Indiana Jones notwithstanding, archaeologists aren’t exactly marquee names, so on the morning of February 20, Ron Williamson was surprised to feel like a celeb­rity. “My phone was ringing off the hook,” he says, recounting the hours following the monumental Queen West fire. When word spread that the blaze had occurred on the site of a 19th-century British army barracks, Williamson became the go-to historical authority for local media outlets. The almost instant demolition of a full city block had turned our collective consciousness toward an often ignored subject: heritage.

Williamson is currently directing the city’s archaeological master plan (a map to help developers gauge early on whether a site has history hidden beneath it). Today he is among a relatively small group of drum beaters rallying for a place (any place!) in which to house and display artifacts from Toronto’s largely unknown history. Not an easily achieved goal in a province where funding consistently goes toward progress over preservation. “The rest of the world thinks, How do we incorporate our story into progress?” says Williamson, and notes that in Toronto, “we’ve been playing catch-up with that for many years.”

Early this summer, city council took a promising step, approving the continued development of the Toronto Museum Project. If all goes according to plan, the new facility will be located at the foot of Bathurst Street at the Canada Malting Silos, as part of the waterfront redevelopment initiative. David Miller is enthusiastic about the proposed museum, slated to open in 2015. “It will tell the story of our people,” he says. “First Nations, Europeans, Asians, Africans and many others coming together in a new land.” Williamson remains cautiously optimistic.

As founder and president of Archaeological Services Inc., Toronto’s most high-profile archaeological firm, and editor of the recently published compilation Toronto: A Short Illustrated History of Its First 12,000 Years, Williamson, who graduated from McGill with a PhD in anthropology, has earned the right to his opinion. Although not directly involved in the museum project as of yet, he believes it should emphasize the city’s unbroken connection with its past. He’s interested in how the natives and the Europeans used Toronto’s geography in the same way. “It’s not two different cities,” he says. Yonge Street is but a “colonial incarnation” of an ancient trail.

For Williamson, the waterfront development boom has been good for business. Thanks to planning laws, sites of archaeological interest have to be examined and, if merited, given the full brush treatment before construction begins. “We know a lot more about the archaeology of Toronto than we did 15 years ago,” he says.