This webpage is in preparation as of August 2019. The plan is to recognize here by name the main residents, city officials, and others who have battled commercial interests at least since the 1960s, in order to preserve heritage buiildings in this district, the community of people who reside in them, and the visitors who enjoy holidays in those homes run as bed and breakfasts.

Whatever shape the webpage eventually takes, it is sure to include the names of Kenneth and Jean Murphy. Shown above is the house at 5401 River Road that was their home for about 30 years. They raised their seven children in this house.

Throughout their residency, Ken was among the fiercest defenders of the River Road Heritage Neighbourhood against commercial intrusions. In the 1980s, he publicly opposed a motel proposed for the John-Philip block along River Road. In 2006, he did the same for the 29-storey high-rise proposed for the same site. In 2001, he even objected to the enlargement of the heritage home at the corner of Eastwood and River Road into an 8-room bed and breakfast, arguing that this would be the thin edge of the wedge of commercialization.

Old and in failing health, Ken and Jean Murphy moved to a retirement residence in Chippawa in 2011. Ken died in 2016, at the age of 83. Jean died in 2018, at the age of 79.

In an ironic twist of fate, their home was bought by absentee entrepreneurs who tried to turn it into a short-term vacation rental property. Neighbours strongly objected, and the property was then sold to John Pinter, who has illegally incorporated this home, zoned residential, into his commercial enterprise, Niagara Grandview Manor. Ken and Jean Murphy's former home is now called Niagara Gorgeview Inn. Nobody lives there. It is part of a multi-building motel. Ken Murphy was right back in 2001: the first enlargement of a nearby heritage home was indeed the thin edge of the wedge. The wedge has now been driven in further, widened to the point of taking his own home.

More to come.
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