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06/02/2006: "Stroll - Nathan Phillips Square"

This Week's Eye Stroll - June 1, 2006

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Back in January, at a presentation put on by Projects for Public Spaces -- a non-profit organization from New York "dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities" -- they said, "Nathan Phillips Square, on a scale of 1 to 100, ranked zero."

They might have been playing the American dilettante, trying to shock us out of our provincial complacency, but there was a collective hiss in the room because the square works. It's a sacred civic space, perhaps the finest concrete manifestation of peace, order and good government in Canada. During the day, it's enjoyed by, seemingly, everybody: scores of office people sitting around, wayward hippie girls with backpacks twice their size resting, lobbyists on cellphones, some homeless folks on the periphery and a constant stream of people crossing the square on their way to City Hall. When Old City Hall was opened in 1899, then-mayor John Shaw said, "Great buildings symbolize a people's deeds and aspirations." He could have easily been speaking at new City Hall's opening 66 years later.

Ernest expressions of what it means to be a Torontonian are everywhere, like at the speakers' corner podium -- so wonderfully, frustratingly, officiously Torontonian that it includes a warning that, while dedicated to the concept of free speech, "speakers are reminded that the Criminal Code prohibits slanderous statements or statements promoting genocide or hatred against an identifiable group or race." By the pond, the middle "freedom arch" includes a chunk of the Berlin Wall on the southern side, which I dare anybody to resist touching.

At the Peace Garden, a very Torontonian plaque set in stone reads "CAUTION ETERNAL FLAME." It should read, "Caution, Peace Garden" -- a mistake that messes up architect Viljo Revell's original clean design. A lesser consequence of the cold war heating up in the 1980s was the desperate need for peace gardens. It's a cautionary tale for those involved in the current design competition to "revitalize" the square. Good intentions can run amok -- even when you get Pierre Trudeau to turn the sod, the Pope to light the flame with an ember from Hiroshima and the Queen to christen it. Calls to tear down the aerial walkways should be ignored, and instead they should be opened, or "freed," to keep with the area's theme.

The Projects for Public Space people encourage programmed human activity in public spaces, and see a modernist expanse like Nathan Phillips as empty and maybe even totalitarian. But we don't always need designed distractions when in public. NPS is alive and well, and should be handled delicately during this upcoming revitalization.