AuDN4T

I’ve been thinking about how Toronto tends to demolish many historical buildings. One way to salvage them is to put facades into parks like a zoo or hang signage off of buildings. Or let buildings go into disrepair without proper engineering protocols until they collapse and nearly kill people. Is that how we pay tribute to history?

Europe tries its best to preserve its historical buildings. Even leave buildings ruined by fires and earthquakes as they are. Such as the Carmo Church turned museum. It’s an overly beautiful space with history. The countless castles in Ireland are epic and beautiful, even if they’re just ruins. They tell a story – of their past conquerors, years of decay. Even Ukraine to some extent tries to preserve buildings the best they can – Lviv’s High Castle is a ruin now but it is still there. Kyiv’s Golden Gates are preserved to the best of their ability. Old buildings continue to be maintained as much as possible. Kyiv ended up having to rebuild Khreshchatyk because the Soviets decided to destroy it, preventing the Nazis from occupying the city.

Seeing how Doug Ford’s government has decided to create a Machiavellian solution to the Ontario Science Centre – creating the roof maintenance issue, subsequently demolishing it, give the land to developer friends and build a new building for significantly more is abysmal. Not to forget other more pressuring issues that require that taxpayer money.

The history of the building – is this something we want to erase? The architect – Raymond Moriyama, a man who contributed to this country and endured so much due to WWII Canadian policies seeing Japanese-Canadians as enemy aliens. This is how we treat a home grown person’s work and art? How do policy makers, politicians and developers feel about erasing art all the while not contributing to anything meaningful or eye-pleasing?

Yes, we have beautiful mixture of old and new like Brookfield Place; but seeing what Bathurst and Bloor has changed into… it’s lost an identity. It almost makes me want to cry.

Like with Kensington Market – developers are hoping to erase these spaces to make a quick buck. Even seeing Bloor West Village have numerous mom and pop shops close down. Some spaces remain unoccupied for years which I’m predicting is likely increased and unattainable rent. Seeing my own family relative have to close down his car garage shop because his rent increased from $2k to $10k. This resulted in him attempting suicide. There’s something wrong when developers and landlords falsely and speculatively increase market values and rent to the point where people feel like they cannot afford to live. Who will end up really living there? Who will do the work in the service industry if they can’t afford to live there? It’ll make no sense for them to travel an hour to get to work minimum wage. Will we even have restaurants if they cannot afford rent? There’s some things I can’t make at home because of their secret recipes or I just enjoy their ambience.

Why is the Premier paying developers and removing bike lanes (not in the scope of work of the Premier)? Why is the Premier starving the healthcare system? I’ve seen countless Indigenous People coming into a Thunder Bay hospital going in for dialysis treatment. What about Indigenous Kids coming into cities and being murdered all the while the police ignores the systemic racism? Why isn’t the Premier focusing on these sort of topics? Funding parts of the province that are ignored 99% of the time? Roads in Northern Ontario are not great. Many are not twinned. Many result in vehicle fatalities. Why is the Premier making post-secondary school unaffordable? Why is the Premier forcing people to go back to the office 5 days of the week? Traffic is unnecessary. Why do we have MPPs who are landlords? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Why was Ontario Place demolished only for some developer friend getting a 99 year contract without public approval?

Why are towns cash strapped and now forcing citizens to pay for this? Shouldn’t the province be funnelling infrastructure funding? What is happening to this money? Who is receiving it?

Why aren’t we holding our politicians accountable?