A vision for Toronto’s decayed Canadian Malting silos becomes reality

Open this photo in gallery:

If there is a curve, a hard ridge, a window, or a vent on the old Canada Malting silos, it needs to be there. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, superfluous.

A grain silo is the epitome of form following function, which is why German architect Walter Gropius published photographs of Buffalo silos six years before founding the famous Bauhaus school, and the Swiss-French legend, Le Corbusier, included them in his influential publication Vers Une Architecture in 1923.

Which might also be why, when Canada Malting announced in 1987 that it would be vacating its hulking 1928-29 (south) and 1944 (north) silos at the foot of Bathurst Street (designed by the Chicago-based John S. Metcalfe Company) most of the voices calling to save them were those of Toronto’s architects. Others, such as then-alderman Tony O’Donahue, told the Toronto Star that “explosives are the answer.”

But some funny – and wonderful – things happened over the next 20 years.

In the mid-1990s, Robert Kearns, an Irish immigrant like Mr. O’Donahue, was moved after seeing seven sculptures showing “the face of famine” by Rowan Gillespie installed at the edge of the River Liffey in Dublin. “They depict departure,” says Mr. Kearns, a partner in Kearns Edgewater Financial Services, “and so I said ‘I’m going to create a waterfront location [in Toronto] depicting arrival – the link between the two is water.’” Arrival is an understatement: Toronto, with a population of about 20,000 during the Irish Famine’s peak year of 1847, saw approximately 38,500 Irish Famine refugees come to the city.

But Mr. Kearns needed a site, ideally close to Ree’s Wharf (near Simcoe Street) where the refugees landed. The Canada Malting complex, on a piece of prime waterfront, was back in the spotlight as home to “Metronome,” a flashy (and expensive) proposal to build a museum honouring Canadian music, along with offices and meeting spaces, on top of, and around, the silos.

Open this photo in gallery:

But the Metronome people wouldn’t meet with Mr. Kearns. So, he went to then-councillor Olivia Chow, who “got lit up by the story” and, by 2000, had “tabled a motion carving off the south-east corner of Bathurst Quay.”

Designed by Mr. Kearns architect-brother, Jonathan Kearns, Ireland Park opened to great fanfare in 2007. Featuring limestone from the Feeley family (Kilkenny blue) and new sculptures by Mr. Gillespie, who came to Toronto in 2000 and watched the sunrise from the site, its newness stood in stark contrast to the silos, which were then in decay.

A dozen years later, however, all of that changed when the city unveiled plans for Bathurst Quay Common: a new water’s edge promenade landscaped by PFS Studio; the silos restored by ERA Architects, Brook Restoration and Moon-Matz Engineers; and a heretofore unnoticed Bauhaus-style office building to the west was leased to the Ireland Canada Foundation for a multipurpose arts centre called the Corleck.

That building, says Mr. Kearns, had been used by the city’s forestry department, but it was so covered in ivy and its yellow bricks were so filthy, it wasn’t on the average person’s radar despite its location beside Billy Bishop Airport’s passenger pickup area at the foot of Eireann Quay. But it was on his: “I had no sooner signed the 20-year lease with Olivia that I said, ‘I want that building.’ That’s where the [Canada Malting workers] would go on Friday to get their pay packets, so we’ve got two old safes in the building.”

Open this photo in gallery:

The Canada Malting plant office was designed in 1946 by Brantford, Ont.-born Frances Hilton Wilkes (1891-1983), who worked, briefly, in the New York office of McKim, Mead & White, and helped introduce “a modernist vernacular into residential architecture in Ontario in the 1930s,” according to the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada. In 1957 a wing was added (not by Mr. Wilkes) with the same buff brick also found in the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant and Maple Leaf Gardens.

On a recent walkabout with Jonathan Kearns, Canada Ireland Foundation vice-chair Eileen Costello, CIF executive director William Peat, PFS Studio’s Vinh Van and Kearns Mancini senior architect (heritage) Dan McNeil, it’s clear the incredible co-ordination (much by City of Toronto project director Bryan Bowen), intensive restoration work, and overarching vision has paid off handsomely. Not only are the silos shining, the Corleck, which will open to the public in less than a year, is one of the most beautiful early-modernist buildings in the city, with its prominent T-shaped window and curved entrance wall.

The Corleck also has one of the most beautiful backyards in the city. With sunlight glinting off the water and the whoosh of airplanes filling our ears, Mr. Peat talked about programming. Four months of the year will be Irish-related arts events, the rest a mixed bag. “We could use this for a wedding venue in summertime, and then converting over [in fall]; we already have great partnerships with the Luminato Festival … with Young People’s Theatre, with Toronto International Festival of Authors, with Mercer Union [artist-run centre], [and] with the Museum of Toronto.”

But what about the silos? Leased to OCAD University for its Global Centre for Climate Action, the complex will “facilitate critical dialogues and presentations on climate resilience” via art (as explained in a 2022 letter to the city). OCAD is also planning on using the taller silos as a canvas for projections.

While our walk-through last week revealed only puddles, graffiti and poor lighting, animating the silos and getting people inside them is the only way the average, non-Le Corbusian will fall in love with them too. Maybe install a glass elevator inside one – with illuminated walls and a quick audio interpretation explaining the building’s former function – to a rooftop restaurant, and the rest, as they say, will be history.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of project director Bryan Bowen's surname.