The Van Horne House in its final winter of existence - Date/Photographer unknown.

27 August 2012

John Lynch-Staunton was an Activist Who Led the Way on Heritage Preservation

Montreal Quebec - I will miss John Lynch-Staunton, who died this month.
 
Most Montrealers do not know that during the late 1960s and early '70s, John was the principal person working to persuade city council's executive committee to refuse to allow the demolition of Windsor Station downtown and of the Van Horne House on Sherbrooke Street West in the Golden Square Mile.
 
During the several years that the fate of both buildings hung in the balance, John was always ready to take a telephone call, to encourage resistance, and to do what he could with members of city council, both for these two buildings, and for other threatened heritage properties that remained out of the news.
 
Those were days when demolitions were virtually impossible to stop. But public pressure from Mayor Jean Drapeau and executive-committee chairman Lucien Saulnier, as well as a very strong position by the Montreal Gazette (supported by the other major Montreal papers and the English TV stations), finally persuaded the Canadian Pacific Railway not to proceed with its planned destruction of Windsor Station.
 
Sadly, the refusal of a demolition permit for the Van Horne House by the executive committee only postponed its demolition, but not before a very effective campaign during the summer of 1973, when Gazette reporters Donna Gabelline, Dane Lanken, the late Jim Ferrabee, and their editors kept up an almost daily barrage of news coverage of the lobbying of the Liberal provincial government of the day and of a legal against the demolition that occupied Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal for months. That case was led by James McLelland and his lawyer, the late Michael Berger, two critical friends of conservation of the times.
 
The Appeal Court finally accorded the Van Horne demolition permit on a Friday afternoon, and the house and almost all of its famous decorative art was rubble by noon the next day.
 
The long-term result of all this action, and the unfortunate demolition, was a sea change in the mindset of the conservation community in Montreal and Quebec as a whole. Heritage demolition became a naughty phrase across the country. Many were the buildings and neighbourhoods that were saved over the next 20 years because of the new awareness of the value of the heritage.
 
Much has been done. Much remains to do. We could use another John Lynch-Staunton.
 
My sympathies to his family. And a toast to a life well-lived.
 
Michael Fish.