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news

Spotted: Taking Down the Toronto Sun Mural

By Hamutal Dotan

20110606spotted1.jpg

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Top photo courtesy of wikiTO; bottom photo by Jason Kucherawy.


SPOTTED BY: Jason Kucherawy
WHERE: The Front Street side of the Toronto Sun building at 333 King Street East.
WHEN: Saturday June 4, in the late afternoon; photo taken the following day.
WHAT: To mark Toronto’s bicentennial in 1993, the Toronto Sun had commissioned a large mural for the side of its building. Created by local artist John Hood (with the assistance of his sister Alexandra) and called “History as Theatre, 200 Toronto Years,” the mural consists of 32 vignettes about the city, ranging from First Nations inhabitants to the official naming of the city of York and right through to the streetcar, which are familiar to us today. For nearly 20 years it has been a local landmark.
No longer. The Toronto Sun building was purchased by the FirstGulf Development Corporation in 2011, and apparently its new owners decided the mural had to go—or at least part thereof. First brought to our attention by reader and tour guide Jason Kucherawy, at least a large swath of the mural at the eastern end of the building has been dismantled over the past few days. “One of my fellow tour guides walked by [Saturday] night to see them tearing apart Mary Pickford’s face,” Kucherawy wrote us sadly.

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Comments

  • http://twitter.com/WanderingPeng1 Steve Craig

    If you want to voice your opinion, you can do it here - http://www.firstgulf.com/conta…

  • http://twitter.com/gilmourtaylor Geoff Gilmour-Taylor

    Looks like they're just tearing down the wall, which just happens to have a mural on it. It's too bad, it was a beautiful mural, in an unexpected place.

    (Insert snarky comment about graffiti removal here.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=590175336 Gregory Hughes

    yeah, thats extreme graffiti removal, tear the whole wall down.  :)

  • tyrannosaurus_rek

    It looks like it's being removed in sections, which suggests it's possible they intend to reconstruct it. But if that were true, I would've expected them to say so before demo began.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bryan-Cook/507835870 Bryan Cook

    My hope is that they are keeping it even if it is in pices. It will just be the ultimate jigsaw puzzle. “I found Gearge Brown's Knee, has anyone seen his thigh?”

  • sonjaruth

    the job of the corporate sector is to be ahistorical, i.e. 'natural' just like governance by 'phone calls to my office'