The summer break presents an opportunity for students to gain vital hands-on experience applying the skills they learned in the classroom in interesting ways and make informed decisions about their futures. We reached out to community members to find out how they’re spending the summer including Logan Warner who leveraged his experience as a Residence Don at St. Michael’s into his dream position —working at the Ontario Heritage Trust as an Architectural Conservation Assistant.
Logan Warner’s summer position as an Architectural Conservation Assistant with the Ontario Heritage Trust combines his appreciation for the province’s heritage sites, education background in archeology studies, and his collections management skills.
He is involved in the Trust’s Cultural Heritage Easements program and travels around the province visiting its heritage properties to document their conditions—a dream come true for the anthropology student.
He meets with the owners to hear about their conservation concerns, takes photos, and documents what he sees. After each site visit, he files a report that includes recommendations on how to continue to conserve the heritage elements of the property. His reports are detailed and methodical and can include details as minute as the paint is flaking in this area.
“But all these details are compounded, and I feel they can have a small, but meaningful, impact on the way people relate to and interact with these important pieces of our province’s history,” he says.
He came to work at the Trust with a background in collections management. He spent his previous summers in progressive roles at the Markham Museum, effectively managing its artifact and archival collections. He had also worked in the ROM’s curatorial department where he catalogued Indigenous artifacts from a Wendat site in Vaughan.
“These experiences prepared me for my role at the Trust because even through I’m not working with artifacts, I’m still working in conservation and cataloging, but on an even bigger scale as I’m applying these skills to buildings and properties,” he says.
Logan earned a Bachelor of Arts in archaeology from Trent University and is working towards his Master of Arts in anthropology from the University of Toronto. He is living in St. Michael’s Historic Houses 6 and 8 where he had served as a Residence Don the previous term.
“It’s sort of a funny that after thinking about heritage houses and places all day, I then go home to a stunning heritage house that I have the privilege to live in at St. Mike’s,” he says.
The soft skills he developed as a Don have been an asset to his summer position as well. As a Don he was often asked by his fellow residents for guidance on how to navigate new and unfamiliar situations, requiring sophisticated interpersonal skills.
“I am often finding myself in different situations and working with so many different people where you need to think on your feet and this was similar to my experience as a Don at St. Mike’s,” he says.
“There are some cases where heritage owners can be really friendly and it reminds me of chatting with other students at Tea Tuesday,” he continues.
In the fall he will complete the research component of his master’s degree on how the landscape of Toronto’s Bloor-Danforth subway was influenced by the cultural climate in which it was built.
“I have a very niche interest in heritage, and I like looking at the world around me through that lens. I see riding the subway as a deeply cultural experience. The Bloor-Danforth subway is an interesting example of post-war era architecture, and we can see how ideas of urbanism and modernism played out in its design,” he says.
As part of his research, he will visit different subway stations to do assessments of their heritage features to find out how the stations were built and how people have interacted with the architecture.
“It’s an opportunity to connect with transit not just as a means of transportation, but through its history,” he says.