building civic narratives that read like novels
revista | water treatment by paul whelan
Toronto infrastructure Michael Ondaatje water filtration architecture
R C Harris beaux-arts functionalism
Water mythologies
Harris proposed that a 2-mile intake tunnel be built under Lake Ontario, terminating at a new filtration plant. In Ondaatje’s novel the filtration plant is referred to as the Palace of Purification. The industrial processing of water may seem an odd choice for the basis of a new mythology, but as was well understand by all ancient cultures, the regulation of water underlies both the foundation of the city as well as its on-going well-being. Ondaatje portrays Harris as a mythic hero who provides the vision, ambition and political will, while Thomas Pomphrey, the filtration plant’s architect, provides the architectural expression to house Harris’s project.
Lacking any kind of magical foundation story, Toronto craves a mythology. It’s often left up to artists to create the magical bedrock for a city’s future mythology. In Toronto, poet bp Nichol developed an urban imagary through a creative re- reading of its geography and street names. And it was Michael Ondaatje’s 1987 novel, In the Skin of a Lion , that widely disseminated a personal myth of the city’s coming of age. The novel focuses on the Bloor Street viaduct and the Victoria Park Filtration Plant, both constructed in the 1920s and 30s through the bullheadedness of a remarkable civil servant, RC Harris, Toronto’s Commissioner of Works.
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