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NARRATING CANADA’S MODERNISMS From Grain Elevators to Museums RHODRI WINDSOR LISCOMBE, Ph.D., is > RHODRI WINDSOR LISCOMBE professor emeritus in the Department of Art AND MICHELANGELO SABATINO History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of . Awarded a J.S. Guggenheim fellowship, his books include monographs on William Wilkins (1980), Francis Rattenbury PLACE AND POWER (1983), Robert Mills (1994), and an exhibition and book for the Canadian Centre for Architecture arratives of Canada’s modernisms are inevitably predicated upon by entitled The New Spirit. Modern Architecture in N its vast and diverse geography yet con- 1938-1963 (1997, The MIT Press). fined by its location in the Americas. The His most recent book is Architecture and the territory that was dismissed by Voltaire Canadian Fabric (UBC Press, 2011). as “a few acres of snow” shares what has been defined as the world’s long- MICHELANGELO SABATINO, Ph.D., is professor est border with neighbouring United and director of the doctoral program at the Illinois States. Arguably among the oldest mod- Institute of Technology in Chicago. His first book, ern nations, with Confederation in July 1, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and 1867, predating German federation and coinciding with the reconsolidation of the the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (2011, University United States post the Civil War, Canada of Toronto Press), was recognized with the Alice was among the earliest to divest colonial Davis Hitchcock Award. Forthcoming publications subaltern status (while still maintaining include: Arthur C. Erickson: Architecture into governmental and commercial relations Landscape (McGill-Queen’s University Press, with the United Kingdom). Yet across 2016) and Canada – Modern Architectures in the gamut of measures, from economic History (Reaktion Books, 2016, with Rhodri to cultural, its contribution is still subject Windsor Liscombe). to a colonialism of financial and political power. Even if Sir Arthur Currie at Vimy Ridge implemented military strategy far more intelligent and effective than his British counterparts, and Canadian regi- ments landing at Juno Beach outper- formed both British and American units on D-Day 1944, Canadian achievement tends to be displaced in the hierarchy of historical narratives (fig. 1). The memory and outcome of those conflicts lie at the chronological core of our new survey book, Canada – Modern Architectures in History (Reaktion Books, London, 2016).

WARFARE AND MODERNISM

The World Wars successively rendered modern movement theory, and practi- ces relevant to designing and efforts at postwar social improvement. If the First FIG. 1. CANADIAN NATIONAL VIMY MEMORIAL, FRANCE (WALTER ALLWARD, 1920-1936). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LANE BORSTAD.

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FIG. 2. CANADIAN GOVERNMENT GRAIN ELEVATOR AT OGDEN, ALBERTA (1911), FIG. 3. ERNEST CORMIER HOUSE AT , ENTRANCE (ERNEST CORMIER, 1930-1931). | ILLUSTRATED IN LE CORBUSIER, VERS UNE ARCHITECTURE (1923, CHAMPS-FLAMMARION). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SANDRA COHEN-ROSE AND COLIN ROSE. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES OF ALBERTA, HARRY POLLARD ARCHIVES.

War ruptured cultural (including religious) fabric continued into the reconstruction, recognition of Canadian modernist enter- tradition, it also privileged technology and modernization, of the social fabric over prise, we concentrated on its narration. materialism. Those phenomena were com- the baby-boom decades. Indeed, one fig- We recognized that it was the relatively pounded through the Second World War ure central to post-1945 Reconstruction in small number of “publicists”—critics and that in Canada also saw the formulation Canada, C.D. Howe, had become wealthy historians—rather than the quality or the of Reconstruction policy. Two anecdotes as engineer-builder of these grain ele- variety of Canada’s modern architectures may suffice to indicate warfare’s legacy vators that inspired the formulation of that have resulted in larger bodies of criti- on design thinking. It concerns Walter modernist “New Spirit” design aesthetic. cism and scholarship on other nations like Gropius before he took up direction of This episode (discussed in the third chap- the United States, Britain, or even Australia. the Bauhaus. Being buried alive during ter of our book) is just one of the many Thus, instead, our objective was to relate an artillery barrage when serving as a that belong to a remarkable compass of the pattern of evolving modernity in young sergeant of signals, he had visceral modernist architecture, and planning Canada. We sought to explain how the idea reason later to embrace modernism’s stress which remains less acknowledged in of representing the present shifted from on transparency and spatial interpenetra- wider territory of modernism’s historiog- reformed historicism and craft sensibility tion. Le Corbusier, working in aeronaut- raphy beyond Canada. Such international toward more thoroughgoing moderniza- ical war production alike rethought design exposure through early modernist polemic tion, as especially envisioned in Art Deco (as processes and objectives in terms of trans- and its early criticism not only increased seen in Ernest Cormier’s House at Montreal, parency and spatial innovation. Moreover, Canada’s visibility, it also went counter to 1930-1931) and Streamline Moderne, and in company with Gropius, Le Corbusier had the wilderness nation cliché. on to a more comprehensive adoption of already recognized the need for thor- modern movement praxis (fig. 3). Here we oughgoing recalibration of architectural HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES endeavoured to clarify some of the fuzzy practice. Toward that end, they shared terminology, modernity being especially admiration for Canadian application of Nonetheless, while wishing to recover the elastic: being applied to architecture on concrete technique and functionalist aes- full compass of Canadian architectural and which advanced building materials and thetic, particularly in the construction planning production and re-position it in internal function were dressed with histor- of larger-scale grain elevators, or silos the main discourse of modernism’s wide ical articulation as well as to architecture described by Le Corbusier as “fruits of the travel throughout the global, we spurned which derived its formal composition from new age” (fig. 2). The association with rad- the trope of historical victimhood. Instead function, structure, and materials while ical, modernist, reconstitution of the built of attending to the absence of proper eschewing historicist iconography.

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FIG. 4. REGENT PARK SOUTH HOUSING AT TORONTO (PETER DICKINSON AND CMHC CENTRAL [CANADIAN] FIG. 5. POSTER FOR CPR RESORTS C. 1926, SHOWING THE BANFF MORTGAGE AND HOUSING CORPORATION (1957-1961). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HUGH ROBERTSON PANDA ASSOCIATES, SPRINGS HOTEL, BANFF, ALBERTA. | BRUCE PRICE 1888; WALTER PAINTER CANADIAN ARCHITECTURAL ARCHIVES, . 1906-1914; AND J.W. ORROCK, 1925-1928.

TRACKING MODERNISM’S Toronto, and Vancouver, carried modern- source of demolition, displacement, POTENCY ist design thinking into the spatial scen- congestion, and pollution so powerfully ery of usual activity. Albeit contributing excoriated by adoptive Canadian Jane By the same token, we argue for a more to the embourgoisement of the societal Jacobs. Recall the anti-Spadina express- liberal understanding of modernism’s and aesthetic idealism of the originating way campaign she and others led that generative potency. We track the quite modern movements, these processes also ended with the cancellation in 1971 of rapid reflexive critique of conventional- accompanied the evisceration of civic core the proposed project that would have ized modernist architecture—posited as often for expressways and poorly serviced bulldozed nineteenth-century neighbour- partly caused by orthodoxies in pedagogy social housing schemes. Politics more than hoods of Toronto. But we do not celebrate at the expanded architectural schools, architecture precipitated degradation modernism’s demise amidst the end-of-it- and typified by repetition of motifs or (not unlike notorious American examples all critique of the 1970s. Instead, we read standardized solution for building types like Pruitt Igoe in St. Louis) in several of the evident counter- or so-called post- like apartments and offices. Indeed, by the Central [later Canada] Housing and modern phase as more reactive than pro- the beginning of the 1960s the Royal Mortgage Corporation projects; the active. We posit that urban design, more Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) negative factors were chiefly insufficient than historicist pastiche, was the positive was concerned by the diminishing agency maintenance funding and community result of a re-thinking of some of mod- of architects in the build-out of urban- and retail facilities. A case in point is the ernist’s abstract—a-contextual—qual- izing Canada, while students at McGill recently re-invigorated modernist hous- ities. Moreover, we allow for the ongoing railed against modernism’s apparent ing of Regent Park in Toronto (fig. 4). And potency of modernist design thought— collusion with crass capitalism and con- automobile design and manufacture that especially its emphasis on analysis of ends sumerism. Nevertheless, we recognize had so stimulated not only Gropius and Le and means in conjunction with embrace that consumerism, alongside massive Corbusier but also Frank Lloyd Wright and of contemporary materials, techniques, downtown renewal and suburbaniza- Richard Neutra, plus Peter Dickinson and and mindset—in Canadian architecture tion of major cities such as Montreal, Fred Hollingsworth in Canada, became of the millennium as exemplified by

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FIG. 6. MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY FIG. 7. INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AT WINNIPEG, INTERIOR (GREEN, BLANKSTEIN, RUSSELL & ASSOCIATES, 1960-1964; OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER (ERICKSON ASSOCIATES JOHN GRAHAM MOSAICIST). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HUGH ROBERTSON PANDA ASSOCIATES, CANADIAN ARCHITECTURAL ARCHIVES, WITH CORNELIA OBERLANDER LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY. 1971-1976). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SERGE AMBROSE.

the work of, among many others, the role of nature from that of mere resource The railway stations and hotels, part of Patkaus, Peter Cardew, Saucier + Perrotte, to be exploited—first primary materials new initiatives in tourism and health, and MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. and then agriculture—to nature as a source demonstrated the Victorian-Edwardian Thus we regard modernism more as a of beauty, recreation, and national iden- desire to control rapid change through dynamic weave of design aspiration than tity. Paradoxically, nature ignores political associative cultural referencing: histori- a set of design dogma welded to specific boundaries; the Rockies and the Prairies cism as aesthetic-cum-mental sheet- aesthetic conceits. cross Canadian and American territories. anchor amidst volatile economy. Take the The CPR rail and telegraph system (soon romantic yet technologically advanced FRAMING MODERNISM’S to be outmoded by the invention of the design for the Banff Springs Hotel origin- GENEALOGY telephone by Scottish-Canadian Alexander ally designed by American architect Bruce Graham Bell), in being less a national dream Price, opened in 1888, in Alberta. The One further dimension of historical framing than an imperial project—it was not infre- first building was replaced with a newer concerns how we view modernism’s geneal- quently then called the “Thin Red Line” version designed by CPR architect Walter ogy. Turning again to the matter of clarify- after a Scottish regiment at the Battle of Painter and completed in 1914, with fur- ing the meaning of modernity, we begin the Balaclava in 1854 during the Crimean War— ther additions by J.W. Orrock completed narrative of Canadian modern architectures represents the continuing-to-this-day flows in 1928 (fig. 5). It was opened in the same with the completion of the Canadian Pacific of capital as much across as within Canada. year in which Geological Survey of Canada Railway (CPR) to Terminal City, Vancouver. These flows, currently primarily from Asia, member Robert Bell “discovered” the oil The year of 1886 is moreover a legitimate inevitably affect local conditions of design sands of the Athabasca and Clearwater marker of both (settler) nationhood and practice as well as framing international Rivers. The external articulation cemented substantive design culture. In this trajectory readings of Canadian social economy. the new facility into the patrimony of we acknowledge the transformation of the historical French and Scottish aristocracy

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by way of more recent iconography of in Canada 1886-1914, Modernizing the DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS British and American hotel construction. Dominion 1914-1945, Modernism and The architectural dressing also embodied Reconstruction 1945-1967—divided into This weld of time and theme brings out ideas of superior culture that legitimated two parts respectively focused on hous- some characteristics of modernism’s the elitism of Thorstein Veblen’s “leisure ing and on other architectural produc- Canadian narrative. Besides Canada’s class” as well as the harsh alienation tion—Rethinking Modernism 1967-1986, linkages with its pioneering phase, of indigenous place and community. It Regenerative Modernism 1986-present, is a continuing contribution whether took provincial hearings of the Advisory and finally Canada’s Modernist Legacy. through professional network, events, Committee (IV) on Reconstruction dur- The thematic scaffold is only partly derived or émigré practices. To be sure, Canada’s ing 1944 to voice the legitimacy of First from modern movement discourse. Recall architectural profession was shaped over Nations material culture, and hence resid- the four functions—dwelling, work, the years by waves of émigrés from both ual right to citizenship. Victoria’s Royal recreation, and transportation—identi- America, England (Commonwealth Provincial Museum of Natural History fied and consolidated by 1933 by the CIAM Institute), and mainland Europe. For and Anthropology was founded in 1886, (Congrès internationaux d’architecture example, Canadian-born and educated but First Nations exhibits were only moderne). Hence, given the movement’s Wells Coates’s participation in CIAM or extensively displayed when a modernist preoccupation with providing afford- the Festival of Britain, or Hazen Sise’s Centennial building project was inaugur- able housing for lower income citizens, acquaintance with Le Corbusier and ated in 1968; ’s monumen- but also the prominence of elite houses work together with John Bland and tal and modernist paen to indigenous in modernism’s development, the pri- Fred Lasserre on the MARS (Modern structural and cultural production, the mary theme is dwelling. Thereafter, in an Architectural Research Group) exhibition Museum of Anthropology, opened in approximate hierarchy of Canadian archi- at London in 1938. By contrast, Canadian 1976 at the University of British Columbia, tectural work, are: connecting, from rail architects never enjoyed the level of conferred even greater legitimacy to the to road and air transportation facilities; either government or patron funding First Nations (fig. 6). And the socialist learning, accounting for both professional available to their American peers. Only impulse within modern movement ideol- education and the tremendous expan- John B. Parkin Associates came near to ogy helped the framing of policy that sion of public education especially from replicating the scale of major US firms eventually contributed to major social the 1950s; representing, encompassing like SOM. Some federal programs yielded reform toward not only the First Nations the use of photography and media (fol- strong design outcomes, notably the but also toward the French linguistic trad- lowing modernist praxis as exemplified, series of international air terminals, at ition and increasingly diverse ethnicity of for example, in Hugh Robertson’s photo- Winnipeg and Toronto, albeit in a more Canada. However, our narrative is critical graphic work for Toronto-based Panda austere vein of modernism (fig. 7). rather than positivist in acknowledging Associates), and marketing to promote the shortcomings of modernist authori- design and its part in shaping collective In Canada public housing, welfare, and tarianism—particularly in early post-1945 identity; working, covering the daily envir- educational commissions were as exten- urban redevelopment—and of govern- ons of labour of all sorts; constructing, sive as those for commercial offices and mental, corporate, and entrepreneurial dealing with methods and machinery of apartments and formed the backbone interest. building, and including Canada’s under- of practice. And a number reflected the ground mega-cities; consuming, address- RAIC’s promotion of the allied arts, exem- STRUCTURING A NARRATIVE OF ing the architecture of retail consumption; plified by artist Bertram Binning’s mosaic CANADIAN MODERNISM and lastly recreating, which focuses on the tile ornamentation of the BC Electric design of places of worship, acculturation, Building (1955-1957, Thompson Berwick To that end, Canada – Modern and leisure. The scaffold is just that: not and Pratt) at Vancouver. But individual Architectures in History is based upon a a permanently fixed feature but a frame- practitioners were able to prosper, like thematic approach matched with a tem- work for constructing the historical narra- Fred Hollingsworth who created an array poral scaffold. These themes define major tive, and allowing for consideration of not of admirable houses that also reflected types of modern activity requiring archi- just iconic edifice but the more ordinary the imbrication of Asian aesthetic into tectural accommodation; and they run fabric of Canadian living. Canadian modernist practice. Hart Massey, through our periodization: Modernity as later Bryan MacKay-Lyons, provide

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FIG. 8. CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE AT MONTREAL FIG. 9. BATA HEAD OFFICE AT DON MILLS (JOHN B. PARKIN ASSOCIATES, 1964). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY (PETER ROSE WITH AND EROL ARGUN, 1985- OF HUGH ROBERTSON PANDA ASSOCIATES, CANADIAN ARCHITECTURAL ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY. 1989; INCORPORATING THE SHAUGHNESSY HOUSE, W.T. THOMAS, 1874). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHELANGELO SABATINO.

a timely reminder that Canadian mod- preservationist Harold Kalman, who Alongside stands a significant literature ernism is is to be found throughout the also wrote the most comprehensive by Canadian architect scholars on the country. Experimentation exists alongside overview of Canadian architecture and ideological, experiential, and performa- more cautious fulfillment of specification, building. With A History of Canadian tive aspects of modern architectures. The although Henriquez Partners Architects Architecture of 1994 (Oxford University intellectual origins were traced by Peter have recently recalled the possibility of Press), and subsequent A Concise Collins in Changing Ideals in Modern bold architectonic that is yet functional History of Canadian Architecture (2000, Architecture (1965, Faber and Faber). and sustainable in their just completed Oxford University Press), Kalman greatly Collins, British-born but Canadian resi- Telus Garden Building at Vancouver. expanded earlier histories of architecture dent, was by then on the faculty of the in terms of typology, production, and the McGill School, having previously assisted SITUATING THE HISTORIOGRAPHY professional as well as social contexts. Auguste Perret on the reconstruction Notable among such contextual histor- of Le Havre and assessed that design- Canada’s modern histories of architec- ies were Alan Gowans’s Building Canada: er’s legacy in Concrete: the Vision of a ture are a narrative of urban build-out An Architectural History of Canadian Life New Architecture (1959, Horizon Press). in what is (and continues to be in most (1966, University of Toronto Press), Kelly Collins’s interest in aesthetic and func- instances) a relatively abundant supply Crossman’s Architecture in Transition. tional probity was explored in his last of vacant land. Consequently, the city From Art to Practice 1885-1906 (1987, book, Architectural Judgement (1971, focus recurs in the historiography of McGill-Queen’s University Press), and University of Toronto Press). But the modern architectures in Canada, span- Geoffrey Simmins’s Ontario Association impact of his first book, arguing the ning the successive phases of modern- of Architects. A Centennial History (1989, point-counterpoint development of mod- ity, modernization to modernism. Eric Ontario Association of Architects). The ern/ist theory and practice, was greater— Arthur’s Toronto. No Mean City (1964, cultural politics of design, including as evinced by Panayotis Tournikiotis’s University of Toronto Press) was the investigation of several facets of modern- extensive analysis in The Historiography progenitor of a series of books about ism, figure more prominently in Windsor of Modern Architecture (1999, MIT Press). and guides to the larger cities coast-to- Liscombe’s anthology Architecture and The phenomenological registers of coast. A major contributor to this genre the Canadian Fabric (2011, University of architecture have been investigated by was Vancouver and Hong-Kong-based British Columbia Press). Canadian-born and educated architect

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and theorist George Baird in Meaning in Architecture (1968, Braziller) and The Space of Appearance (1995, MIT Press). Baird, who taught architecture at Toronto and Harvard Universities, published a monograph on Alvar Aalto (Bijutsu Shuppan-sha [Tokyo] 1968 reprinted in 1970 by Thames & Hudson), the lyrical and craft adaptation of whose modern- ist design was much admired in Canada during those years. The arrival during the 1980s of Alberto Perez-Gomez [1949--], Mexican-born architectural historian and theorist of phenomenology, at Ottawa’s Carleton University and subsequently McGill’s School of Architecture, has had a considerable impact on the teaching of FIG. 10. ISMAILI CENTRE AND AGA KHAN MUSEUM (CHARLES CORREA AND FUMIHIKO MAKI RESPECTIVELY WITH MORIYAMA theory and design in Canada and beyond. & TOSHIBA, 2010-2014). | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GEOFF GRENVILLE. Take his influential study Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (1983, MIT Press) and his Chora (Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture) ser- in a building opened in 1989 and desig- like Architectural History, Journal of ies launched in 1994 (McGill-Queen’s ned by Peter Rose (in collaboration with the Society of Architectural Historians, University Press). The performance of Lambert), the Centre reintegrates the DOCOMOMO, and Urban History. But a architecture especially in the urban set- historic Shaughnessy House with a highly particular venue for recovering the his- ting and as a component of visual cul- modern provision of diverse research and tory of modernism from “sea to sea” ture fascinated Melvin Charney, curator administrative function (fig. 8). has been Architecture in/au Canada, the of the exhibition Les Maisons de la rue Journal of the Society for the Study of Sherbrooke (1976) and designer of the The scope of internationally minded Architecture in Canada directed by Luc architectonic sculpture garden at the CCA publications has been enlarged by regio- Noppen. The monographic structure is (Canadian Centre for Architecture). nal studies, such as the recent overview of more solid than extensive. Again there modernism’s impact upon Newfoundland, is greater emphasis on major regio- WORDING THE MODERNIST LEGACY and an on-going collection of typologi- nal figures especially in Western and cal, thematic, and monographic writings. Central Canada, albeit embracing archi- The preponderance of historical inquiry The company town, from Arvida (1927) tectural discourse, critical reception, and produced mainly by critics and histo- to Kitimat (1950), utilitarian and sports photography. The virtual edifice thus rians based in Canadian academic set- or leisure buildings, domestic and reli- constructed is of commendable and com- tings has been directed to the centres gious architecture together with urban prehensive design achievement in which and leaders of modernist production. planning and infrastructure develop- the ideological and aesthetic impetus of The sequence begins with Vancouver, ment, have received most attention. The modernism has been adapted to the dis- followed by Montreal (stopping on the thematic fabric spans gender factors, tinctive yet diverse conditions, material brink of modernist success), Winnipeg, both in terms of practice and articula- and cultural, of Canada. Similarly the cam- and most recently Toronto; the moving tion of identity, professional history, paign to preserve the architectural legacy force behind the two first publications, and architectural discourse, as well as of modernism, that, due to weak legisla- accompanying travelling exhibitions, was stylistic phenomena including the asso- tive provision and funding, has been less the CCA under the direction of the foun- ciation between architecture and the determined in Canada than in Europe ding director, architect, historian, and allied arts. Articles on those topics have and the United States. Nonetheless, preservationist, Phyllis Lambert. Housed appeared in major international journals DOCOMOMO chapters (Canada-Atlantic,

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British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec), celebrations in 2017. Our text at least Heritage Canada, The National Trust as serves to place Canadian modernist design well as private initiatives like Dominion in the larger world of modernism, in parti- Modern are working to increase aware- cular to relate the force of modern move- ness of modern architecture and design ment theory and practice to building out heritage in Canada at a time when many of national infrastructure and institutions, buildings are threatened. Recall for regional centres of governance, learning, example the demolition of the Bata Shoe commerce and culture as well as more local Headquarters designed by John B. Parkin buildings for housing, consumption, and Associates (1965) to make place for the leisure that helped constitute increasing new Aga Khan Museum (Fumihiko Maki independent nationhood. It is an archi- with Moriyama & Teshima Architects) and tecture both more diverse and distin- Ismaili Centre Toronto (Charles Correa guished than hitherto fully acknowledged. with Moriyama & Teshima Architects), Its diversity and quality derive from the both opened in 2014 (figs. 9-10). extraordinary range of geography and cli- mate but also of society, culture, and poli- A PANOPLY OUTLINED tics. More broadly, Canadian modernism has displayed respect for topography mat- Far from exhaustive, Canada – Modern ched by technological innovation. During Architectures in History aims to stimulate the modernist era a distinct Canadian new scholarship while acknowledging the design attitude coalesced: a liberal, expe- efforts that have thus far been made to rimental, hybrid, pragmatic mindset intent trace the history of the architecture and less upon the sources or dogma of archi- built environments on the eve of Canada’s tectural language than thinking about the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary formation of inclusive spaces and places.

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