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  • November27th

    Inglis Plant

    Posted in: Articles, General

    John Inglis emigrated from the U.K. in 1859 and opened his first business – Mair, Inglis and Evatt – in Guelph, Ontario. Being a skilled metalworker, he built machinery for grist and flour mills.

    In 1881, he moved operations to a new building on Strachan Ave. in now-bustling Toronto under his own name – John Inglis and Sons. When he died in 1898, his son William took over the ever-growing enterprise and in 1902, he changed the focus of the company to the production of marine steam and waterworks pumping engines.

    When the war began, Major E. Hahn purchased the company. Under his leadership the company assisted in the WWII effort by manufacturing Brenn machine guns for the Canadian and British governments. This was a major turning point in employment in the city as most of the young men had gone off to war – leaving the majority of the work force depleted. Of the more than 17800 people employed to produced the Brenn product, the majority at this time were women entering the workforce for the first time.

    With the end of the war in 1946, John Inglis Co. made a deal with Whirlpool to manufacture home laundry products. The wringer washer was introduced in that same year and the automatic washer in 1950. Eventually the company added electric and gas dryers as well as dishwashers to their product lines. In 1972, the one-millionth automatic washer was produced. In 1981, the company moved its head office from Toronto to Missisauga.

    I was lucky enough to shoot the Inglis plant on Strachan Avenue just 3 short months before it was completely demolished to make room for a new condo development. The warehouse facility, where once were manufactured machine guns for WWII soldiers, was in extreme decay with most windows blown out but it house some of the city’s most beautiful examples of graffiti. This great piece of industrial history is now lost to development.

  • November26th

    Don Valley Brickworks

    Posted in: Articles, General

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    Nestled in the lush greenery of the Don Valley along Bayview Avenue in Toronto is the complex of buildings known collectively as the Don Valley Brickworks – a former quarry and industrial site. The Brickworks were constructed in 1889 by the Taylor brothers – John, William, and George – who had purchased the site in 1830s to establish a paper mill. They found out the area had the perfect type of clay for making bricks and they set up a quarry at the north end of the property and built a brick making plant at the south end near the Don River.

    By 1907 the company was producing 85000-100000 brick per day. It was sold in 1909 to Robert Davies and he changed the named to the Don Valley Brick Company Ltd. In 1920, he added electricity, and a sand-lime plant that created cheaper brick and changed the name again to Don Valley Brick Works Limited. The company was sold in 1928 and renamed the Toronto Brick Company. The site continued to changes hands several times until it ceased operations in 1991.

    Over the years, many of Toronto’s best-known buildings were built with bricks from the Don Valley Brick Works including Casa Loma, Osgoode Hall, Massey Hall, and the Ontario legislature.

    In 1994, restoration of the site began by Evergreen Foundation. The quarry was filled and landscaped to create a series of ponds that flow back out into the Don River. Around the ponds are meadow areas, planted with native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. The remaining buildings of where the bricks were manufactured are being restored to be reused as a cultural centre with a focus on the environment. Many of the interior pieces such as the drying ovens and kilns will be preserved and incorporated in to the final structure. This is an excellent example of how an historic industrial space can be restored and reused.

    (This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Don Valley Brickworks”)

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