Canada Linseed Oil Mill
The Canada Linseed Oil mills is one of the buildings in Toronto that everyone seems to know about and has visited, but no one really knows anything substantial about. At three stories tall with 20+ ft ceilings and a flooded basement area, there is no trace left of the machinery or even what went on here almost 40 years ago.
It was a Linseed plant, built in 1915 where Linseed (flax seed) was pressed into oil and other uses, which has been abandonded for almost 40 years, since 1965. It hasn’t seen any other adaptive reuse, apart from the local graffiti artists painting inside and the occasional rave. In 2000, the city purchased the land for $2 million, but nothing was done with the site except occasional attempts at securing the location. Last year a small building next to the main plant was turned into a small meeting space and bathrooms for the park nearby. So far nothing much has happened, but the Wabash community Centre project has its own website with more details on the progress. If you have worked here or have historical pictures of the plant we would love to hear from you. We both happened to love the graffiti inside, because it looked like a time capsule that had been reopening much like Bunsmaster, which probabily will be our next entry.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Manufacturing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
ohlenna December 11th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Fantastic series - as usual. You asked about others shooting the site - a couple of us recently had permission to go in and shoot the building (December 8th) for Heritage Toronto’s Building Storeys 2010 exhibit that we’re putting on in February. It was a blast - amazingly freezing day with sleet, water raining in on the third floor flooding it a bit, flooded basement, and gorgeous light.