FERGUS – Driven by a passion for history, part-time Fergus resident Paul Federico has been awarded the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers for his extensive preservation work.
Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, presented Federico with the medal at his Fergus residence on Feb. 28.
The medal honours volunteers who have made a significant and continual contribution to their community.
“It’s been very interesting over the years,” Federico said of his work. “Once you get involved in something, it just sort of mushrooms into all kinds of related associations and things.”
Federico, now 72, said he’s always had an interest in history.
“My wife likes fiction, but I like facts,” he explained. “So I’m always reading biographies and histories about famous people and stories about events and why this happened, and not that the what ifs and so on.”
Originally from Parry Sound, Federico said he and his wife have been coming to Fergus for nearly 30 years.
“This is going to be our retirement home, if I ever retire,” he said. The couple now split their time between the Fergus home and a condo in Brampton.
Driven by his fascination, Federico said he began to get involved in different committees and associations early on.
Over time, his contributions evolved into more formal roles. It was after meeting a fellow advocate for heritage preservation, that Federico said he began to get more involved.
“She said, ‘you’ve got to be more involved, we need the young people’ – I was young then,” he said with a laugh.
“And so she got me into working on projects and restoration work and saving buildings and neighbourhoods and walkways.”
Following the second amalgamation of Toronto in 1998, the Toronto Historical Association was formed.
He started out there as the association’s treasurer. He has since assumed the role as president of the association.
“Over the 25 to 35 years or so, we’ve been building groups and consensus and working to save heritage and historical structures and rivers and ravines and Indigenous sites, and so on,” Federico explained.
“So that’s been really rewarding.”
He also currently serves as the chair of the Costume Society of Ontario, the director of the Toronto Military History Foundation and he sits on the board of the Lorne Scots Regimental Museum.
“Once you get suckered into one thing, you get stuck on all kinds of stuff,” he explained. “You just keep getting tossed more and more stuff to do and for some reason, I have a defect in my genes – I can’t say no.
“Because I’d rather do something rather than see it get lost,” he said.
Federico said if he can do something to save history, or to preserve it so that younger generations can learn from it, that’s his goal.
“We don’t have to just keep making the same mistakes,” he explained. “And new doesn’t necessarily mean better.”
Over the years, Federico said he’s had some great experiences doing what he loves.
“[I’ve] just met some wonderful people and [been] involved in some fantastic projects that have, I hope, enhanced the quality of life for everybody around.
“You don’t miss it until it’s gone,” he likes to remind people.
Federico said he gets calls and emails all the time from people asking if they can save something or telling him he should be doing something.
“Like I could solve it,” he said with a laugh. “But if I can connect people together and come up with the solution that may not make everybody happy, but satisfied at least, then it’s good.”
“It’s nice,” Federico said of receiving the volunteer’s medal.
“I didn’t get into anything expecting anything – [an] occasional pat on the back or maybe a free coffee or something. But to be recognized nationally as having done something worthwhile, that’s a real privilege to be told that what you’re doing is helping.”
The medal covers 35 years of work, Federico explained, but he’s sure he did more.
“[It] feels like a lifetime and sometimes I think has it been that long already?” he said, laughing.
Federico said he’s always been involved in history in one form or another.
“It just sort of evolved into something that’s not always paid well, but kept me feeling good and thinking,” he said.
“It’s like weaving a blanket,” he said. “All the individual threads have a story to tell, and they enrich the blanket when it’s ready to be used, because they all have an important component.”
It’s learning about the stories behind things that interests Federico so much. And that’s what he’s continuing to do in his commitment to service – to save things and make them better for people.
“I worry that we lose too much,” he explained. “And when you start losing things, and everything becomes the same and bland, people just lose focus or purpose.
“There’s a connection to history,” he said. “The more we connect to what happened in the past, the people today can look back” and see what worked and what didn’t.
But we don’t do it enough, he said, stressing people need to know their history.
“You need to know what happened before in hopes of making it either better or not compounding the mistakes of the past,” he said.
