The Ontario Heritage Act and the Provincial Program: An alternative model for heritage conservation

This thesis is a critical analysis of the origins and history of Ontario's program for heritage conservation, from 1970 to the present. The program's decentralized administrative structure and community-based initiatives are analysed in relation to the emerging concept of social value, in which traditional relationships between people and place are understood to form part of the heritage significance of sites.;The thesis proposes that three dominant heritage paradigms have evolved since the inception of the modern heritage movement. They ate defined as: the conservation of historic monuments; the development of integrated conservation; and the preservation of the social value of heritage sites. A survey and comparison of four national heritage programs (England, France, the United States, and Canada) reveals their emphasis on centralized control and the physical preservation of sites. These characteristics are argued to reflect earlier paradigms of heritage. Ontario's program, by contrast, incorporates unofficial values and criteria into the assessment process and encourages local initiatives to conserve and manage heritage. It is argued that these elements support the protection of social value, and provide a useful model to address the conditions of contemporary conservation.