Mayor John Tory of Toronto joined Councillor Joe Cressy, Robert G. Kearns, chair and founder of Ireland Park Foundation, and other dignitaries last week to officially mark the start of construction on six projects on the city’s waterfront in an area that is centred on Ireland Park and a memorial to the Irish presence in Canada.
At a cost of $15 million, the six projects include a new waterfront promenade and dock wall; a new public plaza and a new playground for the adjacent Waterfront School; a redesign of the Billy Bishop airport’s taxi corral; changes to the streetscape; repairs to the 1929 Canada Malting Co. grain silos next door; and renovations to a 1938 office building on the site.
The office building will become a cultural and interpretive centre run by the Ireland Park Foundation, a not-for profit that has been active in the area for more than a decade.
“We plan to renovate this building as an arts and heritage destination as part of our long-term agenda,” said Mr. Kearns. “Ireland Park Foundation commemorates and celebrates the story of the Irish in Canada.”
Between May and October 1847, 38,560 Irish famine emigrants arrived in Toronto, many of them sick with typhus. The city’s population at the time was only 20,000.
