Bye-bye, big smoke
Erected in 1903, the brick smokestack towered over Lansdowne Ave. until recently. Photo by Tanja Tiziana
Dupont is probably not the first street in Toronto where people dream of buying a home. Cars rather than people thrive there, and the street has a broken and hard feel to it, like the callused knuckles of a fist. An accidental ode to generations past, it cuts through the city like an industrial scar, coming to a kind of exclamation point at Lansdowne Ave., where the Canada Foundry smokestack stood as a totem to big-city industry.
Once one of the tallest structures in Canada, the smokestack rose more than 200 feet. It served the interests of the Canada Foundry Co., an enterprise that made the blunt instruments of an emerging nation — railway tracks, bridge parts, staircases and such. It’s probably not overly dramatic to recognize that this foundry was emblematic of movement and progress, and the smokestack, always billowing, was not merely a symbol but the functioning instrument of industry.
Suggesting a limitless future, it seemed a permanent expression of optimism and confidence that towered above the still-developing metropolis like a parent over a child. It was reassuring, suggesting that we were always moving forward and that there was no problem that couldn’t be solved — we’d just keep shovelling stuff into the furnace, and from that we would sculpt our universe.
Well, the foundry smokestack is no more.
In spite of a heritage designation and protests within the community that its demolition would release dangerous toxins into the environment, the smokestack built in 1903 was torn down earlier this summer.
The former industrial site is gradually being transformed into a residential development. Rows of townhouses have been built nearby and a locomotive factory has been converted to condominium lofts.
Maintaining the iconic brick smokestack would have been expensive; as well, a special road would have had to have been built around it, cutting into planned parkland, and so the past came down.
There was an inescapable melancholy in watching the destruction of the smokestack. Cranes and dumpsters dominated the abandoned and decaying structures that were scattered about fields of dirt and debris.
Hydro towers hummed ominously in the background and the only person around, apart from the crane operator, was a heavy foreman who sat in the shade at a makeshift table drinking from his Thermos.
On this hot summer day, only about 30 feet of the tower remained, with likely another 20 feet underground, and there was a palpable sense of loss in watching the prosaic work unfold.
The crane sprayed streams of water onto the tower as it pulled down the bricks, in an attempt to keep clouds of debris from forming. This seemed oddly considerate, as if an attempt to keep the smokestack cool beneath the sun, thus easing the passage of the massive structure as it fell into dust.
The enforced optimism of the residential development was on display on a billboard that had been erected on the site. Happily advertising the proposed city park that was to comprise a portion of the foundry property, an illustration depicted, against a backdrop of shiny townhomes, a man walking a dog and some kids playing on a jungle gym. An affordable suburban ideal right in the city! A paradise of sorts, at least for some.
It’s a façade, of course, meant to conjure the spirit of the meat-and-potatoes foundry district without actually generating any meat and potatoes.
They’re removing everything that authentically characterized that area, content to reflect back into the community a visual echo of the past. The heavy industry that built the city now gives way, crumbling into a bulldozing present where real estate is king.
Toronto, the Big Smoke, is no more.
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