HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Fort York, a long-neglected bastion of Toronto, can tell its story in new visitor centre, writes Christopher Hume,

What does a city do when its most important historical site is a hole in the ground?

In the case of Toronto’s Fort York National Historic Site, the answer comes in the form of a new visitor centre that makes up in elegance what the place itself lacks in presence. The facility, which opens Sept. 20, will also provide a setting in which the garrison’s story can be told and put in context, something that disappeared eons ago.

Designed by Kearns Mancini Architects of Toronto and Vancouver’s Patkau Architects, the visitor centre is the best thing ever to happen to this long-neglected bastion. Perhaps because so few Torontonians have a clue that American troops invaded here in 1813, the fort tends to be overlooked, as does the War of 1812, though it could have led to a U.S. takeover of Upper Canada.

Now that the dust has long settled — and the U.S. ended up taking us over anyway — Fort York has had to struggle to remain relevant. From the city’s perspective, it has always been in the way. At one point streetcar tracks were run through the ramparts.

Later, in the 1950s when the Gardiner Expressway was under construction, municipal politicians talked seriously about moving the fort to Coronation Park, though how you’d schlep a giant excavation was never explained.

If it lives up to expectations, the visitor centre will fill the imaginative gaps that prevent people from engaging with the place. Though the 43-acre site, which includes the former city tree nursery, is becoming a popular venue for concerts and festivals, Torontonians have never really taken the fort to heart.

With its frosted glass and rusty steel exterior, the centre is a long linear structure that sits southwest of the fort just north of the Gardiner. The location couldn’t be more unlikely; this is, after all, the dank underbelly of an expressway whose designers originally planned to run it right through the fort.

The centre does its best to ignore the unignorable fact of the Gardiner, but, naturally, fails. However, its heroic indifference to the elevated highway helps diminish the impact. It’s also fortunate that, at 20 metres up, this is the elevated Gardiner’s highest point.

Through it all, the weathering steel plates that comprise the facade are spectacular and reminiscent of the area’s industrial past. Despite having been value-engineered within an inch of its architectural life, the centre is exquisitely detailed and spatially coherent.

Much of its bulk is tucked away in a six-metre drop in elevation, which means the building doubles as a retaining wall. A series of sloping passageways leads from the lower level at the entrance up to the fort above. Along the way, visitors will eventually read about the history of Fort York.

Because there’s not enough money to finish the building as designed, that won’t happen for another year or so. Even the exhibition that will be on display when the centre opens will be about the First World War, not the War of 1812. Permanent exhibits won’t be ready until 2015 or beyond. No doubt this will cause confusion, but better late than never.

On the other hand, the inclusion of a fully conditioned room means that in October 2015 the historic Magna Carta, no less, will go on display at the centre. Clearly, the scope of the visitor centre/museum goes beyond the fort.

The beauty of the city lies, of course, in its endless powers of self-renewal. In Toronto, they have never been shown to better advantage than here in the shadow of the Gardiner Expressway. Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca