ACO TORONTO 2026 SYMPOSIUM ON HERITAGE AND PUBLIC SPACE

Doors - 6:00pm

Introductory remarks - 6:30pm

Panel - 6:45pm-7:45pm

Reception with light food and cash bar - 7:45pm-9pm

Every year, the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Toronto Branch hosts a symposium exploring current heritage ideas. Past themes have included Intangible Heritage, Housing and Heritage, Main Streets, Modernist Schools, and Demolition. This year’s symposium will explore ideas of heritage and their relationship to public space.

Heritage exists in our relationships with meaningful places and experiences. Without the opportunity to flaneur past Victorian storefronts, look up into a train station’s Great Hall, or sit on a bench in a century-old park, the value of these places diminishes. Not only must these spaces be accessible for us to appreciate them, but the fact of being public spaces itself takes on its own kind of heritage value.

Join ACO Toronto and a multidisciplinary panel of speakers in the Allan Gardens Palm House—one of Toronto’s most iconic and storied public spaces and heritage buildings—to explore the many ways public spaces and places with heritage value interact and intersect in Toronto and beyond.

PANELLISTS:

Brendan Stewart - Director of Design and Research,

Brendan Stewart is a landscape architect, heritage planner, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph, and co-founder of PlazaPOPS, an organization that transforms privately owned suburban parking lots into pop-up public spaces. Brendan’s scholarship, practice, and advocacy explore cultural landscapes, participatory design in public spaces, and place-making in the GTA’s inner-suburban communities. He sits on the board of directors of the Friends of Allan Gardens.

Pamela Hart - Executive Director,

Pamela Hart is the Executive Director of The Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto, an organization that supports Aboriginal women and their children across the GTA with housing, employment, education, and advocacy. She has over a decade of experience offering front-line client care and support services around issues such as addiction, intergenerational trauma, mental health, violence against women, and homelessness and sits on numerous community councils advocating for Indigenous Women’s programming, safety, and wellness. Pamela is a member of Chippewas of Georgina Island on Lake Simcoe.

Jason Thorne - Chief Planner & Executive Director of City Planning,

Jason Thorne is Chief Planner at the City of Toronto, where he leads over 350 urban planning, urban design, and heritage planning professionals. Jason was previously General Manager of Planning and Economic Development at the City of Hamilton, Director of Policy and Planning at Metrolinx, and Senior Associate and Manager at the Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal.

Michael McClelland - President,

Michael McClelland is an author and architect and the President of the Friends of Allan Gardens. A founding principal at ERA Architects, Michael’s work blends heritage conservation, cultural planning, and urban design. He’s worked on heritage sites including The Distillery District, Evergreen Brickworks, The TD Centre, Mirvish Village, The Royal Ontario Museum, Union Station, and The Art Gallery of Ontario.

Alessandro Tersigni - Vice President,

Alessandro Tersigni is a cultural critic and Vice Chair of the ACO Toronto board of directors. He’s written about art, culture, and architecture for The New York Times, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Alessandro has directed ACO Toronto’s TOBuilt database for half a decade and has led surveys of detached suburban houses and missing middle architecture across the city. He’s currently on staff at ERA Architects.

THE ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVANCY OF ONTARIO

For 93 years, the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Toronto Branch has protected, documented, and conserved culturally and historically significant sites throughout the province and created educational programming that makes that heritage more accessible. Through enterprises like TOBuilt, our public database of over 15,000 buildings, structures, and human-made heritage landscapes across Toronto, we work to inform and stimulate discourses about built and intangible heritage and advocate for its recognition and stewardship. Concerned with more than “official” heritage, ACO Toronto engages not only with governmentally recognized heritage properties but a wide range of underrepresented sites that have cultural, environmental, equity, and economic value for communities, diasporas, local histories, and everyday significance.

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Host or Publisher Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO)