Wrong Must Be Made Right

young and progressive has left a new comment on your post "A Little More Detail":

Evelyn, I don't understand...I thought the museum closed for a few years. Anywho, can everyone not work together to incorporate both ideas of art/culture and heritage. I am a big fan of history and have loved my trips to the museums, black creek pioneer village as a child. What do you propose? What are your ideas? Let's not get hung-up on what was or what should have been. I would like to see your proposed idea. What can be done. I am so excited to be living north of the city and I love the beautiful Aurora. I want to see things move forward...please help me understand why there is so much banter?

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The museum collection was packed in boxes to be stored and the building  vacated  for renovations to proceed.

When I came back to council in 2003, the Historical Society had completed gutting of the building and were undertaking a fund  raising campaign to undertake  re-construction of the interior.

A special event  was held on the second floor to celebrate the first stage and to reveal the building exactly as it had been as a school  Two Historical Society members, the late Bill Devins and Les Oliver, former students at the school were  there. They were lifelong devotees to the town's history.

There was a sense of a dream  realized.  

False ceilings had been removed .Tin  tiles bore the traces of  smoke from the  last wood burning in the  basement furnace.  Stoking the furnace was a student chore. On especially cold days they wore their coats  to stay warm  at their  desks in the cold classrooms .

Windows were single pane glass and  they reached to the ceiling. Once again  they were revealed with removal of the false ceiling.

For authenticity single pane glass had  been installed. But  $770,000 Heritage Canada grant provided  for interior storm windows  and a special HVAC system  specially designed to  keep the air clean and protect museum artifacts.

The Historical Society  had  gutted the interior. The fund-raising  campaign was going well.

By 2006, the building was still empty.

The town had sold the hydro utility. $24 million was realized in the sale. Council resolved the funds would only be used for something special. A project that would otherwise be a burden on the taxpayers.

It would  be a clear and identifiable asset. Not the same as the one we sold. But an asset never-the-less.

We tossed some ideas around for a bit.

I envisioned a building that would provide for every imaginable activity to make a difference in people's lives. Dance studios, music studios, writing and acting labs, art studios,.I remember a young man coming to a meeting and proposing a boxing facility.

A building several storeys high...  windows ablaze with lights well into the evening. People of all ages coming and going from morning until night. I have just this minute realized,I was picturing it on the site of Wells Street School overlooking  the town park.

I did not see a particular advantage to keeping the money in the bank. The longer it stayed there the more likely the vision or the purpose would fade. But I did see the need to wait for the right  idea of how to use it to its best possible advantage.

 Church Street School was still empty. There were costs to heat and maintain.  The museum  had been  missing for four years.  It occurred to me, using some of the hydro money to complete the project would be a good use.

I moved ,Councillor Ron Wallace seconded , Council adopted the motion and it was on its way.

The Historical  Society was already heavily invested in the project.

How would anyone conceive under such circumstances, when the project was completed, with a  museum design commissioned and paid for by the Historical Society and so much more invested for its special needs , a  museum would have  no place in the completed building.

That people with no idea of the years of devoted commitment, the dreams , the financial investment  the actual physical labour ,would be given authority by the town, to exclude the  museum.

Yet that is what  happened.  I am ashamed to say it was on my watch.

I hesitate to use the word  moral in a political context.

Yet I must.

The agreement  that excludes the museum from the Church Street school is morally indefensible.

I will not rest until  the wrong has been made right.