landscape biography Urban Parkland: Engineering + Construction One of the first steps in the construction of Ontario Place was the sinking of three lake freighters (the S.S. Douglas Houghton, the Victorious and the Howard L. Shaw) in 1969, laden down with concrete and boulders, to form a seawall along the south rim (Gemmil, 1980, 16). Records revealed that the Province of Ontario purchased the three vessels for $145, 000 together with equipment, tackle, stores, bunkers and everything else onboard these ships on April 22, 1969. Delivery was made by Upper Lakes Shipping Ltd. at noon on an undisclosed date in May 1969. These vessels and their contents were intended to provide a “portion of a breakwater” for the
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new Ontario Pavilion (Toronto Port Authority Archives, THC Records Department, CODE 1969). Zeidler fondly recalled taking his then
six-year-old son to watch the three ships gurgling down into the depths of Lake Ontario (Interview with Zeidler, February 2013). “It was incredible,” he remembered. This quarter-mile long seawall was then paved over “with a concrete deck and parapet wall” and used as a promenade area and a lookout point (Ontario Place Fact Sheet, 1972; Toronto Port Authority Archives THC Records Dept,
for several years. Correspondence between Jim Ramsay and THC Chief Engineer Jack Jones specify the Toronto Harbour Commission’s role as agents of the Government of Ontario in the procurement of these vessels and Jones was the man behind this idea.
By opening day in May 1971, 2.5 million cubic yards (514 acres) of fill from Metro Toronto excavations was used to create three islands covering 96 acres. Though previously assumed to be excavations from the Bloor Subway line (Filey, 1998, 76), archival records indicated that the clean fill was obtained from several construction projects in Toronto as stated in the Sources of Fill Survey conducted by Jack Jones in December 1969 (Toronto Port Authority Archives, THC Records RG- 3-3, Box 240).
This included Commerce Court, Simpson Sears Limited, Toronto Sheraton Hotel, Hospital for Sick Children and
the Y1 Section of the Yonge Street Subway to name a few (Toronto Port Authority Archives, THC Records RG- 3-3, Box 240).
urban parkland
1970). It was considered an innovative solution to the breakwater problem and an idea incorrectly attributed to Zeidler and Randall