The Fort York Foundation

05/31/2026

Check out the Canadian history resources at the Canadian Institute for Historical Education...
https://cihe.ca/our-resources/

04/30/2026

New and thoroughly revised edition of Carl Benn's 2002 Essential History volume... including specially commissioned maps and over 50 new images... for sale in the Canteen Museum Store, Fort York National Historic Site. Dr Carl Benn, Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) is the leading authority on Fort York and Upper Canada in the years leading up to the War of 1812.

04/22/2026

This Sunday... Battle of York Day at Fort York National Historic Site.... https://tinyurl.com/yeaefwn4

04/21/2026

General Brock in the news... "Forward Guidance" by Prime Minister Carney on YouTube. Major-General Brock is, today, a Canadian symbol of forward thinking and strategic planning who took full advantage of American unpreparedness at the start of the War of 1812. He was the civil administrator of Upper Canada, 1811-12 until his death at the Battle of Queenston Heights in October 1812. The seat of his executive administration was Government House at York Barracks (today's Fort York). https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brock_isaac_5E.html

04/13/2026

The boundary for a theoretical (speculative) Fort York National Urban Park might follow the boundary of Garrison Common (the Military Reserve) in 1812, as seen on this map. The map shows both some early nineteenth-century features and the modern road grid and shoreline around Fort York National Historic Site. (Map by A. Stewart for The Friends of Fort York and Garrison Common, 2012)

04/06/2026

With the new federal initiative announced last week to create and expand national urban parks across Canada, is it too much to hope for the creation of a "Fort York National Urban Park" that combines Fort York National Historic Site with much of Exhibition Place (including the area where line engagements took place during the 27 April, 1813, Battle of York (see map), the New Fort and Fort Rouille) and Coronation Park?
(Map created for the exhibit "Finding the Fallen: the Battle of York Remembered", part of the City of Toronto's War of 1812 Bicentennial Commemoration in 2012)

03/30/2026

Battle of York commemoration, 26 April, 2026, at Fort York:
https://www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/history-art-culture/exhibits-events/?event_id=75a58b7c-46dc-4d7d-8e5d-3e515fa7f8bb&event_name=Battle%20of%20York%20Day%20at%20Fort%20York&calendar_date=2026-04-26T10%3A00%3A00-04%3A00

03/28/2026

"Heritage organizations operate as knowledge institutions, tourism anchors, community conveners, and custodians of collective memory. Yet they are funded, when they are funded at all, as if they were small volunteer hobbies."

Last week, I wrote about the growing tension in Nova Scotia between the stated value of heritage and the policy choices that determine whether it survives. The response to that column was immediate.

03/04/2026

"Heritage in Ontario, like elsewhere, has always been seen in some quarters as a barrier to progress, as the past standing in the way of the future. But, in recent years, as Ontario’s housing crisis has captured the headlines and the province’s attention is drawn to solutions, a variation on the old story, though more subtle and damaging, has taken hold, at least among many leaders at Queen’s Park: that heritage and heritage protections have become a hindrance — worse, a threat — to achieving our housing goals.

"...Suffice to say that the development industry, and home builders especially, have been pushing a one-sided, anecdotal, and ultimately misleading narrative that heritage equates to less housing.

"It’s time to challenge — and change — the narrative.

"A proposal by Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO) would do just that."

Read the rest of this blog by Dan Schneider on the University of Waterloo's Heritage Resources Centre page: "Time for a new, housing-focussed heritage incentive"

Twenty-five years ago, in 2001, the (then) Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Recreation was in the middle of wrapping up a provincial grant

01/20/2026

"People occasionally complain that there is no Canadian identity beyond anti-Americanism. I say, so what? We come by it honestly. The founding political alliance—between Indigenous people, French Canadians, and Loyalists—was made in opposition to the American Revolution." -- excerpt from "My Family’s 240-Year Journey Shows Why Canada Will Never Bow to Trump:
I turned to history—and my ancestors—to understand the country’s resistance to American domination" by Stephen Maher in The Walrus, 10 November, 2025
Steven Kriemadis / iStock