page_title: National Historic Sites of Canada
section_title: Evolution of the program
hierarchical_section_title: National Historic Sites of Canada / History / Evolution of the program
caption_attribution_description: L'hôtel de ville de Westmount, Québec.
context_page_description: National Historic Sites of Canada are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, as being of national historic significance. Parks Canada, a federal agency, manages the National Historic Sites program. As of August 2019, there were 996 National Historic Sites, 172 of which are administered by Parks Canada; the remainder are administered or owned by other levels of government or private entities. The sites are located across all ten provinces and three territories, with two sites located in France.
  There are related federal designations for National Historic Events and National Historic Persons. Sites, Events and Persons are each typically marked by a federal plaque of the same style, but the markers do not indicate which designation a subject has been given. The Rideau Canal is a National Historic Site, while the Welland Canal is a National Historic Event.
context_section_description: As time passed and the system grew, the scope of the program and the nature of the designations evolved.  By the 1930s, the focus of the heritage movement in Canada had shifted from commemoration to preservation and development.  The change was most marked in Ontario, where the Niagara Parks Commission was restoring Fort George and the Department of Highways was restoring Fort Henry.  It took the Great Depression to create opportunities for significant heritage preservation projects at the federal level.  Although the HSMBC took little interest in these efforts, limiting itself to a commemorative role, the Parks Branch made wide use of government relief funds to hire workers to assist with the restoration of old forts.
  In 1943, the interim chairman of the HSMBC, Frederic William Howay, urged his fellow Board members to consider a broader range of designations, and to correct the geographic and thematic imbalance in the designations.  In particular, Howay encouraged the HSMBC to pay more attention to economic, social and cultural history, and he urged a moratorium on additional designations related to the War of 1812.   In 1951, the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences highlighted the imbalances of the National Historic Sites program, urging a more ambitious program with more attention paid to architectural preservation.  In 1955, the Historic Sites and Monuments Act was amended to allow the designation of buildings due to their age or design, resulting in a new focus on the designation of Canada's built heritage.  The 1950s also marked the beginning of the "big project" era, which reached its apogee in the 1960s, in which the federal government invested significant funds in the restoration and reconstruction of high-profile National Historic Sites such as the Halifax Citadel, the Fortress of Louisbourg, the fortifications of Quebec City and the historic core of Dawson City.
  The 1970s marked the start of a new shift in the nature of the designations.  Of the 473 National Historic Sites designated between 1971 and 1993, the formerly dominant category of political-military events represented only 12 percent of the new designations, with the "Battle of..."-type commemorations being overtaken by sites associated with federal politics.   The largest group of designations (43 percent) pertained to historic buildings.  By the 1990s, three groups were identified as being underrepresented among National Historic Sites: Aboriginal peoples, women, and ethnic groups other than the French and the English. Efforts were subsequently made to further diversify the designations accordingly.  Saoyú-ʔehdacho in the Northwest Territories was designated in 1997, becoming the first National Historic Site both designated and acquired on the basis of consultation with Aboriginal peoples, and the largest National Historic Site in land area (approximately the size of Prince Edward Island).  It was at this time that the use of the term "National Historic Park", then still used for the class of larger National Historic Sites operated by Parks Canada and deemed to be of "extraordinary value to Canadian history", was phased out.
  Changes were not limited to new designations, as the interpretation of many existing National Historic Sites did not remain static and evolved over time.  For example, the commemoration of National Historic Sites on the Prairies related to the Red River Rebellion and the North-West Rebellion has gone through at least three phases to date.  In the 1920s, plaques erected at these sites trumpeted the expansion of Canada and western civilization across North America.  Due to local pressures, changes at the HSMBC and evolving historiography, texts introduced in the 1950s avoided the previous triumphalist version of events, but also avoided any analysis of the causes or consequences of the events.  Commencing in the 1970s, a changing approach to heritage conservation at Parks Canada, coupled with growing regionalism and a more assertive Aboriginal rights movement, led to the next generation of in
caption: The historic district of Westmount, Quebec was designated in 2011 in recognition of the efforts of local citizens who had worked for decades to protect the district's historic built environment.[29][30]
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