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What The Friends of Fort York Do: Our Accomplishments for 2015 • held ten monthly meetings of our board. Also, one or more directors attended each public event and function at the fort. • met regularly with our eleven member Precinct Advisory Committee (PAC), a majority of whom are private sector planning and design professionals rather than members of our board. • hired a summer student with grants from the George C. Metcalf Foundation to work under the close supervision of three PAC members compiling and combining electronic data banks covering the fort and its nearby precinct. Ryerson University’s Dept. of Architectural Sciences provided the student with a workstation. • on behalf of The Friends and our PAC met with Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat and her Community Planning staff to discuss issues of common interest such as the Bathurst bridge, future plans for highly-polluted lands at 28 Bathurst, development and renaming of Mouth of the Creek Park. • other board committees looked after Special Events and the Guard. Under consideration were Neighbourhoods and Fundraising committees. Directors sit also on the FY Citizenship Committee. • for the seventh year in a row sponsored two ceremonies in partnership with the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, fort staff, and Fort York Citizenship Committee where ninety people became citizens as their families and friends looked on. Following the ceremonies West Neighbourhood House and the fort’s volunteer bakers offered everyone a delicious buffet lunch. • funded the largest component of the cost of the Fort York Guard and Drum Corps of nineteen students. CIBC and the City of Toronto also provided support. In addition to its outstanding presence at Fort York, the Guard performed at Fort George, winning recognition as best drill unit and firing a perfect volley. • drew down $50,000 from the segregated investment account we established in 2014 to provide funding for the operation of the Guard. At the year end the investment account remained above the initial capital contribution. Strong investment returns in the first half of 2015 prompted a withdrawal from equities into money-market vehicles.
• published five issues of Fife & Drum, four regular quarterly numbers and one special to mark the announcement of Project: Under Gardiner, and construction of a pedestrian/ bicycle bridge over the railways to link the Garrison Common and South Stanley Park extension. • worked diligently in the Reserach Centre to incorporate five boxes of retired archaeologist David Spittal’s reports, photographs, and papers into our collection. The materials represent an amazingly rich resource for fort-related research. We continue to add new books and other pertinent sources. • invited our members to a reception to view and learn about Magna Carta. Tickets were priced advantageously after a generous donor picked up the lecturer’s fee, and the Muskoka Brewery donated refreshments. • convened a dinner for all present and past directors of The Friends on a cost-recovery basis, preceded by a viewing of The Art of Command, a special exhibit in the Visitor Centre of portraits by Gertrude Kearns. • acted to avert an OMB hearing by finding sponsors for a Heritage Toronto plaque to recognize the Immigrant Sheds that stood on Strachan Ave. at the CP rail corridor in the late 19th century. • served as the formal client for a visioning project on the Wellington Street Destructor by graduate students in planning at Ryerson University under Prof. Pamela Robinson. • updated our website to a more current platform which will support its continued growth, enhance the site’s ease of use, and broaden capabilities. • welcomed Jennifer Chan as a new director of The Friends; saw Ceta Ramkhalawansingh return from a leave-ofabsence sitting as an appointed councillor for Ward 20 in place of Adam Vaughan; and thanked Peter Zimmerman and Marc Nufrio for their service on the board as it came to an end. For comparison, our accomplishments for 1994-2014 can be found on our website http://www.fortyork.ca/about-us/ouraccomplishments.html
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