Or, how from a yoga class I went into Liberty Village’s history black hole
One of the very first things I did after we moved was, obviously, find a local yoga studio that wasn’t half an hour away. There are many of them, walking distance, in Liberty Village, which is one of the reasons I am back downtown – there’s everything.
So I found one and started taking classes there, great place and all. The studio is in a basement of what looks like one of the heritage industrial-era Toronto buildings. And there’s this thing – this room that is a block made of bricks, and has an iron door. It looks like a vault.
It’s totally a vault, isn’t it? It has to be. Why is there a vault in the building? I had to look the building up. And it *unleashed the research beast* in me.
So, it was built in 1911-12 as part of the E.W. Gillet Company factory complex.
The company was originally founded in 1852 by Peter W. Gillet, and when his son Edward William Gillet reorganized the business, the company changed the name to E.W. Gillet.
The original location was on 32-34 Front Street West, but it was destroyed on the 1904 Great Toronto Fire. Which prompted the rebuilding of a new, better complex at a new, better location.
The complex was designed by S.S. Beman from prominent Chicago architecture firm A.R. Denison & Stepheson. The grounds chosen were known as the Garrison Reserve, used for military training. Really hard to think of that area as a lot of nothing used for military training.
The new complex included the following buildings:
- 47 Fraser Ave – original head office, which would explain the mystery vault
- 49 Fraser Ave – added in 1922 with additional facilities for staff
- 135 Liberty St – the main factory building, more on that one later
- 42 Pardee Ave (currently 8 Pardee) – the powerhouse
The City of Toronto has designated the complex historical under the Ontario Heritage Act and there is a lot of detail about all of them in a Public Notice issued in 2020
This is an illustration of how it used to look like. I’m particularly fond of how tiny the train looks in comparison to the building (there used to be a rail line inside the neighbourhood back then, but I’m pretty sure the trains were not miniature)
As it’s visible on the illustration, the E.W. Gillet Company used to make baking products, like baking powder and yeast, but also powdered lye and washing crystals. That sounds very healthy, like yoga.
While E.W. Gillet ceased operations in the late 1940s, the building was not abandoned then, and it was used by other companies, including Nabisco – I mean, if it can make yeast and a little lye, it can make cookies.
But things were pretty bad in the 70s, when most of those Liberty Village industrial complexes were basically empty or even abandoned (weird to think about it now).
Which leads us to the 1980s film industry in Canada – it was cheap to film in empty warehouses – still is. And there was this guy named Cronenberg who liked to film weird horror movies.
The year was 1986 and our guy Cronenberg needed a location for his new movie. The movie was a remake of a 1958 movie and had a mad scientist named Seth Brundle, so the mad scientist needed a lab – like any mad scientist. Therefore, Cronenberg found an empty location in Toronto where to film the mad scientist’s lab
If you haven’t seen The Fly (1986) I am so sorry, it’s a horror classic with Jeff Goldblum, I’m not going to spoil it for you, but I LOVE IT, and also, I love that Seth Brundle poor mad science boy’s lab was located in the same complex where I do yoga today
The 135 Liberty building is part of the same baking powder-yeast-lye factory complex, has housed mad fly experimentation, and now guides me through meditation and yoga. What a ride.
The above comparison I found somewhere online and I am sorry I have no clue who did it, if you know who made it, happy to name it. It’s a shot from the movie and the same location sometime in the 2020s. It’s all cool startup offices, yoga and pilates studios and cool people like me – no mad scientists and lye.
If you’d like more *interesting* pictures of the complex, I found this fascinating gallery of the 135 Liberty complex by a group called Angels of the Underground.
And if you’re looking for *cool* commercial space downtown Toronto, or just want to see how it looks like now, Allied, the current property manager, calls it “The Castle” (lol)
There is a lot more to Liberty Village than startups, green juice bars and dog walkers. It’s a fascinating little pocket of Toronto, with a lot of history and change over the last century.
What do you think?