Picton is home to one of Canada’s 78 recently recognized contributors to the success of the nation.

In his appointment to the Order of Canada, Tim Jones, CEO of Base31, receives recognition for a lifetime dedicated to arts and cultural development.

Mr. Jones has spent every phase of his career leveraging the power of culture to create positive and lasting change in one community after another.

From his earliest venture, as General Manager of Buddies in Bad Times, a theatre company in Toronto that helped to make Queer culture mainstream, to his role as CEO of Artscape, a non-profit designed to integrate housing for artists within inspired urban communities, Mr. Jones’s special brand of “creative placemaking” attends to what matters most in close-knit neighbourhoods: the people who live, work and move one another.

“My superpower, if I have one, is an aptitude for bringing people together,” he says, modestly.

Although this sounds as if he were merely good at organizing parties, Mr. Jones knows not just how to scale up — to thousands — but how to make the sense of an event a permanent part of the landscape.

Toronto’s Distillery District is surely one of his greatest successes. What was an abandoned industrial district in the 1990s is now a stunning arts marketplace, built into the antique brickworks of the old Gooderham and Worts distillery. An integrated collection of performance spaces, restaurants and cafes, art galleries, and markets, the district employs what Mr. Jones calls “the bandwagon effect”: his role in creating the Artscape Distillery Studios brought a sense of vibrancy and confidence that attracted investment and created engagement. The Distillery District is now home to thousands — condo buildings stretch high above its central hub — and is visited by many thousands more.

Pursuing conversations and collaborations with world and local leaders, Mr. Jones has travelled the globe, studying social enterprise in Africa and how to bring fresh water to communities in South America. “I learn as much as I contribute to these projects, I’m always listening.”

His believes the power of culture is always present; his role is to elicit its power, to stimulate its growth in just the right ways. He calls it “urban acupuncture,” a term borrowed from Jaime Lerner, the Brazilian mayor of Curitiba. Just as acupuncture finds the right spots for pressure, creative placemaking finds the right nodes to inspire an intentional flourishing.

As readers of the Gazette will know, Mr. Jones now lives in Picton, and is bringing his considerable energies to the former Camp Picton. He and his many partners, inspired by the history and sense of place at the former World War II military training camp, envision it as a “constellation of villages,” a wide open version of the Distillery District. This time, the imagination spreads out over 750 acres, rather than up 40 storeys. The sense of potential is breathtaking.

“The work in the County takes all of the life lessons as a practitioner of creative placemaking and brings them to bear on a canvas that is huge. It’s an extraordinary opportunity,” says Mr. Jones. “Culture and art are bringing people together around a shared purpose. This project is too big for any one group to take on. It’s going to require, really, an army of placemakers to make it happen.”

“There’s such a wealth of creativity and entrepreneurship in the County that it seemed like a perfect place to invite people to come and co-create.”

Creative development, over the long term, responds to changing needs and conditions. Affordable housing is an immediate need that is top of mind. A net-zero approach to energy consumption and production anticipates the future. Mr. Jones and his team are galvanized by the opportunity to build a sustainable and resilient community.

In the nearer future, Mr. Jones says that in 2024, Base31 will become a year-round destination. First up is bringing of water to the top of the mountain, a project already underway. He also promises “bigger and better” cultural events.

“Membership in the Order of Canada is an honour,” notes Mr. Jones. “It is also a responsibility. I’m thrilled to have that responsibility and I hope to do things well.”