Peter van Nostrand was a key player in the work of the Aurora Historical Society through five decades as we worked to preserve Hillary House and open it to the public as a museum.
Peter’s parents were Dr. Fred van Nostrand and Dorothy Hillary van Nostrand. He was a grandson of Dr. Robert Michael Hillary and great-grandson of Dr. Robert William Hillary who, in 1876, purchased the house on Yonge Street which his family affectionately would call “The Manor.” Not only had his grandfather and great-grandfather owned the house and lived there, but they also practiced medicine there, using the two front rooms as a consulting room and dispensary. They left behind a wealth of medical instruments, books and papers. It was only natural, then, that Peter would take particular interest in this property and recognize the importance of its collections to the history of medical practice.
I first met Peter in the early 1970s. This was a time when major changes were coming to Aurora. Yonge Street was widened to four lanes in 1969 and a concrete wall topped by a pipe railing had been erected in front of Hillary House. The large house immediately to the north was torn down to make way for a possible hotel development. At the same time, it looked as if there would be no Hillary descendant who would want to live at “The Manor” in future.
Already the house had been featured in Mary Jukes’s book, New Life in Old Houses, and had attracted interest from the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario. Peter and his wife Janet knew restoration architect and Conservancy leader, Napier Simpson, who was assisting them with the restoration of their farmhouse in Vandorf. With Napier Simpson on board and with the cooperation of a local group called the Concerned Citizens of Aurora, co-founded by the AHS's first president, Dr. Leslie Oliver, they brought Hillary House to the attention of the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Data assembled through the Canadian Inventory of Historic Building was used to establish that Hillary House was among the finest, if not the finest, intact example of domestic Gothic Revival architecture in Canada. In the early fall of 1975, with help from the Town of Aurora, the concrete wall was removed and a National Historic Site plaque set into a reproduction of the house’s original front fence.
That was a major achievement, but Peter and the Hillary family knew that the future of the property was still very uncertain. While the house in many ways was remarkably well preserved, serious structural problems were very much in evidence. The elaborate plaster ceiling in the “ballroom” had fallen, and the south foundation wall was in poor condition. At the time, Peter’s Aunt Nora lived in the front part of the house and rented a separate apartment to a friend at the back. Peter and his family approached both Parks Canada and the Ontario Heritage Foundation (now the Ontario Heritage Trust) with a very generous offer, hoping that one or the other would take ownership of Hillary House for a small fraction of the property’s market value on burgeoning Yonge Street. After nearly five years of trying, hope faded; although federal and provincial agencies did promise to assist with restoration costs.
I vividly remember a phone call from Nora, asking me to come to a family meeting in the spring of 1980. In attendance were Nora, her sister Dorothy (Peter’s mother), and her brother Holly and his wife Mary. Peter took the lead and told me (as I was then Chair of the Historical Society’s Museum Committee) that he and his family had done all they could and that they would have to put the house up for sale. I took a deep breath and asked if they would give the Historical Society the chance to take it on. We would need to commit to raise money for a feasibility study (about $10,000) and then the $50,000 purchase price for the house and land, plus untold restoration costs in future. We were given a year to see what we could do.
This couldn’t have come at a more challenging time for the Historical Society. We had just finished an exhausting five-year campaign to save the Church Street School from demolition and were raising money to establish the Aurora Museum on the second floor. Those were huge projects in themselves. How we managed to become the owners of Hillary House AND open the Aurora Museum at Church Street School in little more than a year is part of a long story in itself. Suffice it to say here that, had it not been for Peter’s and his extended family’s personal commitment and their initial work with the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board, Hillary House would probably not be with us today.
Over the years, Peter and his late wife Janet continued their interest and support. Janet, with her extensive knowledge of herbs and flowers, took particular interest in the gardens and grounds. The Aurora Historical Society will be forever grateful to them and to the many others who played a pivotal role in preserving Hillary House over the decades.
Dr. John McIntyre,
Former President and Chair of the Museum Committee,
Aurora Historical Society
