Don’t take demolition route

Re: Gaslight District gets committee green light — June 8

I am greatly concerned that Cambridge is poised to choose demolition rather than take a more creative approach to the development of Galt’s historic factory district.

Ontario’s industries have fallen on hard times and as a result, visible reminders of its proud industrial past — its unique industrial buildings and related transportation link, and its neighbourhoods of workers housing — are fast disappearing from our urban landscapes. Soon it will be impossible to reconstruct details of the life of that once ubiquitous factory worker. “Salvage, commemoration and documentation” will not serve to preserve his memory.

It is fortuitous, then, that Cambridge has retained an impressive factory/mill site with its stone buildings largely intact that dates back to the 1840s and that in its heyday was recognized as one of the leading manufacturing firms in Canada. This complex and the existing housing on the surrounding streets that define the company property comprise a microcommunity today that represents life in Galt’s factory district over a century ago.

Central to this important neighbourhood is the Goldie-McCulloch factory. Its presence in its totality gives meaning to all the architectural resources that surround it. If building A is demolished, the visual impact of the factory complex is greatly reduced.

Cambridge has a unique opportunity. Please maintain the integrity of the Goldie-McCulloch factory complex by preserving and reusing buildings A and B and C intact within the proposed development concept.

Susan Burke Kitchener