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THE ERA Wed June The Second Section Sports News District News En Briars keeps dignity while ghosts laugh TUB BRIARS Is sit uated on the banks of Lake The house Is of stone well built fitted up for a gen- a n residence There Is also a good farm house on the grou nds together with stab smoke ash and and all neces sary outbuildings The properly consists or 230 of land or which are in a stale of cultivation It Is within miles walk of the a m boat Landing s mill post office and church There Is a clergyman of the Church of England and the surrounding I set- Even some say probably in the 1830s a real ghost who walks fret- supposedly named The fully through the night Briars after Napoleons frightening guests out of temporary residence in their beds Or maybe its on St Helena C a t just the antique plumbing had at one time half and the rheumatic grumb lings of a 140yearold Jacksons Point a mansion moved through adolescence as a gentlemans residence spent its adulthood raising a family and now in its windows The Brairs had a graceful arched anda copied from the on St Helena By lfiao it had and diamond been taken over by Frank Sibbald the bachelor pioneer Susan He the east and west bored for his love of child ren and The was filled youngsters ighborhood Is lied That Is how one York Countys finest I homes was describ ed by a real estate man JACKSONS POINT The ghosts linger among the raucous laughter of con ventioneers The ghosts of kit tens who skidded down the gleaming walnut and floor of the grand hallway chasing elusive ping pong bails The ghosts of chil dren playing in the lilac under the kindly eyes the house with their mementos Arabella a 300yearold black porce lain African ivory fans the property of an historic balds descendants of the same family that built don Hill now a museum at Point Provincial The old house still boasts marbletopped wash- stands 10foot high glassed In book cases mahogany furniture stained glass window as reminders of a more gracious era when it was the hub of the South Shores social life The Briars has always survived It managed to bo gracious when Georgina was an empty wild outpost on Lake It managed to cope with children when they ar rived years ago although it was built with an abso lute disregard for such as nurseries vivo the demise of servants It managed to sur vive wartime fuel rationing which provided heat or hot water but not both And it will William farmyard barn of The It wasnt until this century that The Briars ac quired Its first bride Mrs J D Sibbald and child ren Mrs Sibbald arrived years ago in 1927 and her skirts to the ankles and a cache of heavy keys around The plumbing was antique one of the brides tasks hand pump the water tank full every morning The job re quired a precise eye too little and the supply ran out before nightfall too much it overflowed drenching the pumper girl a a the house was a handful Mrs remembers wryly With rooms keep up rcpapering one a season was the limit Fireplaces in every room were lovely but less efficient lhan cen tral heating And electric wiring to a city girl was a necessity the 50 fixtures Including a crystal chan delier were bought at the Casa auction for A library wall was torn down to reveal longburied pine shelves hi dden In the fivefoot thick walls The pine floors were polished to a shine that ma tched the walnut stair rail carved from a single tree The stairway carvings done by the carver of St Georges Church were dusted carefully But the house and its ghosts welcome them The feet of the pioneers walked its hallways and the feet of the visitor has taken their place The Briars near Jacksons Point remembers the days of the dashing young men from across the Atlantic and the first quiet bride to disturb its former bachelor existence On the LEFT the main staircase looks down on some of the old paintings in the hall and the four foot reflect the light from the windows around the door RIGHT comfortable modern chairs vie with the older style on the left but both are overshadowed by he massive bookcase on the right Photos by Robert White Roberts urges national foundation to preserve Canadas historic buildings OTTAWA The federal government may soon be acting to preserve old and architecturally in teresting buildings in Cana da York MP John Roberts reported last week Mr Roberts who has introduced several bills on the subject recently in troduced one to establish the Canada Heritage Foun dation It was discussed by Parliament at the end of May I believe the go vernment is going to intro duce new legislation in this area next autumn said the MP last week Here is part of what Mr Roberts said in the Commons The pur pose of this legislation is to establish a foundation the primary abjective of which would be to encour age the maintenance and preservation of those artis tic and architectural trea sures of our past which col lectively we can describe as the Canadian artistic The objective of the Canadian Heritage Fou ndation that I propose is to provide a means to encour age the citizens of Canada themselves to undertake poses It would be able provide interest free loans to householders who had a desire to undertake his toric interest to the coun try This would be a means at little or no cost to the foundation of encouraging people to hire the services of restoration architects to preserve the buildings in which they happen to re side and which have an his toric interest Secondly and perhaps sal although this is a course which is followed to a great extent in the United States it should be possible for the foundation to pur chase a site or building of historic interest restore it to its original condition and then resell it with a res trictive covenant may do so and have compensating tax benefits for doing so At the moment in order to receive tax free compensa tion for a gift the gift must be made to the government of Canada or to the provin cial governments in other words to the Crown The establishment of such a chartered public foundation would provide a means by which people with buildings or objects of historic inter est could transfer them for the use of Ihe people of Ca nada as a whole and not be penalized for so doing Another objective of the foundation would fall in the area of public relations Many members that J of this necessary task of pres ervation First of all I would suggest that such a founda tion should have a revolv- tion and improvement their houses in order to re store them to their original historic character I am of course referring to houses the building is preserved Another important rea son for establishing such a foundation is to provide a means by which those who wish to donate or give to the country either works of great art or works of their monthly maga zine dealing with historical questions and matters of architectural interest I am sure such a publication would be too expensive to promote on a profit basis in Canada but the kind of foundation I have described would be able to undertake such a publication distri bute it to schools and stim ulate a continuing interest on the part of our citizens in the history of our coun try and in the architectur al buildings which demon strate the history of our country One of the great handicaps in pursuing a steady consistent and deep program of preservation of our buildings is the present lack in Canada of restora tion architects and engin eers equipped One of the functions of the foundation could be through scholarships and grants to provide training facilities and encourage the training of We already in Canada many provincial bodies who occupy them selves with the kind of ob jectives I have described I do not intend to deal at the moment at any great length with the activities of the Ontario Heritage Founda tion although it is doing much good work I merely wish to point out that at the which will coordinate the very useful work done at the provincial level A further objective of the foundation would be for it to work with the Central Mortgage and Housing Cor poration because the au thorities in the United States have found that it is through urban renewal pro- done to restore historic ar eas which have on occasion fallen into the state of slums The last project which is the one of inven tories As a matter of fact we simply do not know where our historic buildings and buildings of da We do not have a com prehensive survey of them On a private basis in On tario at least many groups are trying to do this work this way rather than a thor oughly professional way and necessarily without the complete devotion of time that such a task requires But it is impossible for us to restore to preserve and respect buildings if we do not know where they are if we do not know their history and if we do not know their qualities One of tional inventory of historic sites of architecturally in teresting sites those of an aesthetic or cultural appeal which should be preserv ed