A prominent Kingstonian has passed away. George Muirhead died late last week at the age of 101.
Muirhead was the Limestone City’s first professional city planner and was also the co-founder of the Frontenac Heritage Foundation.
David Gordon, the director of Queen’s University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, says Muirhead definitely left his mark.
“George Muirhead was Kingston’s first professional urban planner from the 1950s to the 1980s. Just about everything we like about Kingston today was touched by him during that period.”
Gordon says when Muirhead came to town, Kingston was a declining industrial city that saw factories on the waterfront, the railway yard in front of city hall and a parking lot behind city hall. Muirhead helped all of that change. City curator Paul Robertson says the longtime planner was truly a visionary.
“He worked with others, certainly the beginnings of the Frontenac Heritage Foundation to look at the historic assets that this community has and to see how best can we preserve them, how can we celebrate them but in the context in a wider viable community.”
George Muirhead was awarded Canada’s premier honour for an individual in the heritage field back in 2005. He died on Jan. 11.
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