It can become a community centre.
There is a lesson here for our politicians. If they let our infrastructure rot, we won’t let them use that as an excuse not to fix it. Yes, this may be an expensive lesson, potentially costing us millions more and delaying the opening of a new school by a few months, but the alternative is a city gutted of its character.
Jonathan McLeod, Broadview Public School Class of 1990.
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