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From the Globe, Toronto Section
Tearing down the past
As Regent Park gets demolished, local youths working on the project find signs of hope
PETER CHENEY
Randy Martin stood in a field of twisted steel and shattered concrete, surrounded by giant tracked machines that belched black diesel fumes into the sky -- take away the orange safety vest, and it was easy to imagine him as an infantryman on a field of battle. But Mr. Martin's fight is a different one entirely, and it continued this week at the corner of Parliament and Oak Streets, where he has spent the past month working on the demolition of Regent Park, a job that involves concrete, jackhammers and more than a little demon-wrestling.
As he hauled away steel scrap, Mr. Martin's eyes welled with tears as he considered the course of recent events: Just last month, his 19-year-old brother Jermaine was shot to death, apparently the victim of one of the countless street-level vendettas that have played themselves out in the east-end housing project. Mr. Martin took a few minutes off work this week to talk about his brother's killing, and how his new job on the demolition might help alter the course of a tragic neighbourhood history.
"It's time for these buildings to come down," says Mr. Martin. "Things need to change."
And they are: Demolition is now well under way at the site of one of Toronto's most troubled neighbourhoods.
Four apartment buildings have been torn down so far, leaving a giant swath of empty space at the corner of Dundas and Parliament Streets. But they're coming down slowly. Demolishing Canada's largest housing project -- a $1-billion project that will transform Regent Park into a new mixed-used neighbourhood -- is a painstaking process due to strict requirements that call for careful control of environmental hazards and extremely high recycling rates (at least 95 per cent of the materials must be recovered).
The demolition process is unusual in another way too: a provision in the contract calls for about 20 per cent of the workforce to come from Regent Park, which is how Mr. Martin has come to be working on the project.
The death of his brother is just one in a series of events that have made Mr. Martin appreciate the true extent of the social woes that have cursed Regent Park. He can reel off the names of at least half a dozen friends and acquaintances who have lost their lives to gun violence.
"I hate watching it," he says. "My mother's crying. My brothers and sisters are crying. It can't go on like this."
Mr. Martin hopes that the redevelopment will change the social dynamic of the area. By the time the project is completed (a process that's expected to take up to 15 years) the density of the area will be doubled, and it will combine subsidized housing market-rent units and privately owned homes.
The project has been anything but easy, involving an elaborate sequence of relocation, demolition and reconstruction. This week, work continued on the demolition of Phase One, a series of low-rise brick buildings set next to Parliament Street.
The demolition, which is being handled by Restoration Environmental Contractors, a company that specializes in handling hazardous materials and complex demolitions, calls for a unique industrial choreography.
First, the residents of each building have to be relocated (some have moved to other buildings in Regent Park, while others have gone to different Toronto Community Housing projects).
Once the buildings are empty, the demolition is carried out according to guidelines that have made the job environmentally friendly and socially conscious -- but have also made it extremely time-consuming and difficult.
"It's quite a job," says Don Bremner, Restoration's CEO.
The demolition of their neighbourhood has provided the young workers with an object lesson in modern engineering. Unlike a typical demolition, where buildings are quickly flattened and hauled away as waste, the Regent Park job has involved a meticulous process that engineers refer to as "deconstruction."
Once the buildings were emptied, the work began with the arrival of hazardous-materials experts who stripped away the sins of the past. Like many buildings from the post-war era, Regent Park's structures were constructed with materials and techniques that are now considered environmental sacrilege -- asbestos insulation, mercury-filled thermostats, and fluorescent lights with PCB ballasts. The building's age added further hazard -- many of the structures were filled with toxic mould that had bloomed over the decades.
With the hazardous materials removed, the first stage of the demolition began with workers who went through the buildings like ants, taking out everything that could be removed -- windows, appliances, cabinets, wiring, sinks and toilets were all removed and examined for reuse. Wooden trim was pried off, and doors were stacked in piles. Then came the most visceral stage: Huge excavating machines were brought in to tear down the buildings. Hundreds of people lined the steel safety fences as the work began.
But instead of simply bashing the buildings down, the machines cut them apart with massive hydraulic shears that can snip through steel girders like kitchen scissors snipping through chicken bones. The dismembered sections are dropped on the ground, pulverized, then sifted for recyclable materials like iron, steel and copper. Shattered brick and concrete is separated for use as roadbeds in the upcoming construction phase.
This week, the process went on as Mr. Martin and his co-workers continued the process of materials sorting. Two giant excavating machines crawled over acres of broken concrete mixed with steel, plastic and insulation scraps. Mr. Martin dragged out chunks of metal and put them in piles. Then the machines spread out the debris so a massive electromagnet could be swung over it, pulling out more steel. Then the debris was scattered again so Mr. Martin and the electromagnet could go over it again.
"You have to keep turning it," said Carlo Mercuri, senior site manager. "You just keep pulling stuff out until it's as clean as you can get."
The demolition has given Mr. Mercuri and his colleagues an abiding respect for the workmanship that went into Regent Park. Although it is generally fixed in the public eye as a ghetto, the 50-year-old project was once considered state of the art, with architectural features that captured worldwide attention, including extensive greenery, sweeping public spaces and high-rise buildings that featured two-story apartments that have windows on both sides.
As he cut apart the buildings, Mr. Mercuri learned they were anything but second-rate. "They were built like bunkers," he says. "Rock solid."
Dozens of young men and women from Regent Park have now worked on the project, and have received training from Mr. Bremner's company on industrial safety and demolition technique. The worth of the program has already been demonstrated -- about 20 of the young workers employed on the demolition have since gone on to skilled trades programs at George Brown College.
Mr. Bremner gives rave reviews to the Regent Park workers -- "They've been terrific," he says. "Some of them were a little lost at first, but they caught on and became great workers. These were kids who needed a chance. They're minorities, and their address is Regent Park. A lot of doors got shut in their faces because of that. If you let them in, they prove themselves."
For Mr. Martin, the abiding lesson of the demolition -- and of his brother's' murder -- has been the connection between architecture and sociology. He came to Regent Park from Jamaica as a 10-year-old, and watched as his mother, Rosie Osbourne, fought to raise eight children and shield them from overwhelming forces of social decay. He recalled how his mother would paint the rooms in their townhouse in a regular sequence to ensure that the house was presentable, and cooked for a family that grew by the year as grandchildren arrived -- the latest addition was last month, when his brother Jermaine's girlfriend gave birth to a baby just days after his death.
"My mother's worked hard," Mr. Martin says. "It isn't easy."
Mr. Martin hopes to use his new job on the demolition crew as a springboard to a different future. He's planning to enroll in a trade program that will give him the credentials he needs to start a career as a cook. "What's happened tells me that I have to change my life, and that I have to live on for my brother," he says. "I'm trying to do the right thing."
AoD
Tearing down the past
As Regent Park gets demolished, local youths working on the project find signs of hope
PETER CHENEY
Randy Martin stood in a field of twisted steel and shattered concrete, surrounded by giant tracked machines that belched black diesel fumes into the sky -- take away the orange safety vest, and it was easy to imagine him as an infantryman on a field of battle. But Mr. Martin's fight is a different one entirely, and it continued this week at the corner of Parliament and Oak Streets, where he has spent the past month working on the demolition of Regent Park, a job that involves concrete, jackhammers and more than a little demon-wrestling.
As he hauled away steel scrap, Mr. Martin's eyes welled with tears as he considered the course of recent events: Just last month, his 19-year-old brother Jermaine was shot to death, apparently the victim of one of the countless street-level vendettas that have played themselves out in the east-end housing project. Mr. Martin took a few minutes off work this week to talk about his brother's killing, and how his new job on the demolition might help alter the course of a tragic neighbourhood history.
"It's time for these buildings to come down," says Mr. Martin. "Things need to change."
And they are: Demolition is now well under way at the site of one of Toronto's most troubled neighbourhoods.
Four apartment buildings have been torn down so far, leaving a giant swath of empty space at the corner of Dundas and Parliament Streets. But they're coming down slowly. Demolishing Canada's largest housing project -- a $1-billion project that will transform Regent Park into a new mixed-used neighbourhood -- is a painstaking process due to strict requirements that call for careful control of environmental hazards and extremely high recycling rates (at least 95 per cent of the materials must be recovered).
The demolition process is unusual in another way too: a provision in the contract calls for about 20 per cent of the workforce to come from Regent Park, which is how Mr. Martin has come to be working on the project.
The death of his brother is just one in a series of events that have made Mr. Martin appreciate the true extent of the social woes that have cursed Regent Park. He can reel off the names of at least half a dozen friends and acquaintances who have lost their lives to gun violence.
"I hate watching it," he says. "My mother's crying. My brothers and sisters are crying. It can't go on like this."
Mr. Martin hopes that the redevelopment will change the social dynamic of the area. By the time the project is completed (a process that's expected to take up to 15 years) the density of the area will be doubled, and it will combine subsidized housing market-rent units and privately owned homes.
The project has been anything but easy, involving an elaborate sequence of relocation, demolition and reconstruction. This week, work continued on the demolition of Phase One, a series of low-rise brick buildings set next to Parliament Street.
The demolition, which is being handled by Restoration Environmental Contractors, a company that specializes in handling hazardous materials and complex demolitions, calls for a unique industrial choreography.
First, the residents of each building have to be relocated (some have moved to other buildings in Regent Park, while others have gone to different Toronto Community Housing projects).
Once the buildings are empty, the demolition is carried out according to guidelines that have made the job environmentally friendly and socially conscious -- but have also made it extremely time-consuming and difficult.
"It's quite a job," says Don Bremner, Restoration's CEO.
The demolition of their neighbourhood has provided the young workers with an object lesson in modern engineering. Unlike a typical demolition, where buildings are quickly flattened and hauled away as waste, the Regent Park job has involved a meticulous process that engineers refer to as "deconstruction."
Once the buildings were emptied, the work began with the arrival of hazardous-materials experts who stripped away the sins of the past. Like many buildings from the post-war era, Regent Park's structures were constructed with materials and techniques that are now considered environmental sacrilege -- asbestos insulation, mercury-filled thermostats, and fluorescent lights with PCB ballasts. The building's age added further hazard -- many of the structures were filled with toxic mould that had bloomed over the decades.
With the hazardous materials removed, the first stage of the demolition began with workers who went through the buildings like ants, taking out everything that could be removed -- windows, appliances, cabinets, wiring, sinks and toilets were all removed and examined for reuse. Wooden trim was pried off, and doors were stacked in piles. Then came the most visceral stage: Huge excavating machines were brought in to tear down the buildings. Hundreds of people lined the steel safety fences as the work began.
But instead of simply bashing the buildings down, the machines cut them apart with massive hydraulic shears that can snip through steel girders like kitchen scissors snipping through chicken bones. The dismembered sections are dropped on the ground, pulverized, then sifted for recyclable materials like iron, steel and copper. Shattered brick and concrete is separated for use as roadbeds in the upcoming construction phase.
This week, the process went on as Mr. Martin and his co-workers continued the process of materials sorting. Two giant excavating machines crawled over acres of broken concrete mixed with steel, plastic and insulation scraps. Mr. Martin dragged out chunks of metal and put them in piles. Then the machines spread out the debris so a massive electromagnet could be swung over it, pulling out more steel. Then the debris was scattered again so Mr. Martin and the electromagnet could go over it again.
"You have to keep turning it," said Carlo Mercuri, senior site manager. "You just keep pulling stuff out until it's as clean as you can get."
The demolition has given Mr. Mercuri and his colleagues an abiding respect for the workmanship that went into Regent Park. Although it is generally fixed in the public eye as a ghetto, the 50-year-old project was once considered state of the art, with architectural features that captured worldwide attention, including extensive greenery, sweeping public spaces and high-rise buildings that featured two-story apartments that have windows on both sides.
As he cut apart the buildings, Mr. Mercuri learned they were anything but second-rate. "They were built like bunkers," he says. "Rock solid."
Dozens of young men and women from Regent Park have now worked on the project, and have received training from Mr. Bremner's company on industrial safety and demolition technique. The worth of the program has already been demonstrated -- about 20 of the young workers employed on the demolition have since gone on to skilled trades programs at George Brown College.
Mr. Bremner gives rave reviews to the Regent Park workers -- "They've been terrific," he says. "Some of them were a little lost at first, but they caught on and became great workers. These were kids who needed a chance. They're minorities, and their address is Regent Park. A lot of doors got shut in their faces because of that. If you let them in, they prove themselves."
For Mr. Martin, the abiding lesson of the demolition -- and of his brother's' murder -- has been the connection between architecture and sociology. He came to Regent Park from Jamaica as a 10-year-old, and watched as his mother, Rosie Osbourne, fought to raise eight children and shield them from overwhelming forces of social decay. He recalled how his mother would paint the rooms in their townhouse in a regular sequence to ensure that the house was presentable, and cooked for a family that grew by the year as grandchildren arrived -- the latest addition was last month, when his brother Jermaine's girlfriend gave birth to a baby just days after his death.
"My mother's worked hard," Mr. Martin says. "It isn't easy."
Mr. Martin hopes to use his new job on the demolition crew as a springboard to a different future. He's planning to enroll in a trade program that will give him the credentials he needs to start a career as a cook. "What's happened tells me that I have to change my life, and that I have to live on for my brother," he says. "I'm trying to do the right thing."
AoD
