This document discusses a pilot project called the Rideau Heritage Initiative that aimed to help rural communities along the Rideau Canal nominate heritage properties to the Canadian Register of Historic Places and build heritage management capacity. The project worked with 12 municipalities and identified 4 models of existing heritage stewardship capacity. It also encountered challenges like skepticism about heritage designation and a lack of municipal heritage committees. The project found that building community engagement and capacity, such as through municipal heritage committees, was key to successful implementation of the Historic Places Initiative in rural areas.

1. To Save a Butterfly, Must One Kill It?
The Historic Places Initiative in a Rural Context
In Focus, June 2007
Ha Nguyen

2. ii
Acknowledgements
Feature prepared by Stephen Irving, Francesco Manganiello, Rebecca Sciarra and
Christopher Wiebe.
This piece was originally introduced at the May 3, 2007 In Focus Speakers’ Series
Workshop on The Arts and Heritage in Rural Communities done in partnership with
the Knowledge Centre of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The workshop
featured John Brotman, Executive Director of the Ontario Arts Council and the
following members of the Rideau Heritage Initiative pilot project: Stephen Irving,
Francesco Manganiello, Rebecca Sciarra and Christopher Wiebe. Workshop
discussants included Pamela Blackstock, Director, Historic Places Branch, Parks
Canada and Deborah Hossack, Registrar, Historic Places Initiative, Ontario Ministry
of Culture.
Special thanks to Pamela Blackstock, Director, Historic Places Branch, Parks
Canada, James Hamilton, Supervisor, Services Unit, Programs and Services Branch,
Ontario Ministry of Culture, Deborah Hossack, Registrar, Historic Places Initiative,
Ontario Ministry of Culture, and Professor Herb Stovel, Coordinator, Heritage
Conservation Programme, School of Canadian Studies, Carleton University for their
collaboration in the development of To Save a Butterfly, Must One Kill It? The
Historic Places Initiative in a Rural Context.
The views and opinions in this paper reflect those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the positions of the Department of Canadian Heritage, Parks
Canada, the Provincial Government of Ontario or the Government of Canada.

3. To Save a Butterfly, Must One Kill It?
The Historic Places Initiative in a Rural Context
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Historic Places Initiative in a Rural Context
The Rideau Heritage Initiative: A Case Study
Sustaining Butterflies: Methodology and Approach
Community Engagement
Identifying Community Capacity
From Cocoon to Flight: Transformations and Challenges
Transformations
Four Municipality Models of Heritage Stewardship
Challenges
Understanding the Historic Places Initiative
Scepticism about the Benefits of Heritage Designation
Municipal Heritage Committees-Essential Capacity Building Blocks
Linking Heritage and Economic Development: A Double-Edged Sword
Conclusion
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4. To Save a Butterfly, Must One Kill It?
The Historic Places Initiative in a Rural Context
Introduction
Heritage conservation in Canada is often identified with the notion of “freeze-drying” places as
static monuments to the past thus removing them from everyday practical use. This idea is
perpetuated by the widely held perception that heritage designation of property — heritage
conservation’s most high-profile instrument — onerously imposes on property rights. So
pervasive and resilient is this perception that it has become a historical artifact in its own right;
one that unfortunately permeates the views and imaginations of individuals and governments
alike.
This paper examines the findings of the Rideau Heritage Initiative (RHI), a 2006 Ontario
provincial summer pilot project, conducted in the predominantly rural municipalities of the
Rideau Canal Corridor that was designed to advance the heritage conservation goals of the
Historic Places Initiative (HPI). It seeks to show that rather than freezing places in time, a
heritage conservation program such as the Historic Places Initiative can be a powerful tool for
rural communities in managing their local heritage resources. However, these resources are most
difficult to manage because they are linked to a complex legal web of property rights pertaining
to a palimpsest of zoning bylaws, planning legislation and land-use restrictions that are subject to
municipal bylaws and provincial statutes which vary from community to community.
The Historic Places Initiative in a Rural Context
With its launch in 2001, the Historic Places Initiative aimed to transform the discourse around
heritage conservation in Canada — whether of historic buildings or cultural landscapes — and to
put to rest the perception that heritage conservation was a backward-looking and antiquated
concept. The Historic Places Initiative is a rare model of a shared federal–provincial/territorial
partnership. Furthermore, by acknowledging that all levels of government and all Canadians
share responsibility for the management of heritage resources, the Historic Places Initiative has
changed the profile of heritage conservation and awakened support within public and private
sectors.
At the heart of the Historic Initiative is the Canadian Register of Historic Places (CRHP), the
first Canadian online registry that catalogues all historic places designated by federal, provincial,
territorial, or municipal jurisdictions. The Canadian Register collects information about
designated historic properties and communicates how local communities understand and value
their heritage. In order for a historic property to be listed on the Canadian Register, a Statement
of Significance (SoS) is required. This narrative profile provides a description, the heritage value
and character-defining elements for each historic place.
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5. However, this national register is not an end in itself. The Canadian Register aims to raise the
profile of heritage on the local and national stage and then harness this awareness to achieve
two long-term goals:
1. Build heritage stewardship capacity in local communities;
2. Engage all sectors in the conservation of these places.
The Canadian Register served as the Rideau Heritage Initiative pilot project’s centre-piece.
The Rideau Heritage Initiative: A Case Study
In 2006, spurred by the 175th
anniversary of the Rideau Canal and its UNESCO World
Heritage nomination, the Ontario Ministry of Culture’s (MCL) Historic Places Initiative and
Carleton University’s School of Canadian Studies collaborated on a ground-breaking four-
month summer pilot project. This pilot, the Rideau Heritage Initiative, was implemented by a
team of six Canadian Studies graduate students —Stephen Irving, Andrew Jeanes, Francesco
Manganiello,
Ha Nguyen, Rebecca Sciarra, and Christopher Wiebe — with Professor Herb Stovel as
technical supervisor.
The purpose of the Rideau Initiative was to facilitate the work of the Historic Places Initiative in
12 municipalities of the Rideau Canal Corridor: Ottawa, Kingston, Perth, North Grenville,
Rideau Lakes, Merrickville, Smiths Falls, Westport, South Frontenac, Montague,
Drummond-North Elmsley, and Tay Valley. All of these municipalities, except for Kingston
and Ottawa, are considered “rural” by Statistics Canada. The primary goal was to help these
communities nominate their heritage properties to the Canadian Register and to help build their
heritage-management capacity, where appropriate.
With a research area strung over 202 km, the Rideau Heritage Initiative team worked with over
50 community members — councillors, municipal staff, heritage planners, property owners,
local historians, residents and volunteers — to craft Statement of Significances and
subsequently nominate 137 municipally designated heritage properties to the Canadian Register.
The team also visited municipal councils, Municipal Heritage Committees (MHCs), historical
societies, town halls and community centres to raise awareness and provide support for heritage
stewardship. On average, the team collectively spent over 440 hours in these communities,
largely dictated by the availability of identified community members, and the needs and
opportunities for building community capacity in heritage stewardship.
Sustaining Butterflies: Methodology and Approach
The Rural Heritage Initiative sought to integrate the recently adopted Ontario Heritage Act
(OHA) amendments and the Historic Places Initiative principles and practices within existing
municipal planning processes, in a language communities could understand, while also seeking
to underscore the benefits of such an initiative. The fundamental approach included: articulating
the economic benefits of heritage stewardship, the value of the Historic Places Initiative as both
tool for preserving local memory and its use as a management device for the impacts of heritage
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6. tourism. The keys to success in identifying community capacity in heritage stewardship rested
on a viable communications and community engagement strategy.
Community Engagement
Over the course of the project, the team identified some key factors in building and sustaining
community engagement for heritage stewardship in rural municipalities. They included:
• Community buy-in;
• Integration of heritage into community life;
• Visionary leadership;
• Sense of urgency about a way of life that is being lost; and
• Recognition of resources, assets and values that are embedded in the community.
Key steps in successfully engaging communities and determining their capacity included
adopting an informal face-to-face approach at meetings and when interacting fostering trust both
at meetings and one-on-one with local heritage stakeholders. The conscious choice to use
graduate students rather than government employees was to not only encourage participation by
community stakeholders but also to expose the ‘new’ Heritage Professionals to the realities and
complexities of rural communities. Knowledge of each individual rural audience proved
crucial, as was a sense of humour and willingness to work with multiple members of a
community. A week-long team road trip at the beginning of the pilot project and some
preliminary research enabled the team to tailor its message to each community and assisted an
engagement with community members.
Identifying Community Capacity
An initial first step was to develop a community diagnostic to disentangle present capacity from
future potential. In the past, the ecological conservation of the Rideau Canal often overshadowed
the importance of conserving the Corridor’s cultural heritage resources. However, the Rideau
Heritage Initiative team was able to take advantage of the earlier efforts of the Rideau Heritage
Network (RHN) – a group of heritage planners, volunteers and advocates – who had begun to
identify specific heritage conservation needs along the Rideau Canal Corridor in early 2006. The
diagnostic exercise was essential as it identified stewardship tools already in place (heritage
inventories, archives, community engagement processes), as well as determined:
• How Rideau Heritage Initiative objectives could be shaped in particular municipalities;
• How heritage conservation principles were or could be integrated into municipal
management;
• What, if any, incentives were linking heritage conservation with community development;
• Time management for Rideau Heritage Initiative in order to build community capacity on the
ground; and Benchmarks to measure the Rideau Heritage Initiative’s impact.
While each community is unique, Rideau Heritage Initiative found that heritage stewardship in
many rural communities was often performed not by municipal staff but rather by volunteers,
who were equally passionate, committed and skilled, but often lacked the tools to connect
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7. effectively with political structures. It is volunteers that staff the principal building block in the
province of Ontario - Municipal Heritage Committees (MHCs) - which provide key local advice
on heritage-conservation matters, such as the designation of properties, property alterations, and
demolition applications.
From Cocoon to Flight: Transformations and Challenges
Transformations
Working with 12 uniquely positioned municipalities along the Rideau Corridor provided insights
into potential opportunities where components of the Historic Places Initiative could serve as
effective heritage conservation tools. However, the discovery of potential hurdles -
misconceptions and doubts of both the benefits of the Historic Places Initiative and heritage
designation, gaps in community capacity and limitations to coupling heritage with economic
development – can impede the successful implementation of the Historic Places Initiative within
rural communities.
Four Municipality Models of Heritage Stewardship
When one thinks of the Rideau Corridor, recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage
Site, one immediately thinks of the locks, dams and lakes of the waterway itself. But there is a
sprawling chain of 10 rural municipalities spread along either side, each with an abundance of
historical resources. There are homestead cabins sitting beside the brick houses that made them
redundant, Aboriginal flint-mines lying unmarked beneath a screen of bush, and 1920’s
boathouses and stone foundries as well as 1950s era drive-ins that still serve their original
purpose. The diversity of historical resources challenged any catch-all management strategy and
confounded any simplistic characterization of the current state of heritage stewardship and
community capacity in the region.
With respect to heritage stewardship capacity, municipalities fell into four basic categories:
1. Cities and bigger rural towns with highly developed heritage infrastructure;
2. Rural communities whose heritage infrastructure was adequate but impeded by
present circumstances;
3. Rural communities that had had little official heritage-conservation activity in the
past;
4. Rural communities with very little heritage activity.
Highly developed heritage infrastructure includes areas with heritage planners, databases and
archives, a steady record of heritage designations, and an active and engaged heritage
community. The team nominated properties from these areas to the Canadian Register, but
realized that other municipalities would benefit more from the Rideau Heritage Initiative’s
community capacity-building efforts.
Adequate heritage infrastructure includes areas with vigorous groups of heritage advocates and
excellent archive facilities. However, old heritage bylaws did not reflect a broad social and
contextual understanding of heritage value. This made it difficult for these municipalities to
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8. handle the rising tide of insensitive home renovations and infill. In both of these communities,
the development of Statement of Significances for the Canadian Register of Historic Places was
used as an exercise to help residents update their bylaws. In some areas, the team worked with
several next-generation heritage hopefuls to lobby the municipal government to reinstate a
Municipal Heritage Committee.
In rural areas that had little in the way of official heritage-conservation activity in the past but had
lately been moved to act by the growing influx of transient cottage owners and the accelerated
construction of enormous houses that threatened the environmental, cultural, and heritage
character of their communities, the team introduced first steps, such as the creation of archives
and inventories, while simultaneously conducting informal surveys of potential properties for
designation.
In the areas that had very little heritage activity to speak of, either current or past, the team
encouraged preliminary initiatives, such as creating unofficial inventories and making
presentations to municipal council meetings at which the team pointed out remarkable structures
and landscapes and addressed popular misconceptions about heritage designation.
Challenges
Understanding the Historic Places Initiative
Rural community members were often sceptical about participating in the Heritage Places
Initiative. They questioned the program’s usefulness and often asked for concrete benefits of
nominating a property to the Canadian Register of Historic Places. Canadian Register’s use as a
tool for establishing a national standard for heritage conservation did not resonate with rural
community members. Some recalled the Canadian Inventory of Historic Buildings in the late
1960s and 1970s and wondered whether the Historic Places Initiative was reinventing the wheel.
However, presenting the local benefits of Historic Places Initiative and the Canadian Register, as
articulated below, proved more effective in convincing rural residents of the efficacy of these
tools:
• The Canadian Register is an opportunity to showcase local heritage, values, stories and
places, which are often neglected within national historic sites since the purpose of that level
of designation relates to national significance, not local;
• The Canadian Register can be used as a local memory tool, because creating Statement of
Significances involves defining what is important in a community;
• Historic Places Initiative can be a means for people interested in local heritage to participate
in planning processes; and
• Historic Initiative can help manage tourism pressures that will likely increase along the
Rideau Canal Corridor in the near future.
Scepticism about the Benefits of Heritage Designation
One of the central issues that arose is the strong scepticism about heritage conservation and,
particularly the heritage designation of property in rural communities. In Ontario, only
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9. designated heritage properties recognized by provincial legislation are eligible to be nominated to
the Canadian Register. As such, a positive view of heritage designation is essential for the
successful implementation of the Historic Places Initiative within rural Ontario communities.
Designation has an aura of limitation, control, and government bureaucracy about it that
summons up an inborn resistance in many people hindered further by the perception of imposing
arbitrary rules on the evolution of private properties, with few, if any, financial incentives offered
in compensation. Many rural residents still believe the myth, dispelled by Robert Shipley and
Donovan R. Rypkema, that heritage designation can even reduce property values.
The vast majority of properties the team examined were designated in the early and mid-1980s, a
time when Ontario provided financial incentives for heritage properties. As financial incentives
for maintaining heritage properties were reduced, there appeared to be a corresponding drop in
the number of properties receiving designation, posing a challenge for the continued growth of
the Canadian Register in rural Ontario communities. There is little current incentive or financial
rationale for the agricultural sector to find the time, energy, or financial resources to preserve
unused structures such as barns and associated outbuildings in their original form. Nevertheless,
residents’ negative perceptions of heritage designations is not a reflection of the survival of their
intense passion for the land and buildings and the ways in which residents along the Rideau
Corridor preserve and express the past. Although heritage designation is a viable solution within
some heritage circles, it is not universally perceived nor understood as such within many rural
communities along the Rideau Corridor.
Municipal Heritage Committees (MHCs) -Essential Capacity Building Blocks
In larger urban areas, the team was able to work directly with municipal staff to nominate
properties for the Canadian Register and update municipal designation by-laws. In smaller, rural
areas, the responsibility for implementing the Historic Places Initiative was relatively unclear, as
none of the smaller municipalities and townships employed heritage planners. Smaller locales
typically employ one municipal staff member who oversees a multitude of portfolios, including
heritage planning.
The project found that the establishment of a Municipal Heritage Committee was a crucial first
step toward successfully nominating designated heritage properties to the Canadian Register
because the Municipal Heritage Committee members could act as front-line administrators and
stewards of cultural heritage resource management. Work in communities was greatly facilitated
by the presence of a Municipal Heritage Committee, while in those without a Municipal Heritage
Committee, very little progress was made in nominating designated heritage properties to the
Canadian Register. Of the ten rural communities involved in the Rideau Heritage Initiative, only
four had a Municipal Heritage Committees at the outset of the project. By the project’s end,
however, two new Municipal Heritage Committees had been established in rural townships with
the explicit intention of encouraging new municipal heritage designations. It remains uncertain,
however, whether Municipal Heritage Committees alone can and will implement components of
the Historic Places Initiative.
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10. Linking Heritage and Economic Development: A Double-Edged Sword
As Donovan Rypkema observes, structuring heritage conservation strategies in opposition to
economic development is counter-productive and can encourage myopic long-term community
planning. The problem is not change itself, as change is inevitable, but rather the nature, scale,
and pace of change in rural communities.
One of the potential opportunities for the Historic Places Initiative is that its work can
demonstrate that conserving heritage resources in rural communities is not antithetical to
economic development strategies. Economic development strategies are designed to increase the
vitality of a community. However, when heritage and economic development strategies are
treated as mutually exclusive priorities, the end result is often the creation of bland spaces
through big-box commercial development and uncontrolled urban sprawl that can dramatically
change the character and fabric of a community. A heritage-conservation tool like the Historic
Places Initiative can help rural communities manage this change – it enables them to step back,
identify, understand, and ultimately protect the unique characteristics and values of local heritage
places. Armed with this information, the integration into the economic development plans is
greatly enhanced, and not only from the aspect of tourism.
The limitations, of yoking heritage and development together, for example, when heritage
tourism is seen as the solution, belies the importance of being sensitive to local community
dynamics to avoid the oversimplification of a community’s economic, social, and cultural
infrastructures. In a recent report, J. Friesen underlines this point.
“...Heritage-in-service-of-tourism can become too closely linked to economic development...
when the historical message offered in such projects is geared primarily to an ‘outside’ market or
transient visitor, then it does long-term disservice to its own community members and their sense
of the past.”
Conclusion
When one thinks of heritage, a multitude of ideas often come to mind – static objects, old
buildings, museums, national monuments, and ancient artifacts – all representing a freezing of the
past. However, heritage rests not in the object or the building in and of itself; heritage is a
selection of stories, memories, values and perceptions based on the interpretation of an individual
or group within a particular time and place. With the Historic Places Initiative, its components
serve as heritage conservation tools that allow local communities to resist the fossilization of
their local heritage resources, allowing them to co-exist within the past, present, and future social,
cultural and economic fabric of their community.
The Rideau Heritage Initiative was the first project in Ontario to promote and advance heritage
conservation practices by implementing components of the Historic Places Initiative, in
conjunction with Ontario’s legislative framework, into specific communities linked by a common
bond, the Rideau Canal corridor. The collaborative nature of the project, which brought
governments, community members and students together in a mutual exchange of ideas and
skills, led to insights into potential impediments — as well as potential opportunities — for the
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further implementation of the Historic Places Initiative in rural areas. One of the central issues
that arose is the scepticism about heritage conservation and particularly the heritage designation
of property. Nevertheless, a deep passion for the land, buildings and the way in which residents
hold and express the past is never far from the surface along the Rideau. For the Canadian
Register of Historic Places, a registry built on the encouragement of heritage designations, the
crucial element for success in rural areas will be to connect this robust fervour for the past with
the official recognition of it through government policy instruments.
One of Rideau Heritage Initiative’s most striking insights was that heritage stewardship is not
necessarily more effective in municipalities that have the most tools at their disposal. In rural
communities, heritage stewardship frequently took the form of organic processes, where
leadership, personality, and commitment to place appeared to drive heritage stewardship efforts.
These drivers are essential to the implementation of heritage conservation principles and
practices, and reflected in the Historic Places Initiative values-based approach. The mere
presence of tools, in other words, is not necessarily an indicator of stewardship capacity. Rural
communities often evoke a stronger attachment to place and a sense of community, whereas in
urban areas, this sense of community stewardship is primarily displaced onto a bureaucracy,
which performs these roles professionally.
With the current World Heritage nomination of the Rideau Canal, the Rideau Corridor may gain
international attention as a tourist destination demonstrating economic potential for communities.
However, in order for heritage tourism to be sustainable, local communities must remain active
participants in the process in limiting a fishbowl effect – where area residents feel community life
has been eroded by the overwhelming presence of visitors. The Historic Places Initiative can
serve as a tool and a space for dialogue, where local communities can identify, understand and
negotiate imminent tourism pressures along the Corridor.
The Rideau Heritage Initiative revealed that rural communities face particular concerns when
managing, conserving, and promoting their cultural heritage resources. Continued efforts are
needed to look for dynamic and creative solutions — incentive-based heritage conservation,
formal recognition of non-designated heritage properties, exploration of adaptive reuse principles
for rural heritage structures, and sustaining organic community stewardship. Historic Places
Initiative, with its flexible and collaborative governance model, proved an excellent catalyst for
this discussion.