HTA from Coast to (almost) Coast
By Peter Coffman
It’s hard to find two towns in Canada further apart than Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and Dawson City, Yukon. But they have two striking things in common. First, they’re both small towns that are of big importance internationally as historic sites. Second, they both currently have graduates of our very own History & Theory of Architecture (HTA) program playing key roles in the preservation of their built heritage.
In 2023, Hilary Grant (HTA 2012) went to Lunenburg to serve as the town’s Heritage Officer. There are few places in the country where that position has such high stakes. Old Town Lunenburg was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, and remains one of the world’s best-preserved and most evocative ensembles of 18th-century colonial planning and 19th-century vernacular architecture. Since arriving, Hilary has been promoted to the position of Director of Community Development, and is currently serving as the town’s Interim Chief Administrative Officer. In all of those capacities, she finds herself juggling the needs of preservation and progress:
“As Interim CAO and Director of Community Development for the Town of Lunenburg, I see my role as both a custodian of Old Town Lunenburg’s World Heritage status and a public servant committed to ensuring the Town thrives. The essence of our heritage involves more than preserving buildings—it’s about keeping the town functional, alive, and continuing to serve its people as it has for centuries. Whether it’s maintaining infrastructure or supporting community services, every decision we make is tied to Lunenburg’s history, allowing us to respect its past while planning for its future.”
This is not a job for the faint of heart, but I like to think that HTA does not produce faint-hearted graduates. And I’m pretty sure I’m right about that, because another one, Stephanie Mah, is smack in the middle of an equally important heritage project at the opposite end of the country in Dawson City, Yukon.
Stephanie graduated from HTA in 2015, and is now the Creative Director at Giaimo, a Toronto architectural firm that specializes in combining heritage preservation with contemporary design. Earlier this year, Giaimo was engaged by Dawson City to create a new Heritage Management Plan and Heritage Bylaw. They assembled an expert team, and Stephanie was named the Project Manager and Cultural Heritage and Community Engagement Lead.
Like Lunenburg, Dawson is a historic place of international importance – it’s part of the Tr’ondëk-Klondike UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town is famous as the epicentre of the Klondike Gold Rush, but the site was inhabited for millennia before that by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people, and has evolved considerably since the brief heyday of the Gold Rush in the 1890s.
Designing a heritage plan that does justice to both the past and the present is a complex task with a lot of stakeholders. Stephanie and her team are working with representatives from the City of Dawson, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, the Government of Yukon, and Parks Canada. They’re also getting input from a volunteer Advisory Committee to leverage local knowledge and community insights. Like Hilary in Lunenburg, Stephanie finds herself navigating the complex interplay of a historic town facing twenty-first-century challenges:
“Updating Dawson City’s Heritage Management Plan and Design Guidelines is an important next step towards aligning with the recent 2023 inscription of Tr’ondëk-Klondike as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and supporting the growth of Dawson as a vibrant living community. From housing affordability and tourism to climate and environmental risks, the Heritage Management Plan needs to respond to a range of considerations, which makes it both a challenging and exciting project.”
From coast to (almost) coast, HTA grads are taking on the big challenges and making a difference in some of the most important historic sites in the country. We at HTA can’t take any credit for our graduates’ accomplishments – but we do take a lot of pride in them!
Note: for further reflections on both Dawson City and Lunenburg, scroll through some of the other recent HTA blog titles.