Speaker Bios
Paul J. Bedford, FCIP, RPP, is a Member and Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners with 45 years of experience in urban planning. As Toronto’s Chief City Planner for eight years, he championed numerous innovative planning strategies with Jane Jacobs for the King-Spadina and King-Parliament districts, a new city-wide Official Plan and a principles plan for the Central Waterfront called “Making Waves” that was the basis for the creation of Waterfront Toronto. He served eight mayors over his 31-year career at the City of Toronto.
Since his retirement he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. He serves on the National Capital Commission’s Advisory Committee on Planning, Design and Realty, the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel, the University of Toronto Design Review Panel, and is a Senior Associate of the Canadian Urban Institute. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of 8-80 Cities and the Ryerson City Building Institute.
He served two terms on the Metrolinx Board of Directors and was appointed as Vice Chair of the Ontario Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel. He is passionate about Toronto and is actively involved in the life of the city.
Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic for The Globe and Mail, covering architecture and
urbanism across Canada and globally. He has won a National Magazine Award and has also
written for publications such as Azure, Architectural Record, Blueprint, Dwell, Frame, and Spacing.
Carolyn F. King, Member and Former Chief, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, has over 25 years of experience in the First Nations community economic development field. Her experiences include community development, public relations, economic development, and planning policies and procedures for the environment. She is the former elected Chief of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, and was the first woman ever elected as Chief in her First Nation.
Ms. King is currently a board member with the Toronto Historical Association (THA), the Caledonia Old Mill Corporation, and the Ontario Historical Society.
As the sole proprietor of JDI Business Services, Ms. King’s goal is to be a facilitator/resource person for Aboriginal/First Nations relations in Canada. She has been engaged by government, colleges, universities, businesses, and community organizations to do cross-cultural training sessions and presentations to help people develop a better understanding of Aboriginal/First Nations peoples in Canada. Ms. King’s latest project is an exciting initiative called the Moccasin Identifier Project, an initiative to recognize First Nations’ impact on Toronto’s landscape.
Ms. King is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Ontario Heritage Trust Award; the eagle feather (equivalent in the First Nations community to receiving the Order of Canada); the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal; and most recently, the 2016 Heritage Toronto Special Achievement Award.
Madeleine McDowell is an artist, educator and advocate for Heritage – built, natural, and cultural.
Ms. McDowell has had extensive involvement in preservation in the former City of York, Toronto, and the Humber River area, including the designation of the Humber as a Canadian Heritage River.
For over two decades she has been contributing to public education as a researcher and speaker about heritage as well as through walking tours, while providing a strong advocacy for Heritage infrastructure.
She has a particular interest in the cultivation of public understanding of and enthusiasm for natural heritage preservation where it meets urban culture.
Catherine Nasmith, B.Arch OAA FRAIC CAPH
Educated at University of Toronto and Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, Catherine Nasmith Architect has offices in Kensington Market in Toronto and the former general store and post office in Windermere, specializing in heritage research and restoration, custom residences, urban design and heritage conservation district planning.
Current projects include an HCD Plan for Port Dalhousie, a condominium conversion for the former Harris mansion at 450 Pape Avenue, and steering several clients through the Heritage Property Tax Rebate Program. The first project under that program was 519-23 Queen St. West, which we have been thrilled to see in HPS staff presentations of before and after the program.
She was awarded the Jane Jacobs prize in 2010, two Queen’s Jubilee Medals for her work on behalf of Ontario’s heritage and has won several awards from Heritage Toronto, the OAA, and the Muskoka Heritage Foundation. She was godmother to the Doors Open program in Toronto, and is currently President of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, as well as the Toronto branch. ACO Toronto has recently relaunched TOBuilt, a database of over 10,000 Toronto postings. Any ACO member can post what they know about Toronto there, so join up and get everything you know about Toronto online where others can share it. She is a past chair of the Toronto Preservation Board, and the Gardiner Lakeshore Task Force. She is also the publisher of Built Heritage News, a bi-weekly e-journal with 1500 subscribers across Canada.
Stephen Robinson, BA U of T/Sheridan, MA Concordia, CAHP, has been the Senior Heritage Planner at the City of Guelph since 2009, following a similar posting with the City of Vaughan, and working as a heritage researcher for the City of Brantford Heritage Inventory.
Guelph City Council has recently endorsed a project charter for the Guelph Heritage Action Plan. One of the major goals of the GHAP is to identify and assess cultural heritage landscapes within the city using Official Plan policies and basing each assessment on the best in current heritage-conservation practice.
Wendy Shearer, OALA, FCLA, ASLA, CAHP, is an award-winning landscape architect and cultural heritage landscape consultant who specializes in the conservation planning for heritage properties.
She has 30 years of experience in private practice working on numerous nationally and provincially significant sites. Her expertise includes the documentation and evaluation of heritage values and significance of a wide range of cultural landscapes including evolved industrial and institutional landscapes, designed gardens, and historic rural settlements. She teaches the Cultural Landscapes course at the University of Victoria in the Cultural Resources Management Program and is a frequent invited speaker in both Canada and the United States on the subject of cultural heritage landscape conservation.
Ms. Shearer is a member of the College of Fellows of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects and the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for an Individual from the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals.
Julian Smith began his career in the contemporary architecture field with Donlyn Lyndon and Peter Eisenman in the U.S. He then spent several years in India and became interested in cultural landscapes as a way of understanding human habitat.
On returning to Canada, he worked for Parks Canada, eventually becoming Chief Architect for the National Historic Sites program. He established his own architecture and planning practice in 1987, and has worked on culturally-significant sites in Canada, the U.S, Europe, and Asia.
His interest in education led him to create the master’s program in heritage conservation at Carleton University in 1988, a program he directed for 15 years, and more recently to become involved in developing the Willowbank School of Restoration Arts and its Centre for Cultural Landscape. The work at Willowbank has led to an international involvement in cultural landscapes and urban sustainability with ICOMOS, UNESCO, the European Cheriscape Initiative, the Canova Association, and others.
Brendan Stewart, MLA, OALA, CAHP, is an Associate, landscape architect, and heritage planner at ERA Architects. He holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Guelph and a Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.
At ERA, Brendan is involved with a number of landscape and urban design projects and initiatives in and around Toronto, as well as projects in Newfoundland, Gothenberg, Sweden, and Edmonton, Alberta. Often working on significant cultural heritage and post-industrial sites, Brendan brings a keen knowledge and understanding of cultural and design history, and cultural landscape theory to his work.
He is a director of the not-for-profit Friends of Allan Gardens, a regular guest lecturer, critic, and instructor at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University, and a former editorial board member of GROUND: Landscape Architect Quarterly, the journal of the OALA.
Mark Warrack is the Manager, Cultural Planning, for the City of Mississauga. For 25 years Mark was responsible for heritage planning and archaeology for the City of Mississauga. During this time Mark had three secondments, two with the Ontario government, first as L.A.C.A.C. Coordinator and secondly as Museum Advisor. In addition Mark had a two-year secondment in 2010–2012 to the Ontario Heritage Trust as Manager of Special Projects followed by a two-year special assignment to lead the rewrite of the Meadowvale Village Heritage Conservation District Plan.
In Mark’s current role, he oversees cultural planning, public art, digital and community engagement, as well as heritage planning. Immediate projects include a new Culture Master Plan, implementation of a Heritage Management Strategy, implementation of a Public Art Master Plan, and the retrofit and rejuvenation of the Small Arms Inspection Building, a 1941 firearm factory, as a new community cultural facility.