Time to update our historical plaques

It’s good to see the city working on a plan to review local historical plaques and signs. The months-long public consultation closes on Aug. 22; a draft framework for historic plaques should be in front of city council in the fall.

No, the look and content of these plaques is not the number one issue facing Kawartha Lakes, but that doesn’t mean the plan isn’t important, given the disparate look of such signs.

There are tasteful blue or reddish metal ovals with raised text on heritage structures all over Kawartha Lakes, many of which predate the 2001 amalgamation. These signs may have been installed by Victoria County, one of its multiplicity of municipalities, by heritage groups or by the new city.

In other locations, there’s everything from tiny signs bearing a brief recognition of a site’s past to large panels offering a fuller history. Think of the signs put up by local historical societies or community groups at country cemeteries, in Kinmount’s Austin Sawmill Heritage Park or at the Edgewood Dry Stone Wall in Bobcaygeon.

Valuable a resource as they are, these signs typically depend on volunteer goodwill and donations. When the original committee members drift away and no one takes on the responsibility of looking after them, they quickly fall into disrepair. The once-engaging historic panels along the river in Lindsay, for instance, are unreadable eyesores owing to sun damage and graffiti.

Standardizing the look of historic plaques and signs, while leaving room for local individualization, is a worthwhile goal. Greater consistency would boost continuity and recognizability, especially for visitors. The city’s effort to replace the hodgepodge of signs in its parks is a good example of how much better uniformity looks.

The other reason it’s way past time we thought about historic markers is the inaccurate or incomplete wording on far too many of them. These are the signs that talk about how the railway “opened the West” or describe some European as “the first man” to set foot on a given spot.

Now, of course, we acknowledge that Anishinaabeg peoples set foot in this territory thousands of years before Europeans. And while the railway brought settlers to the West, it also brought devastation to the Indigenous people who’d been living there for generations.

There’s not much the city can do about wording like that on plaques erected by provincial and federal governments, but a made-in-Kawartha-Lakes historic plaque program can ensure our own signs look great and inform readers while avoiding the mistakes of the past.