Thursday, October 25, 2018

Rockwood hospital will either be flattened or sold off.

     The government of Ontario is planning to divest all "ghost buildings" in the province."The government agency in charge of provincial buildings, Infrastructure Ontario, plans to sell about 80 per cent of the vacant buildings and demolish the rest." (From: Mike Crawley, CBC News December 8, 2017.)

Infrastructure Ontario Business Plan - 2017-20
Part Two - Strategic Directions - Page 10/23 The government will continue to derive further administrative efficiencies and maximize revenues by selling properties and demolishing buildings that are no longer required and have ongoing costs and liabilities. Since 2007, 598 buildings have been sold or demolished, and 12,484 acres of land have been sold. However further opportunity exists to reduce the portfolio."
    
     Infrastructure Ontario is now working with lawyers to "remove barriers" to the disposition of so-called ghost buildings. I think the "barriers" are federal, provincial and municipal heritage laws. Heritage laws were created to preserve buildings, to protect them from entities and Crown corporations that care more about money than history. It is time for the United Nations to become involved, UNESCO was created to save heritage buildings from wrecking crews....UNESCO has already saved prisons, for example Robben Island in South Africa where Nelson Mandela was a prisoner; and the Convict Sites in Australia. I received a letter from Parks Canada, essentially telling me that the Kingston Pen is no longer a National Historic Site of Canada or a Classified Federal Heritage Building.

The Great Mosque and Hospital in Divrigi, Turkey is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The hospital was called A House of Healing.




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