A CHAMPION OF TORONTO
Local historian Stephen Otto died last month, but his impact will be felt for years to come.
One of the great joys and privileges of living and working in this city has been meeting and learning from people who’ve long tried to make it a better place. Stephen Otto was one of those people. A historian and civic activist, he passed away on April 22 at age 78, but his impact on Toronto and Ontario will be long felt.
Over the years, Stephen became a friend and he shared his enormous knowledge about this city and province. He also knew how to negotiate politics and personas, and when to be loud and when to quietly work in the background. Though a historic preservationist, he also knew the city was not a museum and thought it could grow while still respecting its history.
To say his knowledge of this place was enormous would be an understatement. During even a casual conversation with Stephen, in person or during one of his many phone calls, he would mention enough names and events to make my head spin. History is so immeasurable — there’s just so much of it — that it can be difficult to know and understand anything more than isolated snippets, but Stephen was somebody who could see the entire arc of it, at least in Ontario. One summer day about 10 years ago, Stephen picked me up in his ancient Volvo sedan. A tank of a car, he famously purchased it without air conditioning, driving it until late last year when the cancer he fought off the last decade returned for a third and final time. We were heading up to Alliston for a historic plaque unveiling at the Stevenson Farms where Theodore Loblaw was raised before founding his chain of grocery stores.
It was an excuse for a day trip outside the city, and a chance for him to say hello to Lincoln Alexander, the former lieutenant-governor and an old acquaintance from his years in the public service, who was presiding over the ceremonies. Stephen seemed to know everybody, but he never made a big deal about that.
Instead of driving straight to Alliston, Stephen chartered a meandering route northwest from downtown Toronto roughly following the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) route out of town. We stopped in Weston to get a glimpse of the GTR bridge crossing the Humber River valley and further out we stopped in Georgetown to see the bridge crossing the Credit River valley. Both are beauties and date to the 1850s but are still put to great use, carrying UP Express and GO trains everyday. Useful and historic at the same time, Stephen wanted me to appreciate that they were there and to see a bit more of that arc. As a young man, Stephen studied business at the University of Toronto and later at Harvard, but he had a passion for history and eventually studied it at the University of Cambridge. After working in business, he moved to the public sector as the founding head of heritage programs for the province of Ontario. After leaving government, he became a consulting historian, working on various projects, including a revision of Eric Arthur’s canonical book Toronto: No Mean City.
Stephen’s fingerprints are on historic sites all over the province, but none more so than Fort York. In1994, after years of being surrounded by industrial neighbours and the Gardiner Expressway, post-recession, Toronto was beginning to grow again, and the development being planned for the area around the fort that wasn’t sympathetic to the national historic site.
That year, Stephen and a few other passionate folks founded the Friends of Fort York, a citizen advocacy group that would look out for the fort’s interests. (Full disclosure: Stephen wrangled me to join the Friends’ volunteer board of directors in 2011; his friendship did not come without certain obligations.)
What’s most interesting about this particular “friends” group is, while it was formed because residential development was getting close to the fort, with Stephen’s guidance it became anything but a NIMBY group, instead advocating for thoughtful development that respects the fort site while embracing the new neighbours who continue to move in. This was the city’s birthplace, but also their neighbourhood park, Stephen Stephen Otto, shown at his home in 2010, was a preservationist that knew Toronto wasn’t a museum, and thought it could grow while still respecting its history. would like to say, and he hoped they too would become advocates for it.
In the last few years, Stephen was particularly excited about the new pedestrian and cycling bridge that will cross the railway corridor later this year, connecting the fort to both the Niagara neighbourhood to the north but also the eventual extension of the West Toronto Rail Path. Though a historian, Stephen was always looking to the future and saw the fort as the nexus of this pedestrian and cycling superhighway network, connecting the centre of the city, the west side and the waterfront.
Playing the long game in city building is something Stephen did well. Soon after the Friend’s formed, Stephen started “Fife and Drum,” which began its life as the group’s newsletter but evolved into a local history journal with deeply researched articles. Over the years he wrote a few times about Jean Earle Geeson, a teacher, artist, journalist and an early advocate for Fort York. Last year he led a campaign to have a new school near the fort named after her. Though her name wasn’t ultimately picked — indeed all candidate names were deserving — it was another way to remind people about an important figure who might be lost to history.
Stephen would certainly be pleased to see that the Fort York Visitor Centre, a project he advocated for and donated $250,000 of his own money towards, won a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture this week. A modern, forwardthinking building on a historic site that, by necessity, even embraces the Gardiner Expressway. It’s a building that embodies the outlook Stephen had on Toronto.
He’ll be missed, but there are reminders of him all over this city.
Though Stephen Otto died last month at age 78, his legacy is felt in places like Fort York, where he co-founded a citizen advocacy group
Shawn Micallef is a Toronto-based freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter: @shawnmicallef