Monday, February 13, 2023

History of the fall of a fence.

Osgoode Hall, fence, and trees, c1868

The grounds of Osgoode Hall have been under threat almost as long as they have existed.  And they have existed a long time. The hall was first built by the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1832, and its grounds were soon encircled by wooden fencing. A handsome wrought-iron fence replaced the wooden one in the 1860s, by which time the Hall also housed the superior courts of Ontario. Ever since, the grounds have been a rare green oasis in the concrete jungles of downtown Toronto. 

And pretty much ever since, someone or other has seen a need to encroach upon the green space with some urgent developmental need. 

In the nineteenth century the University of Toronto thought itself entitled to encroach on the space for University Avenue, the route to its new campus. 

During the Second World War, Osgoode Hall was a rare holdout when most of the wrought-iron fences around churches, gardens, and public and private buildings in Toronto were taken down to provide iron for the war effort. In almost every case, the lawns and gardens inside were gradually replaced with street widenings and parking spaces as soon as the fences were removed

In the 1950s the City of Toronto planned to expropriate a broad strip of the grounds in order to widen Queen Street. 

In the 1960s , the Ontario government proposed building an office tower on the grounds at the corner of Queen and University. 

In the 1970s the law society quailed at the cost of renovating the fence, and considered transferring it to the provincial government, and it was argued that the fence was a symbol of exclusion, exclusion, and barriers to justice -- a suggestion that was revived in the early 2000s.

It's fair to say that the survival of the fence, at considerable cost to the Law Society, was indeed assisted by the Law Society's -- and the Ontario legal profession's -- sense of noblesse oblige, "a positive obligation to preserve the legacy of 'a handful of barristers who built thsi marvellous building to our great joy today.'" The other factor was the very substantial clout that leading lawyers and judged always had in dealings with the provincial governments of all stripes at all times.

The gardens and the fence triumphed over all these challenges.  But it looks like they will succumb to the Doug Ford government and Metrolinx, its transit-building arm, which have expropriated a corner of the gardens and are about to level all the trees on it as part of planning for a new subway station. The law society has been resisting the erosion of its domain, but not very effectively or successfully.  Authoritarian, headstrong governments and their "arm's length" agency are no longer subject to the informal restraints that once prevailed, and are likely to get their way, even on stupid things.


(Much of the detail here is drawn from my own The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers 1797-1997, University of Toronto Press, 1997)

 
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