A longtime resident of Uxbridge, Ted Barris has written professionally for 40 years - for radio, television, magazines and newspapers. The "Barris Beat" column began in the 1950s when his father Alex wrote for the Globe and Mail. Ted continues the tradition of offering a positive view of his community. He has written 16 non-fiction books of Canadian history and teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto.
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An ordinaary fatal flaw
Preservation, it seems, only works when times are good.
A couple of weeks ago, a producer at CBC Radio called. He asked if I were available to substitute-host the regional program “Ontario Morning” for a day. It turned out my teaching schedule had just enough room to allow me to help him out. The show is a weekday current affairs program heard across southern Ontario. And it's comprised of interviews on news of the day. Almost immediately after agreeing to work the show, I suggested we interview Lynn Philip Hodgson about his attempts to save the Camp 30 site near Bowmanville.
“Not really in our mandate,” the producer said, meaning that listeners wouldn't necessarily relate to the story.
“It's the only known POW camp left in the world where WW II German officers were housed,” I insisted. “It's a piece of history.”
I went on to explain that the story offered a political and contemporary angle as well. Situated on the site of the one-time Boy's Training School for the town of Bowmanville, the 18 buildings on 40 hectares of rural land had - during the Second World War - housed hundreds of German officers of the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe (army, navy and air force). I told the producer that Hodgson was the definitive authority on the subject, having written the book “Word of Honour: Camp 30.” I also explained that despite all that world history, it appeared that the current owners of the historic site, the Kaitlin Group, would go ahead with plans to demolish the Camp 30 buildings for a planned housing development.
You can probably guess what happened. I lost the pitch to do the interview. And within a week of my suggestion to interview Lynn Philip Hodgson on the air about trying to preserve the site, the former Camp 30 grounds were mysteriously hit by fires. The flames gutted the 1925 administration building, which Coun. Hodgson referred to as “an absolute jewel.” The man's frustration and anguish were palpable. I felt it too.
Modern society's general disregard for architectural antiquity - other than churches, old theatres or significant community buildings - has allowed too much demolition in the name of progress. In this town alone, I point to the demolition of mills, historic storefronts and in particular the post office on Brock Street as examples of such disregard. What some politicians, entrepreneurs and futurists don't seem to realize is that even commonplace structures - such as administration buildings, warehouses and bungalows - can mirror a community's soul.
It's perhaps when times are toughest that the structures closest to our everyday lives need our care and attention most. Some of the world's most utilitarian and yet most spectacular structures came into existence when the economy was at its worst. I point to the Empire State Building in New York City built in the depths of the Great Depression, or in England, Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall, London's British Library and Newcastle's arching Tyne Bridge. Closer to home, Toronto's Bloor Street viaduct was completed just as the First World War ended, when the country faced an influenza epidemic and massive unemployment descended on urban Canada.
Would Toronto city fathers even think of tearing such practical facilities down? Of course not.
A few years ago, I took in one of Lynn Philip Hodgson's autumn walking tours of the old Camp X site on the Lake Ontario shoreline south of the General Motors plant in Oshawa. During a casual hour-long stroll, Hodgson guided about 20 or 30 of us around the grounds of what had once been among the most crucial and top-secret training facilities for secret agents. Beginning in December 1941 (just before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor) and continuing even after the war, Hodgson told us, Camp X had been home to 500 spies in training. It had housed some of the most sophisticated communications technology and been frequented by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover (of the FBI), Bill Donovan (of the British OSS) and Ian Fleming (later author of the James Bond novels).
Hodgson and a number of other Camp X enthusiasts had managed to save and/or gather its artefacts for a museum on the edge of the Oshawa airport. But, again, in tougher times following the war, nobody seemed interested enough in the routine buildings - the barracks, the lecture halls or even the communications tower - to preserve them for their historical value. And they were knocked down and their existence swept away.
I think it's a fatal flaw. In not recognizing and preserving the ordinary, why should anyone believe what we define as extraordinary?
