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Artefact Collecting at Fort York Carl Benn, PhD, Chief Curator, City of Toronto Museums and Heritage Services The Friends of Fort York recently acquired an interesting mid-Victorian military manual with a good Toronto provenance. This fine item joins the fort’s collection of historical artefacts that the City of Toronto has assembled and curated since the 1930s primarily through archaeological excavation, purchase, trade with other museums, and donation.
By far the largest element in the fort’s collection is the archaeological assemblage. The bulk of this material was recovered in the 1980s and ’90s when the fort undertook a major archaeological programme associated with the re-restoration of its 1813-15 buildings. Some excavated specimens stand out as particularly evocative, such as a soldier’s combat-ravaged cross-belt plate from the Battle of York in the War of 1812. However, most of the archaeological material is more pedestrian, consisting of the military buttons, broken dishes, and other debris lost or jettisoned by the garrison community between the 1790s and the 1930s. Yet these humbler items possess enormous significance for refining our understanding of the details of the fort’s history in ways that we never would be able to accomplish through other artefacts and documentary records. Gifts from individuals and organizations form another important element in the City’s artefact collection related to Fort York, and include such things as the uniforms, medals, and firearms that have been donated over the last eight decades. In recent years, the City acquired the large Larry Becker and Morris Norman collections of Toronto memorabilia, both of which include military items that will benefit our understanding of the City’s martial past. Often people with family connections to the objects are the donors, and so the artefacts come with a provenance that enhances their meaning for research, exhibition, and interpretation. Within the last while, descendants of the original owners gave us a captured Fenian rifle from the 1866 raid, two 1796-pattern cavalry swords from early Toronto families, and a pair of binoculars presented by the City to returning Boer War officers in 1902. Sometimes organizations buy historical materials and then donate them to us. For instance, the United Empire Loyalists acquired two 1812 Military General Service medals and an 1820s portrait of King George IV for the fort. Museums also donate or trade surplus materials to us (as we do to them), as occurred not long ago when the Royal Ontario Museum gave us twenty-six historical firearms, or as happened when we traded a kayak to the ROM for an important bronze sixpounder artillery piece from 1797. Finally, purchasing objects on the antique market has been a fundamental source of artefacts over the years. Historically, most of our money for purchasing has come from the City, although other organizations or people give us funds for acquisitions. For example, one family donated money to purchase a rare sword in memory of their son for a new exhibit, while the St George’s Society paid for 5 The Fife and Drum
furnishing two of the fourteen rooms in the Officers’ Barracks. Unfortunately, we no longer have the funding we once did within our municipal budget to purchase items due to the financial cuts that have occurred in museums since about 1993, so it now is difficult for us to acquire objects commercially. This is a concern because the kinds of artefacts that come onto the antique market tend to be different from the items that are offered to us in donation, so we ought to acquire materials through both donation and purchase to develop the collection in a balanced manner. We do not accept everything that comes our way. In fact, we only pursue a minority of acquisition opportunities because we want artefacts to be genuinely relevant in telling the story of Canadian military history as it relates to Fort York and to the City of Toronto. Thus, we do not collect things that do not improve our ability to share this history with the public effectively or that duplicate our holdings beyond our need for multiple examples. Furthermore, we avoid acquiring items in poor condition, such as objects that have lost much of their cultural value through the ravages of time or because they have been altered in undesirable ways, as sometimes occurs when they enter the antique market. By enhancing our already-strong artefact collection, we can research and appreciate the material heritage of Canadian military history better and create compelling public exhibits, and thus fulfil our fundamental museological function to use material culture to educate and excite our visitors about
Two different Toronto families recently gave us two 1796 Pattern Light Dragoon sabres, as seen in this print from Rules and regulations for the sword exercise of the cavalry (London: War Office, 1796).
furnishing two of the fourteen rooms in the Officers’ Barracks. Unfortunately, we no longer have the funding we once did within our municipal budget to purchase items due to the financial cuts that have occurred in museums since about 1993, so it now is difficult for us to acquire objects commercially. This is a concern because the kinds of artefacts that come onto the antique market tend to be different from the items that are offered to us in donation, so we ought to acquire materials through both donation and purchase to develop the collection in a balanced manner.
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