For more than forty years George Waters made history at Fort York, first as a uniformed interpreter, for some time as curator, and not least as deputy director of the Toronto Historical Board which once administered the fort. His involvement as a volunteer with The Friends was long-standing, productive, and meaningful. When he died last December, George did not forget Fort York, but instead bequeathed $50,000 to the Fort York Foundation. The Friends have recommended to the City that the library in the new building be named in his honour.
The Fort York Foundation is leading the Fort York Invigorated Campaign to raise funds to help the City of Toronto open at Fort York the first Class-1 museum facility at any of the City’s museums. This state-of-the-art building will finally allow remarkable artifacts from City of Toronto collections to be displayed and interpreted in a secure setting. The Visitor Centre will also enable City of Toronto Museum Services to borrow material from anywhere to help us tell the story of Fort York, the place where urban Toronto was founded in 1793.
The Fort York Acquisitions Fund
Over the years artifacts important to Fort York have come up for auction, usually in Canada or the United Kingdom. By and large, City of Toronto Museum Services has not been in a position to bid at auction since the mid-1990s when its acquisition budgets were cut to nil. Hence, the fort has little flexibility when objects are offered on the open market, and must depend instead on gifts. The Friends have attempted to step into the breach, but they too lack the ready means.
To illustrate, a recent opportunity to acquire an important oil portrait of Frances Battersby at a Toronto auction house was missed for want of funds (see Fife and Drum July 2007). During the War of 1812 Battersby was the lieutenant colonel of the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles who fought under his command at York in April 1813. His horses are famously buried in Victoria Square, today part of Fort York National Historic Site.
Now, thanks to the foresight of a friend, the Fort York Acquisitions Fund, seeded with a generous initial gift of $10,000, has been permanently established within the Fort York Foundation. Chief Curator of City of Toronto Museum Services Wayne Reeves has expressed gratitude and delight, saying that this fund is vital for Fort York. Not only will it allow City of Toronto Museum Services staff to be nimble in bidding at auction for artifacts deemed important to the fort’s story, it will also support conservation of these items. We encourage additional donations to augment the Fort York Acquisitions Fund, and make us competitive in the market for pieces of our history to be exhibited in the new Visitor Centre and throughout Fort York National Historic Site.
TD Bank Group Donation
In addition to their $5,000 donation to support War of 1812 Bicentennial education programs at the City’s historic sites, TD Bank Group will be donating $100,000 to support the revitalization of the Garrison Common. This donation enhances the $1 million gift from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation to the Fort York Foundation for the Garrison Common.
The focus of the TD Bank Group’s donation will be on the west end of the Common and in the area of the Strachan Avenue Military Burial Ground, the focal point of our annual Remembrance Day Ceremony. Improvements to this area will include new walkways, interpretive signage, tree plantings, and re-surfacing in the area surrounding the memorial wall and flagpole. Work is expected to be underway, if not complete, by the end of 2014.
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