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relics

The ruins of an old grand trunk train engine house from the 1850s can be seen on Bathurst Street, across from Fort York, in Toronto.

A huge archeological dig that unearthed evidence of Toronto's 19th-century railway boom is being plowed over to make way for condominium construction.

The dig, adjacent to the Bathurst Street bridge south of Front Street, uncovered the foundations of part of a giant cruciform-shaped building that in the 1850s housed the steam engine service and repair facilities of the Grand Trunk Railway. It also revealed some remaining portions of the Queen's Wharf – a massive wooden dock that jutted into Lake Ontario – and a wood-lined channel that directed the flow of now-defunct Garrison Creek to the waterfront.

Those features, relics of a time when Toronto's waterfront was a vibrant industrial and transportation centre, attracted the stares of pedestrians crossing the Bathurst bridge as they were revealed and probed by archeologists this spring and summer. But they are now disappearing under the path of bulldozers preparing the site for the construction of the Library District condominium project, which also includes public housing and a new municipal library.

Although some of the stone and bricks will be preserved in an adjacent park to commemorate the findings, the end of the dig underlines how difficult it is to retain the heritage that is just under the surface of the city.

"Everybody always begins with protection as the preferred option," said Ron Williamson, president of Archaeological Services Inc., the private company that conducted the Bathurst dig for the city and the developers. "But sometimes it is just not practical."

In the case of the Bathurst project, a key issue was the depth of the old materials – far below grade – making them much more difficult to preserve on site. The uncovered wood and the mortar between the bricks and stones also began to deteriorate as soon as they were exposed to the air.

The masonry material that has been salvaged to be used in the park beside the condos and library will be handled "in an imaginative, commemorative way," said Susan Hughes, Toronto's supervisor of archeology. While there were hopes that some of the wood unearthed at the site might be used in the construction of the library – possibly as floorboards – chemical studies showed it was too contaminated from being buried in landfill to allow that, she said.

The city's parks department has issued a request-for-proposal for the design of the park, and the winning designer will incorporate the materials in a way that underlines its historic links to the engine house, Ms. Hughes said. The Library District project is a joint venture of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and Context Development.

Railway historian Derek Boles said that when he learned how deep the artifacts were, he accepted the fact that it was unlikely any sort of underground shrine would be built to contain them. But he hopes the stone and brick can be incorporated into the park "in a way to acknowledge where they came from and not just be recycled. This could easily be accomplished with a Heritage Toronto plaque containing a map and photographs."

Mr. Williamson noted that the detailed archeological study, photographs and cataloguing his firm conducted provide a valuable permanent record of the engine house and the other features on the site. "Although it is not preserved, the information about it is."

Occasionally some urban archeological remains can be retained intact. At a hotel being planned on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, the foundations of an old military barracks from the mid-1800s will be excavated and incorporated within the new building.

A key factor at the CNE site, Mr. Williamson said, is that the remains of what is known as the East Enlisted Men's Barracks are just below the surface of the parking lot, making them much easier to preserve in the design of the new building.

The site, south of the Direct Energy Centre, will be subject to a careful archeological dig soon, and construction of the hotel will likely begin next year. The foundations are what's left of a complex of military buildings built in the 1840s and known as New Fort York. Only one of the buildings, the Stanley Barracks, remains standing.

"That is a situation where we can demonstrate history in a very exciting way by putting it under a glass floor, pretty much like they do in many parts of Europe," Mr. Williamson said. In addition to the accessible and well-preserved site, there is a "very friendly developer" and the city is keen to help preserve the remains, so "the stars are aligned," he said.

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