A modernist house she built in the hills above Guelph occupies the book’s front cover. But unlike most of her predecessors, she’s managed to make the actual design and creation of buildings the centre of her work life. She ran an antique shop in the 1960s and taught at the Ontario College of Art from the ’60s to the ’80s. She has never relied on anyone else to support her or funnel work to her, though she, too, has had to improvise. Many of the women who followed Hill were consigned to teaching or interior design positions if they married well, female graduates could use their training to design the family cottage, or, if they found someone congenial while studying at the faculty, they could marry him and work alongside him in the practice.īurt is among the first of those documented in For the Record to open the profession’s door herself, then walk through and keep on going unaided. Although she did cobble together some architectural or quasi-architectural work over time – adding to a motel or sitting on a town planning board – her career was far from brilliant. She made ends meet through the Great Depression by teaching weaving and glove-making.
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A new book, For the Record: the First Women in Canadian Architecture (Dundurn Press), documents the travails and triumphs of female graduates of U of T architecture from Hill’s era, the 1920s, to Burt’s, the 1950s, and demonstrates just how long it has taken women with the academic credentials to rise through the profession’s ranks.įanfare greeted Hill’s graduation as the first “girl architect” in Canadian history (that’s what the papers called her), but, unable to find architectural work after she completed the degree, she initially earned her living teaching in a rural school and advising Eaton’s clients how to decorate their homes. “There were six women when I started in the program, and I was the only one to finish,” she says matter-of-factly. Burt was the only woman to graduate from the University of Toronto’s architecture school in 1956, and just the 21st woman to make it through the program since the first one, Esther Marjorie Hill, did it in 1920. It’s the present and the future that I really care about.”īut the past has its uses, too, and the story of Burt’s progress in the architecture profession highlights both changing views about the preservation of historical buildings and the growing clout of women in a traditionally male-dominated field.
“You know, I’m not much of a one for trips down memory lane. “I’d never thought of doing anything about it,” she says over brunch, with one of the breezy laughs that frequently punctuate her conversation. It’s typical of Burt that she is not celebrating her half-century in the business. “I can’t tell what age Joan is,” says a client, for whom Burt is building a large estate home and guest house on the Niagara Escarpment. You’d think that she would be winding things down at this stage of her career, but the 77-year-old agrees to meet on a Sunday because the week is packed with deadline-driven, paying work.
In May, Burt marked 50 years of operating her own firm, Joan Burt Architects. But her impact on this city has been major. There are no bank towers with her name on them nor does she have any libraries or art galleries to her credit. She’s always operated on the fringes of the architecture profession. She’s probably the single greatest friend the Victorian row home has had in this city, saving many of them from demolition in the period when they were most threatened – the 1960s and 1970s – then renovating and modernizing them, making them better places to live. They say you can’t fight city hall, but Toronto architect Joan Burt has spent much of her career doing so – often successfully.
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