The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 17

11,1. .11... SECTION PAGES C1-C12 CLASSIFEDC4 One man's fight Walking the creaky floors of death row "inn rti J(gj Lq)MDU(oJDDtQ DAN TURNER Qff 111 I'IiIt: CLOSER TO HOME By Charles Rusnell Citizen staff writer espite the title, The Vampires of Ottawa is not a book about fed- II 1 emolition is brief and easy. Preservation of houses or neighborhoods usually takes years of effort and dedication. It takes people like 39-year-old Richard reral politics.

Well, there is one section rirYvv fvc I 1 I r- l. s. i 111 I i5 I i 1 v'v fa A "-yV I Vi i if Gervais. He is among a small group of Ottawans that has diligently and persistently worked to save and restore old buildings. Like most preservationists, he's just an ordinary citizen armed with nothing more than determination.

For two weeks in early 1983, Gervais stalked the corner of Laurier and King Edward avenues seeking signatures. His objective was to save the Panet House from demolition. It was to be knocked down and a firehall built in its place. Gervais, who lived next door to Panet House, wanted the three-storey house restored to its original grandeur. It was built in the 1890s for Lt.

Col. C. Eugene Panet, then deputy minister of defence. "He stood out on that corner for a couple of weeks and gathered more than 2,000 signatures on a petition," said Judy Deegan, a member of Heritage Ottawa and the community association Action Sandy Hill. "He almost single-handedly saved that building." Gervais was largely responsible for convincing the city to sell the property to Andrex Holdings Ltd.

who promised to preserve and renovate the building rather than to the highest bidder. Andrex spent more than $1 million to restore and renovate the turn-of-the-century stone building. The building has been sold for about $1.5 million to a group of four national arts service organizations for their headquarters. They are to move in next month. Gervais, past president of Action Sandy Hill community association, also played a key role in saving another heritage building on the same block.

The building, located at the corner of King Edward and Wilbrod avenues, is now being renovated and converted into condominiums. Gervais traces his commitment to heritage preservation to his childhood. "I was raised on armed forces bases across Canada. If you have ever been on an armed forces base you'll know the buildings look very similar, very bland and very modern." "As a kid, when we visited Quebec City or Trois Rivieres, I was really struck by the richness of design. I realized there was only a limited number of those buildings and there would be less as the years went by so I grew to appreciate them." A Public Service Commission recruitment officer, Gervais lives in Martin Terrace, a beautifully restored 19th-century rowhouse that occupies the centre of the block between the two buildings he helped save.

"You have various people, like the Richard Gervais of this world, who feel they have to contribute something to the community that will have a lasting effect," said Marc Denhez, an Ottawa lawyer and former president of Heritage Ottawa. "These people want to create good neighborhood esthetics because it contributes to the ambience, to the character of the whole community." Ottawans awakened to the cause of historical conservation in 1972, when the Grey Nuns sold the Rideau Street Convent to a developer. Although the convent's chapel was declared a site of national architectural importance, it took a determined campaign by conservationists to have it rescued, stored and finally reassembled in the new National Gallery. The building's exterior however, was demolished for a parking lot. Veronica Vaillancourt, chairman of the city's Lo- Bruno Schlumberger, Citizen Then, now: Panet House before restoration, top, and today with Richard Gervais where kids visit Parliament.

And one kid does say: "Here comes the Prime Minister! Look at that tan." The author is using Brian Mulroney to prepare young readers for terror. He knows the prime minister is at his scariest when he's sporting a tan. It often means he's been South again, bargaining for pottage. But The Vampires of Ottawa is not about prime ministers with powerful jaws. It is about vampires with long teeth, and the Globe and Mail says it stands accused of terrifying our youth.

Never mind that the only blood here surfaces when the heroine scratches her hand. Never mind that most of the book is taken up with describing the Motilities' musical ride, eating beaver tails in the Byward Market, and visiting the Mint: "The racket was tremendous as huge presses punched out blank coins before sending them to other machines for stamping out the designs." Oh, at one point the book does deal with some fake vampires in a delicious-ly hair-raising way, but it takes only seconds for virtue to triumph. Yet the Globe has seen fit to describe Vampires as "the story of a Manitoba girl who goes on a ghoulish tour of Ottawa." The book has become controversial because parents in Thorndale, in southern Ontario, objected that it frightened their children. It was read aloud to them by their Grade 4 teacher. Even the author, Eric Wilson, admits this may not be perfectly smart.

Wilson, 48, was born in Ottawa and now lives in Victoria. He is a sensitive man, as reflected in the dedication in The Vampires of Ottawa: "Remembering our cat Stripe He was a good friend." Wilson suggests that teachers wait until Grade 6 to read Vampires aloud. He finds parents' concerns commendable, but doesn't like being depicted as a monstrous kind of writer, who might have owned a cat named Stripe whose hobby was ripping people's throats out. The controversial passage in the book describes how a rascally girl at the Ottawa Youth Hostel, which now occupies the old Nicholas Street Jail, tried to spook her friend from Manitoba by describing how executions once took place there: "Slowly," she pronounces, "the executioner reaches his foot forward, then pushes down hard on (that) pedal. With a terrible screech that can be heard by every prisoner on death row, the medal doors fall open.

An agonizing cry as the prisoner drops, and then silence." Well, that isn't for every nine-year-old, any more than The Wizard of Oz is for every nine-year-old, or any more than a trip to the Tower of London is, for that matter. But if you're, say, between 11 and 95, Wilson recommends you drop in (hee hee) on the "Old Gaol" for more legitimate spine-tingling that you'll get from gruesome videos like The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre or Friday the Thirteenth, and he's right. Liz Gontard, 19, who gets the willies herself sometimes, took me on my tour. I walked the creaky floors of death row. I stood in the tiny cell in which Patrick Whelan languished before he was hanged for the murder of D'Arcy McGee.

I pondered the original hangman's noose that was thrown open to the picnickers who would gather on the other side of the street, and viewed the tiny basement cells where we'd shackle the criminally insane spread-eagled on the cold, cold, floor. I saw the debtor's prison, now the hostel's dining room. Going there is indeed a nightmare, but worth more than a visit to Parliament Every day the headlines remind us we live in an inhuman society. But if you think we're not making progress, skip the movies and take a look. Maybe not Grade 4.

But as soon as they hit Grade 6, your kids should know who we were. ment building in 1915. The city expropriated the building when councillors thought the site would be needed for the proposed King Edward Freeway from the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge to the Queens-way. The freeway plan was abandoned in the mid-1970s, but the city kept the building because it was the proposed site for the Sandy Hill fire station. Community pressure resulted in the station eventually being built across the street.

Gervais now volunteers to conduct walking tours of heritage buildings in Sandy Hill. He's also taken it upon himself to beautify his block by planting and maintaining graceful gardens in front of the Martin Terrace rowhouses, charging owners for the cost of bulbs. Although reluctant to talk about his achievements, Gervais is clearly proud of his section of King Edward Avenue. "The block is intact," he said. "The buildings that were here in 1900 are still here.

This may not be the most beautiful heritage block in the city but it's the most visible today and 25 to 50 years from now it will still be the most visible. That's important to me." cal Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee says heritage preservationists have made a difference. "You can be sure that unless communities are out there working very hard and very diligently to save buildings they will not be saved," she said. In recent years, conservationists have saved the Daly building at Rideau Street and Sussex Drive, the Bell Block on Confederation Square and are still working to save the Cattle Castle at Lans-downe Park. In Sandy Hill, a community known for its heritage buildings, Gervais is an effective conservationist.

"He is incredibly important," said Vaillancourt. "He is energetic, he's very generous with his time and is very knowledgeable about what he is doing so that he never takes extreme positions." Aid. Nancy Smith, who represents Sandy Hill, worked with Gervais to save the Panet House. "It was critical not to lose the Panet House and his pigheadedness about the whole thing really made it impossible for the city to ignore it," Smith said. Panet House was converted into a 12-unit apart dedication: Supporting families of Alzheimer's victims in 1 By Allyson Latta Citizen staff writer It localSI HERO For 18 years, Madeleine Honey-man coped with the trauma of her husband Ken's deterioration from what doctors believed was Alzheimer's Disease.

For the past eight years, she has worked to ensure relatives of Alzheimer's sufferers have support in dealing with the incurable regressive organic brain disorder that re "Doctors weren't interested in talking to you once they'd identified it, because they felt so helpless. There was nothing they could do," explains Honeyman, 76. "I'd wake at night with cold sweats, and think what can I do to change this?" In 1980, Honeyman finally made contact with several Ottawa families who shared her plight. She organized the first local meeting on Alzheimer's. More than 220 people crammed a hall that seated 75.

Honeyman vowed not to let anyone else go through the isolation she had experienced. "We worked out of my upstairs bedroom saw everybody we could see, went to their homes, went to funerals. Showed them that we cared," she says of the society that began with five volunteers and today has 200. Incorporated in 1982, the 600-member organization offers support to families of those affected by Alzheimer's an estimated 5,000 in the region. It also plays a role in advocacy and public education.

It is most visible during January, which is Alzheimer's Awareness Month. Though she retired as Ottawa society president last March, Honeyman still works at the head office two to three days a week, writes for the newletter and keeps up on the latest developments in research. And she cares for her 84-year-old sister, who has been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's. Honeyman says what "energizes" her are regular speaking engagements across Canada. "I love to speak, I love to write.

That really raises my spirits, gives me happiness." sults in memory loss, impaired language and judgment. Last year, the Ontario government rewarded Honey-man's dedication and her role in founding the Alzheimer's Society of Ottawa-Carleton with an Ontario Citizenship Medal. Ironically, when Ken died in November 1987, bis autopsy revealed that he didn't have Alzheimer's after all, but another form of dementia. That didn't change his wife's commitment to families dealing with the disease because she "lived Alzheimer's all those years." "She recognized some of my needs as a caregiver," says writer Margo Royce-Deriger, whose mother suffers from the disease. "I think that's one of Madeleine's talents, is to recognize not only problems but solutions." Honeyman recalls the feeling of isolation and helplessness she felt when doctors diagnosed her husband as having Alzheimer's in 1970.

John Major, Citizen Madeleine Honeyman with photo of husband.