BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West

How should a municipality best protect its heritage buildings?

It’s a question that at least one councillor in Pointe Claire believes should not be swept aside and dealt with in a bureaucratic manner. It deserves citizen input, expertise and a framework to help preserve a municipality’s built heritage, he suggests.

“What does heritage mean to us?” asked councillor Bruno Tremblay in an interview with The 1510 West. “What would we like to preserve in the city?”

The questions were sparked by Pointe Claire council’s move at its last public meeting on Dec. 3 to give the city’s Planning Advisory Committee new responsibilities that focus on preserving the city’s heritage structures. Tremblay was the only councillor to vote against the move. The objection was supported by Mayor Tim Thomas, but was ultimately approved by a majority of council.

A municipal Planning Advisory Committee, commonly referred to by its acronym PAC, is a body that is required by law and is composed of elected officials and citizens. It is tasked with offering council advice and recommendations on topics dealing with building projects, including minor exemptions, and planning bylaw applications.

“As I have argued in caucus on several occasions,” Tremblay explained in a public statement made during the council meeting, “I believe we as a community have not done a very good job in the last 20 years of working together to value, protect, enhance and preserve our built heritage.”

The provincial government has recently mandated municipalities to specifically assign the responsibility of heritage concerns to either its PAC or a local heritage committee, a body that would essentially be formed under the same framework as the planning committee but exclusively be tasked with focusing on heritage issues.

Pointe Claire council voted to assign the responsibility to its existing PAC.

“The (Planning Advisory Committee) already has a lot on its plate,” Tremblay said. “Adding heritage building responsibility addresses this problem bureaucratically, but does not provide any substantive direction.”

He would have preferred the city to have what he called a “proper heritage advisory committee.”

“I worry the path proposed in the draft bylaw will simply allow all items pertaining to heritage to actually fester and become what we have today – the status quo I’m not in agreement with or favour,” Tremblay said.

In an interview, he elaborated on what he sees an the unacceptable status quo. He pointed to issues over the past two decades in Pointe Claire, including the failure to move forward with preserving the windmill, the future of the convent along the waterfront next to the windmill, the acrimonious debate over the fate of the now demolished Pioneer in the village sector and a number of older homes that have been torn down.

“My goal is to put this problem to rest,” Tremblay said, explaining individuals have different views of what heritage is.

Defining a policy would add clarity, he added, and would get away from a “culture of making decisions on a basis of liking or disliking certain people.”

Councillor Eric Stork, who is an elected member of the PAC, said the resolution supported by the majority of council was put forward by the city’s administration to meet the new requirement established by the provincial government. Although he supported it, in an interview Monday said he is not against establishing a separate heritage advisory committee.

“This is just the first step to getting there,” Stork said, adding: “I’m 100 per cent for putting a heritage committee together. We want to protect our heritage, there’s no doubt about that.”