Derelict Delights is a weekly series where we look at abandoned buildings begging for revitalization. This week: an old factory that’s been empty for over 40 years could become a community centre for Sorauren Park residents—provided the elements don’t wear it down first.
Even on a dreary February morning, Sorauren Park is a busy place. Dogs play fetch with their owners in the enclosed dog park, there’s a doubles match going on at the tennis courts, a couple of moms and strollers amble next to the soccer field and baseball diamond. But overlooking the park is a massive, multi-storey, abandoned brick building, covered in graffiti and open to the elements.
“The windows are all smashed out, and they have been for I don’t know how long, so water is just flowing into the building whenever it rains,” says Gary Miedema, Chief Historian at Heritage Toronto. “You wonder, ‘How much longer can that thing survive?’”
The former Canada Linseed Oil Mills building has tremendous potential, says Miedema. For one thing, it’s located in the heart of a bustling, growing neighbourhood in need of community facilities. As well, the hundred-year-old property tells a story about Toronto’s industrial and manufacturing heritage.
The Canada Linseed Oil Mills were built around 1910 for the manufacturing of linseed oil, and it was one of many factories that sprung up along the rail line that cut through Toronto and facilitated easy access to southern Ontario. Most of the other industrial buildings of that era have been converted to condos or torn down, but the Canada Linseed Oil Mills building remains, sitting abandoned ever since the factory ceased operations 1969. The City of Toronto bought the property in 2000 and decontaminated the site in 2004.
“The really interesting thing about that building is the community activism that has really pushed for something to be done to that site,” says Miedema. The non-profit Wabash Building Society was formed in 2006 with the long-term goal of transforming the Canada Linseed site into a community centre. There’s even a comprehensive 2009 report outlining how the 1910 building could be developed into a modernized, LEED-certified structure. It’s a proposal the City of Toronto endorses, says Miedema.
“It’s sits on a list of projects that the city is looking to at some point to complete, and has since prior to amalgamation,” he says. “The question is when will that happen, so the community has worked very hard with local councillors to chip away at it.”
Through the efforts of the Wabash Building Society, a small administrative building on the western-most part of the site was converted into the Sorauren Park Fieldhouse, a rentable community space. Now they’re trying, through fundraising, to turn the empty lot next to that building into a town square. But the hulking Canada Linseed Oil Mills building seems to be the holy grail of the proposed development.
“I think at this point, it really depends on funding and priorities for the city,” says Meidema.
Because the building is constructed of reinforced concrete, it’s had the good bones to withstand over 40 years of neglect. Even so, says Meidema, no building can sit indefinitely in the elements.
“We know from the silos down at the foot of Bathurst that concrete, when it’s exposed, does need to be repaired,” he says. “So the longer it sits empty and wide open to the elements, it does sit at risk.”
