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Truth is, I don’t remember the first time I went to Fort York. I don’t recall learning of its existence. It’s just always been there all my life, it seems I’ve always known about it—like the CN Tower, or the lake, or electricity. A fact of Toronto life. Being born and raised here, I’m sure there were lots of school trips, side ventures on our way through the Exhibition Grounds with Boy Scout groups, family parties of one kind or another in buildings rented to showcase the historic backdrop. It’s a place, you could say, I have always taken for granted. In that it’s like my Canadian citizenship, which I was born with and never really gave a second thought to growing up. Something that just is, a part of my world, who I am, where I live. I do remember the time I first gave serious thought to both. It was in 2011, when I was invited to participate in a citizenship ceremony taking place at Fort York. I was one of the existing citizens invited—as a local newspaper columnist who writes about the city—to help welcome those new Canadians taking their oath of citizenship for the first time. Over coffee and snacks, I participated in a “community roundtable discussion” with the new Canadians, who came from Eastern Europe, Africa, and South America, about our impressions of Canada. They had, as expected, marvelled at the weather. They also had, unexpectedly, all marvelled at how Torontonians obey traffic laws. They spoke a bit about the difficulties of adjusting, but they spoke mostly about the sense
of opportunity Canada represented to them—a place where they and their families could achieve great things. I joined them to swear the oath of citizenship, affirming my own. I had never even heard the words of the oath before, never mind uttered them or reflected on them. And as we said them together, promising to “faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen,” while small children and extended families beamed and cried with joy, I considered the meaning of that citizenship, what a lucky, remarkable thing to be born with it was. At the site of this historic landmark where the sovereignty of the colony that would become Canada was defended, I thought for the first time in detail about the chain of events that led me to be born with that remarkable luck. It was a momentous day for those receiving their citizenships. And for me, the first time in my life I consciously became aware of my own citizenship, and considered the obligations that come with it. In a way, it is when I became aware of Fort York then in a whole new way, too. Not just as a place in my city, but as a symbol in my mind of the ongoing history of Canada, and all that being Canadian means.
Edward Keenan is a columnist for the Toronto Star and the author of Some Great Idea: Good Neighbourhoods, Crazy Politics, and the Invention of Toronto (2013).
Fort York Memory by Edward Keenan
to the Environmental Assessment for the Fort York the EA for the design set aside for reasons of cost in 2011. the closest study. It can be seen at the Fort York Library, 190
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