Article content continued

All of which is to say it takes a lot to raise my heritage hackles. But a staff report to the most recent Government Management Committee meeting managed it. The best use of Old City Hall once the provincial courts vacate the building in 2021, the report argues, is “conversion to a retail centre that contains a mix of food service, leisure, event and civic uses.”

From the corporate and real estate perspectives to which I might normally defer, perhaps that’s true. From whatever perspective it is that I currently find myself inhabiting … no. Uh uh. Go back and look again.

It’s not that there can’t be places to eat and buy things in there. That would at least accomplish the crucial basic goal of returning one of Toronto’s most, er, striking buildings to the public realm. But “retail centre” isn’t right. Rarely does such an important building come up for repurposing. It deserves, the city deserves, more respect.

The good news is the committee approved a motion by councillor Paul Ainslie to study the building as potential museum space. Staff dismissed the building as unsuitable for such purposes in 2011 for reasons that don’t seem to hold much water — and certainly not against a “retail centre.” It is high time to revisit the idea in earnest.

I have argued before that a proper history museum would be a suitable departure from Toronto’s general aversion to whimsy. There is this absurdly prevalent notion that Canadian history, and Toronto’s by extension, is boring. It isn’t remotely, and a proper history museum would reflect the battles and the fires and riots. But the most effective exhibits you find at city museums focus on the less famous and the less noticed, on perspectives you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. In all sorts of ways visitors might not even realize, they instil an understanding of how what was became what is, and how what is becomes what can be.