A case of historical indifference: Battle of Lundy’s Lane site to become seniors’ housing, funeral home, parking lot

Anyone looking for villains in the fate of a historic Canadian landmark is going to have a tough time, unless perhaps they look in the mirror.

Canadians a pretty blasé about much of their history and, it seems, largely indifferent to where that history took place. The result often is that historic locales that aren't explicitly protected by government heritage agencies are erased from the map.

Case in point: the Battle of Lundy's Lane and the battlefield where it happened.

Preservationists in Niagara Falls, Ont. — a scene of a pivotal clash in the War of 1812 between American and British forces, allied with Canadian militia and First Nations warriors — are wringing their hands over plans to redevelop an unused school on the site into senior-citizens' housing and a funeral home parking lot.

The site is significant. In a way the bloody, six-hour battle, which resulted in more than 1,700 killed, wounded and captured on both sides, was symbolic of the entire war. It was a draw but it stopped American forces from seizing Upper Canada and potentially annexing it to the United States. The school sits on the route of advance of American troops up the hill to the British guns.

The development plan, just approved by the Ontario Municipal Board, does set aside roughly half the four-acre site for a commemorative park. But a group called Friends of the Lundy's Lane Battlefield wanted to preserve the entire property, demolishing the vacant Battlefield Elementary School, which is adjacent to a cemetery where many of the battle's dead are buried.

The City of Niagara Falls, which acquired the land from the local school board for $900,000, had delayed submitting its redevelopment plan to the board for several months to give the Friends of the Lundy's Lane a chance to raise money to acquire the site.

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The city also approached the federal government, which earmarked roughly $30 million to commemorate the bicentennial of the war, to support the battleground's preservation, Mayor Joe Diodati told Yahoo Canada News. It argued preserving a national heritage site was a federal responsibility, not a municipal one.

But Ottawa, which Diodati said had already pumped money jointly with the Ontario government into Niagara Falls' history museum, turned down the request.

“We got a real clear [response]," he said in an interview. "We’ve already invested enough in the War of 1812 and we’re done.

“Had that land become available maybe two years earlier it might have been a different answer but given that they’d already committed so much, they didn’t feel they were interested in giving more. So the city stepped up.”

Lawyer Thomas Richardson, who represented the Friends group, said there is little it can do to fight the decision unless there's a legal error or it can come up with grounds for a rehearing.

The city had little choice, he said, since it bought the property at market price from the school board. The land, which encompasses four city blocks, was zoned for low-density residential development. It's in the heart of the city and much of the adjacent area has long had houses on it.

Under Ontario law, the city got an opportunity to acquire the land before it was put up for public sale. The deal with the local Kiwanis Club, which is acquiring the school to convert it into seniors' apartments and the funeral home, was aimed at defraying the land's high cost, avoiding private development and preserving at least some of the battlefield outside the cemetery, which is designated a national historic site.

Still, Richardson said Ottawa had time to step in.

“It’s unfortunate because if they’d anted up some money I think that would have tipped the scales for the city," he said.

No one from Parks Canada, which is responsible for national historic sites, responded to requests from Yahoo Canada News to discuss the fate of the Lundy's Lane site.

[ Related: Washington Post columnist takes aim at Tories’ War of 1812 campaign ]

Neal Ferris, who holds the Lawson Chair of Canadian archeology at the University of Western Ontario, said the dilemma of how to preserve and manage Lundy's Lane dates back decades.

“The classic thing about a battlefield is it’s a big landscape," he said in an interview. "And of course it’s in an urban area, where growth and development pressures have been eating at such landscapes.”

Interest in preserving the battlefield is comparatively recent, perhaps dating from the 1990s, as groups like the Friends pushed back against the site's steady erosion.

The problem with War of 1812 battlefields is they're huge but also transitory, said Ferris. A battle may have taken place over a few hours, days or weeks, but afterward there's little to mark it unless someone makes an effort.

Any attempt 200 years later to recreate the landscape would be a massive, costly undertaking, he said. The payoff is in the impact it creates for visitors, who can visualize what the battlefield must have looked like and the significance of what happened there.

"In the case of Lundy’s Lane, you’re not talking about [a location] even on the edge of a city; you’re talking about [a site] in the urban area," said Ferris. "So you would have to develop the usual kind of vegetation screen so you’re not seeing the strip malls and the street lights and all that.”

Canada, where control of historic sites outside of federal property is in provincial jurisdiction, has a mixed record when it comes to preserving such places, he said.

The Old City of Quebec and the Plains of Abraham battlefield or parts of Old Montreal are well looked after.

In contrast, the Amherstburg, Ont., homestead of Loyalist settler Matthew Elliot, a key player on the frontier between Canada and post-Revolutionary America who died during the War of 1812, was being redeveloped by its current owner. Ferris said he decided to build a new home overlooking the Detroit River over the objections of preservationists. There was nothing in provincial heritage legislation to prevent it.

"Because of that, the site was completely destroyed," said Ferris.

Throughout Canada, developers are required to hire archeologists to document potential historic sites and allow removal of artifacts before proceeding with construction.

“But that’s not preservation," said Ferris. "That’s more conservation of information. It means we’ve got lots of stuff in boxes stored up over the decades by that kind of work.”

It has often meant bulldozing of significant sites once the archeologist is finished, he said.

Ontario Heritage Trust, responsible for the province's historic sites, has no say over redevelopment of Lundy's Lane property it does not already control, Sean Fraser, its director of programs and operations, said via email. It could, however, be asked for conservation input and technical advice if the plan calls for connecting the parkland and open space adjacent to the existing historic site, he said.

The fact the battlefield has not been protected in the past, the way the U.S. government has preserved the Civil War Gettysburg battlefield and the Little Big Horn, scene of Custer's Last Stand, probably comes down to longstanding public ignorance.

Not even many locals know much about the battlefield, Diodati said. He hopes the unveiling of a commemorative arch at the site on July 25, the bicentennial of the battle, will ignite some curiosity.

"I think more Canadians go to Dieppe and Normandy than come here," said the mayor. "I’m not exactly sure why that is.”