Historic Preservation Essay

The act of protecting architecture involves maintaining the integrity of the place through restoring the buildings with both old and new materials. In Canada, historic objects can be granted special designation by the government at any of these three levels: the federal, the provincial, or the municipal. Historic preservation can include both short-term and long-term measures to protect, even stabilize the place or prevent from further damage occurring so there is no need for full construction and/or renovation. We have to ask ourselves what are the true questions on this topic of preserving and protecting. Should we be protecting everything and what is actually worth saving with preserving? Are they the beautiful buildings, the greater historical

We need to recognize these as our heritage and then we can establish what is worth saving. Educating people on this topic can be essential to helping protect other historical architecture and our heritage. In the case of Iraq, how do we save their heritage sites? This question will take time to answer, but we need to look at it altogether and explore every possibility. Maybe more funds could help towards this. Architecture and their sites are our past, historically, and culturally. We need to show our respect to them. No matter what they look like, beautiful, greatly historical, ugly, we must protect all that we can, that is worth saving. So in the end, what is worth saving? The answer is everything that shows part of our richer heritage, but to a certain extent, only the buildings and sites with true value should be saved and preserved. As Russell Smith said in his article in the Globe and Mail, “let’s preserve our great architecture and our historic sites, by all means, and let’s be open-minded when it comes to architectural value. But let’s not confuse a pride in history with a vague and emotional sense that everything was better in the past” (Smith,