- Reaction score
- 6
- Points
- 410
This article in today‘s Toronto Star really puts me off of my Christmas cheer.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article
Harbord WWI statue is losing the battle
But alumni group hopes to win war
Wants to raise restoration funds
JOHN DEVERELL
STAFF REPORTER
The bareheaded World War I soldier in front of Harbord Collegiate Institute is still advancing against the enemy, rifle in hand, but he‘s lost his bayonet.
The monument by George William Hill, raised 82 years ago at the Toronto high school near Harbord and Bathurst Sts. to honour its Great War fighters, is falling apart. It‘s not clear whether anyone will restore it.
In Ottawa, the Canadian heritage department says it isn‘t into war monuments, while Veterans Affairs is focused on the large installations at Dieppe, Vimy and 11 other battlefields in Europe. It has no funds to maintain hundreds of small monuments of varying allure across Canada.
The deficit-ridden Toronto District School Board has told Harbord principal Fran Parkin it won‘t spring for the refit, and she refuses to dip into the teaching or library budget to refurbish the fine old brass casting.
Instead, Parkin has asked the Harbord Club, an alumni organization, and the Harbord Foundation, a registered charity, to burnish the collegiate‘s military memento, and the alumni just might pull it off.
The campaign, led by retired pharmacist Murray Rubin (class of 1950 and former owner of Vanguard Drugs), has decided its best hope lies in a $200,000 update to provide for a faithful restoration of the original figure and granite pedestal, and for a protective new honour wall bearing the names of Harbord‘s World War II dead.
A new wall would help keep skateboarders off the old installation, Rubin reasons, and at the same time offer fresher memories to help him pitch the living: all the post-WWII Harbord grads.
The original monument of 1921 names 75 fallen heroes, from Fred Adams to Harold Worthington, almost every one a Canadian of Anglo, Scots or Irish heritage. It captured the early character of Harbord and its Annex neighbourhood.
`We‘ve stayed very proud of that school and of Canada for the opportunities it gave us.‘
Former student Murray Rubin
During World War II, the public high school became predominantly Jewish and turned out a raft of high achievers, who in turn became leaders in many aspects of Canadian life.
They include lawyers Eddie Goodman and Alan Borovoy to developer Max Goldhar, generic drug king Leslie Dan, central banker Louis Rasminsky, Dr. David Bohnen, entertainers Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, newspaper executive Burnett Thall, broadcaster Morley Safer, and politicians Phil Givens, Mel Lastman and Stephen Lewis.
"We‘ve stayed very proud of that school and of Canada for the opportunities it gave us," said Rubin, 73, as he turns back to the old networks to keep the legend alive.
It‘s not just a Jewish legend, he said. Early in the campaign, an unsolicited donation of $5,000 arrived from Loblaws. It turns out the founder, Garfield Weston, went to Harbord C.I.
Hal Jackman, a former Ontario lieutenant-governor, Conservative, monarchist and pal of Eddie Goodman, did not attend Harbord but kicked in $2,000 anyway.
Rubin‘s partial mailing lists of Harbord alumni and friends have been producing a steady stream of cheques for $50, $100 and more for the Harbord Remembers campaign, all flowing to the Harbord Foundation. To date, $23,000 has been raised.
The foundation firmly refuses to touch its capital of $200,000 to save the old monument.
"Legally we could, but it‘s out of the question," Rubin said. The foundation pays out $8,000 every year ($16,000 in the year of the double cohort) in bursaries and scholarships to current students.
The heritage of academic excellence and ethnic tolerance pioneered at Harbord Collegiate is the most important tradition of all, Rubin said.
"The bursaries are for the living, the students of today," he said. "If we have to choose, then the students are more sacred than the monument."
I don‘t know what ticks me off more the fact some punks are using it as a skateboard obstacle or the political buck passing. While it does not surprise me that the politically correct professional granola munchers of the Toronto School Board won‘t touch this issue, I‘m really ticked off by the statement from the person at Heritage Canada who says "it isn‘t into war monuments." As a taxpayer I‘m more than a little curious as to what they are "into" with my tax dollars?
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article
Harbord WWI statue is losing the battle
But alumni group hopes to win war
Wants to raise restoration funds
JOHN DEVERELL
STAFF REPORTER
The bareheaded World War I soldier in front of Harbord Collegiate Institute is still advancing against the enemy, rifle in hand, but he‘s lost his bayonet.
The monument by George William Hill, raised 82 years ago at the Toronto high school near Harbord and Bathurst Sts. to honour its Great War fighters, is falling apart. It‘s not clear whether anyone will restore it.
In Ottawa, the Canadian heritage department says it isn‘t into war monuments, while Veterans Affairs is focused on the large installations at Dieppe, Vimy and 11 other battlefields in Europe. It has no funds to maintain hundreds of small monuments of varying allure across Canada.
The deficit-ridden Toronto District School Board has told Harbord principal Fran Parkin it won‘t spring for the refit, and she refuses to dip into the teaching or library budget to refurbish the fine old brass casting.
Instead, Parkin has asked the Harbord Club, an alumni organization, and the Harbord Foundation, a registered charity, to burnish the collegiate‘s military memento, and the alumni just might pull it off.
The campaign, led by retired pharmacist Murray Rubin (class of 1950 and former owner of Vanguard Drugs), has decided its best hope lies in a $200,000 update to provide for a faithful restoration of the original figure and granite pedestal, and for a protective new honour wall bearing the names of Harbord‘s World War II dead.
A new wall would help keep skateboarders off the old installation, Rubin reasons, and at the same time offer fresher memories to help him pitch the living: all the post-WWII Harbord grads.
The original monument of 1921 names 75 fallen heroes, from Fred Adams to Harold Worthington, almost every one a Canadian of Anglo, Scots or Irish heritage. It captured the early character of Harbord and its Annex neighbourhood.
`We‘ve stayed very proud of that school and of Canada for the opportunities it gave us.‘
Former student Murray Rubin
During World War II, the public high school became predominantly Jewish and turned out a raft of high achievers, who in turn became leaders in many aspects of Canadian life.
They include lawyers Eddie Goodman and Alan Borovoy to developer Max Goldhar, generic drug king Leslie Dan, central banker Louis Rasminsky, Dr. David Bohnen, entertainers Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, newspaper executive Burnett Thall, broadcaster Morley Safer, and politicians Phil Givens, Mel Lastman and Stephen Lewis.
"We‘ve stayed very proud of that school and of Canada for the opportunities it gave us," said Rubin, 73, as he turns back to the old networks to keep the legend alive.
It‘s not just a Jewish legend, he said. Early in the campaign, an unsolicited donation of $5,000 arrived from Loblaws. It turns out the founder, Garfield Weston, went to Harbord C.I.
Hal Jackman, a former Ontario lieutenant-governor, Conservative, monarchist and pal of Eddie Goodman, did not attend Harbord but kicked in $2,000 anyway.
Rubin‘s partial mailing lists of Harbord alumni and friends have been producing a steady stream of cheques for $50, $100 and more for the Harbord Remembers campaign, all flowing to the Harbord Foundation. To date, $23,000 has been raised.
The foundation firmly refuses to touch its capital of $200,000 to save the old monument.
"Legally we could, but it‘s out of the question," Rubin said. The foundation pays out $8,000 every year ($16,000 in the year of the double cohort) in bursaries and scholarships to current students.
The heritage of academic excellence and ethnic tolerance pioneered at Harbord Collegiate is the most important tradition of all, Rubin said.
"The bursaries are for the living, the students of today," he said. "If we have to choose, then the students are more sacred than the monument."
I don‘t know what ticks me off more the fact some punks are using it as a skateboard obstacle or the political buck passing. While it does not surprise me that the politically correct professional granola munchers of the Toronto School Board won‘t touch this issue, I‘m really ticked off by the statement from the person at Heritage Canada who says "it isn‘t into war monuments." As a taxpayer I‘m more than a little curious as to what they are "into" with my tax dollars?
