Historic designation can hold off wreckers

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/12/2010 (5403 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Giles Bugailiskis, senior planner for heritage for the City of Winnipeg, the plight of historic churches is more than just a job — it’s personal.

When he came to Winnipeg in the 1970s to study, he went St. Casimir’s Lithuanian Church on Elgin Avenue. Back then, it was an active place. Today, the church is gone, although the building is used as a drop-in centre.

“It was very hard to see it go. The community put so much energy into it,” he says, noting the church was built by its members.

Today, “it speaks silently for the end of an era,” says Bugailiskis, who functions as an unofficial historian for the church.

Bugailiskis couldn’t save St. Casimir’s but, as a member of the city’s historical buildings committee, he is helping other churches stay open.

Through the committee, congregations can get their places of worship included on the historical buildings inventory, a list of structures that have not been formally researched and evaluated, but are known to be of potential architectural and/or historical significance, or on the buildings conservation list.

Of the two, the conservation list is much more significant. Inclusion in the inventory only delays approval of a demolition permit pending an assessment of whether the building in question warrants preservation.

The conservation list, on the other hand, not only protects places of worship from demolition, but also qualifies them for some financial assistance to help with conservation efforts.

Altogether, there are 57 places of worship on the inventory and 16 on the conservation list.

In addition to what the city is doing, the province maintains a list of historical buildings; 108 places of worship in Manitoba are on the list.

“Our goal is to be sure that these buildings are protected,” says David Butterfield, manager of historical assessment services for the province’s historic resources branch.

According to Butterfield, these places of worship are key symbols for the ethnic and other groups that built them, and also “important as landmarks in their communities.”

The main benefit of being listed with the province is advice; the provincial government doesn’t have a lot of money for preservation efforts.

A big challenge facing the province today is rural churches. Rural depopulation means fewer people are attending church, and that’s putting many historic places of worship at risk.

“We’re doing our best,” says Butterfield, noting they are working hard to preserve Ukrainian churches in the Parkland region. “It’s going to be a growing challenge in the next five to 10 years.”

The province won’t be able to “save everything,” he says, adding he thinks “we’ve got a good collection of buildings” that will be able to tell future generations the story of worshipping communities in Manitoba.

For more information about historical designations, go to the City of Winnipeg’s web page at www.winnipeg.ca/ppd/historic/historic.stm or the Province of Manitoba’s page at www.gov.mb.ca/chc/grants/heritage_grants.html