Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, heritage conservation deals with actions or processes that are aimed at safeguarding the character-defining elements of a cultural resource so as to retain its heritage value and extend its physical life. Historic objects in

may be granted special designation by any of the three levels of government: the

federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...

, the provincial governments, or a

municipal government A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

. The Heritage Canada Foundation acts as Canada's lead advocacy organization for heritage buildings and landscapes.

Federal level

There are a number of heritage designations at the federal level for historic sites in Canada: *

National Historic Sites of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...

are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the

Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...

(HSMBC), as being of national historic significance; * Heritage Railway Stations are train stations owned by federally licensed railway companies recommended for protection by the HSMBC; * Heritage Lighthouses are lighthouses deemed to be historically significant; and * Federal Heritage Buildings are buildings owned by the federal government which are determined to be of historical and/or architectural value. The federal government also operates related programs for the recognition of historic persons ( National Historic Persons) and events ( National Historic Events).

Provinces

Provincial historic resource of Alberta plaque

Each provincial government has distinct systems and approaches to heritage conservation. They may delegate the authority to preserve historic buildings to municipalities, and / or have a provincial

heritage register This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and human-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In ma ...

. For example, in the province of

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

, only sites owned by the provincial government and run as a functioning historic site or museum are known as Provincial Historic Sites or Provincial Historic Areas. Buildings and sites owned by private citizens and companies or other levels or branches of government may gain one of two levels of historic designation, "Registered Historic Resource" or "Provincial Historic Resource". Historic designation in Alberta is governed by the Historic Resources Act. The province also lists buildings deemed historically significant by municipal governments on the Alberta Register of Historic Places, which is also part of the larger

Canadian Register of Historic Places The Canadian Register of Historic Places (CRHP; , ), also known as Canada's Historic Places, is an online directory of historic places in Canada which have been formally recognized for their heritage value by a federal, provincial, territorial ...

although this does not imply provincial or federal government status or protection. To supplement this system, the province also run the Alberta Main Street Program which helps to preserve historic buildings in the

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

s of smaller communities. The basis for the preservation system in Alberta is the Heritage Survey Program, which is a survey of 80,000 historic buildings in Alberta which lack a protected status but are documented for possible future protection. In

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, the

Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec The Quebec Cultural Heritage Directory ( French: ''Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec'') is an online cultural heritage knowledge dissemination tool for the province of Quebec. The directory is maintained by the province's Ministry of C ...

is the main heritage register, it includes both protected and unprotected properties. The Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec is a non-profit organization created in 1995 to promote the conservation of churches and other religious heritage buildings in the province.

Municipalities

Cities, towns, counties and other

local government in Canada Local government in Canada can be defined as all elected local government, local authorities which are legally empowered to make decisions on behalf of its electors, excluding the government of Canada, federal government, provinces and territori ...

may use

zoning In urban planning, zoning is a method in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into land-use "zones", each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for ...

and other

bylaws A by-law (bye-law, by(e)law, by(e) law), is a set of rules or law established by an organization or community so as to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authority. The higher authority, generally a legislature or some other ...

to restrict the demolition of individual historic buildings or districts. They may maintain a municipal heritage register, such as

Edmonton Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...

's "Register of Historic Resources in Edmonton". The city of

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

uses a traditional heritage register and a new system called a density bank, under which developers are rewarded for preserving and restoring heritage buildings by being awarded exceptions to restrictions (usually height restrictions) on other sites they own. In

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, one of Canada's oldest and most historically rich cities, the Le Conseil du patrimoine de Montréal advises the municipal government on matters related to heritage building preservation. A pair of non-governmental groups have worked to preserve Montreal historic buildings since the 1970s: Save Montreal, co-founded by

Michael Fish Michael Fish (born 27 April 1944) is a British weather forecasting, weather forecaster. From 1974 to 2004, he was a television presenter for BBC Weather. Career Fish was born on 27 April 1944 in Eastbourne, Sussex. Educated at Osmington Sch ...

in 1974, and Heritage Montreal, founded by Phyllis Lambert two years later. In October 2009, Lambert, Heritage Montreal and others formed a

think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

called the Institut de politiques alternatives de Montréal to advise the city on a range of matters including urban planning, development and heritage.

Government approach to policy

Two of the primary conservation tools in Canada are the

and the '' Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada''. This document was the result of a major collaborative effort among federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments, heritage conservation professionals, heritage developers and many individual Canadians. A pan–Canadian collaboration, it is intended to reinforce the development of a culture of conservation in Canada, which will continue to find a unique expression in each of the jurisdictions and regions of the country. In the document, conservation approaches are broken down into three categories: Preservation, Rehabilitation, and Restoration. As published in the '' Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada'', these conservation approaches are defined as follows:Standards and Guidelines - Definitions of Some Key Terms
, ''Canada's Historic Places''. Retrieved 30 March 2007.

Preservation: the action or process of protecting, maintaining, and/or stabilizing the existing materials, form, and integrity of a historic place or of an individual component, while protecting its heritage value. Preservation can include both short-term and interim measures to protect or stabilize the place, as well as long-term actions to retard deterioration or prevent damage so that the place can be kept serviceable through routine maintenance and minimal repair, rather than extensive replacement and new construction.

Rehabilitation: the action or process of making possible a continuing or compatible contemporary use of a historic place or an individual component, through repair, alterations, and/ or additions, while protecting its heritage value.

Restoration: the action or process of accurately revealing, recovering or representing the state of a historic place or of an individual component, as it appeared at a particular period in its history, while protecting its heritage value.

References

External links