While the Town has had a Heritage Register of Properties for a very long time, what it has not had was an inventory of cultural and/or heritage landscapes, and that, in my opinion, is a significant oversight on our part, certainly as it speaks to the important need to preserve Aurora’s Cultural and Historically significant landscapes.
I think we can agree that in Aurora, we take great pride in how we preserve our heritage. I believe that we as a municipality have done a good job protecting and preserving those built structures that are of significant heritage value. But historical and cultural significance goes beyond buildings, it is also speaks to places where people gather, where people play, where people have grown together.
We need to protect and preserve not just built structures but landscapes that have a special meaning and place to the residents of this Town. We need to preserve them so that future generations can enjoy the cultural significance of these landscapes and understand their importance to this Town and what make s this Town what it is!!
I feel that we may have missed opportunities to preserve such culturally important landscapes in this Town. The intent of this motion is to protect these landscapes where – as described by the Provincial Policy – “Such an area is valued by a community, and is of significance to the understanding of the history of a people or place”
The Province has identified that the determination of Heritage AND Cultural significance should be left to each individual municipality. This is because what is significant to community one might not be significant to another. Therefore, we, as a Town, have the ultimate authority to determine what landscapes are of cultural and historical significance to our community.
With that said the motion passed 8-1 (Councillor Pirri opposed as he didn’t see the need for this inventory to be created.) I am looking forward to the creation of the policy for identifying and evaluating cultural heritage landscapes and the development of the Cultural Heritage Landscape Inventory. With this policy in place, we can preserve these significant landscapes and protect what makes Aurora unique.
