The Making of a Medley
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!
The Canada Malting facility at Harbourfront near the airport is captured beautifully by Torontoist Flickr pool member propamanda in the photo above. Taken at 8 am, the sun is just rising and its golden rays really allow this impressive structure to shine. More surprisingly, this photo was taken with a cameraphone, showing that talent really comes down to the photographer and not how much money you've spent on a snazzy camera. You really cannot buy photographic skill.
After looking at this pic, we spent a bit of time trying to figure out what the Canada Malting building is used for, and the answer? Nada. It's been lying derelict since the '80's. There have been various attempts to renovate the structure, turn it into a music museum, declare it as a heritage building or knock it down, but nothing has come of any of those plans.
The most thorough examination of the building and its history can be found the Infiltration web site of the late urban explorer Jeff Chapman (aka Ninjalicious).
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I've been top to bottom in the Malt Plant, as recently as a few weeks ago, and love the place.
Currently they are building a memorial to the irish famine in a little space to the south of the silos.
Isn't that the place someone (West8?) proposed as a funky water filtration plant?
It would be a shame to knock it down. Maybe they AGO or ROM could open a satellite museum or something.
To demolish it would be a tragic blow to the city's industrial history. It's also very difficult to demolish this kind of building (the concrete silos). The common suggestion for reuse would be for archives.