The R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
, Canada, is both a crucial piece of infrastructure and an architecturally acclaimed historic building named after the longtime commissioner of Toronto's public works Roland Caldwell Harris. The plant's architect was Thomas C. Pomphrey with engineers H.G. Acres and William Gore. It is located in the east of the city at the eastern end of
Queen Street and at the foot of
Victoria Park Avenue
Victoria Park Avenue is a major north-south route in eastern Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the western border of Scarborough, separating it from Old Toronto, East York, and North York. The common nickname for it is VP or Vic Park.
History
Vi ...
along the shore of
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border ...
in the
Beaches
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...
neighbourhood in the former city of
Scarborough.
Roland Caldwell Harris
Harris was born in Lansing on May 26, 1875 in what is now
North York, Ontario
North York is one of the six administrative districts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly north of York, Old Toronto and East York, between Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east. As of the 2016 Census, it had a popu ...
, but grew up in Toronto. Harris was Public Works Commissioner from 1912 to 1945 and involved in projects like:
*
Prince Edward Viaduct
The Prince Edward Viaduct System, commonly referred to as the Bloor Viaduct, is the name of a truss arch bridge system in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, connecting Bloor Street East, on the west side of the system, with Danforth Avenue on the east. The ...
opened in 1918 and which included his idea to add a deck under the bridge allowed for the
Bloor Danforth line to be built decades later.
* Mount Pleasant bridge as part of the extension of
Mount Pleasant Road
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, Co ...
north to
Lawrence Avenue East in 1934.
* expansion of the streetcar network of the
Toronto Civic Railways from 1912 to 1915.
* Waterfront Railway Viaduct built from 1925 to 1934 to bring rail lines into
Union Station
A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...
.
* extension of
University Avenue
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
south of
Queen Street West
Queen Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original east ...
to
Front Street in 1931.
Harris died on September 3, 1945. His son
Lieutenant Colonel Roland Allen Harris was a member of the Queen's Own Rifles. Harris is buried in family plot at
St. John's Norway Cemetery.
Site history
Pre-1932 history
The land was once owned by Peter Patterson and
George Monro. Prior to the construction of a water treatment plant, the area was the site of Victoria Park, a waterfront amusement park that operated from 1878 until 1906. It closed the same year as rival
Munro Park ceased operations. The amusement park was initially served by ferry from York Street (same docks serving
Toronto Islands
The Toronto Islands are a chain of 15 small islands in Lake Ontario, south of mainland Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Comprising the only group of islands in the western part of Lake Ontario, the Toronto Islands are located just offshore from the ...
) until 1895 when streetcar service commenced.
After the park closed in 1906, Victoria Park Forest School opened and used the site until 1932.
Water treatment plant
With an early 20th-century Toronto plagued with water shortages and unclean drinking water, public health advocates such as George Nasmith and Toronto's Medical Officer of Health,
Charles Hastings, campaigned for a modern water purification system.
Construction for a water treatment plant began on the site in 1932 and the building became operational on November 1, 1941. The building, unlike most modern engineering structures, was also created to make an architectural statement. Fashioned in the
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style, the cathedral-like structure remains one of Toronto's most admired buildings. It is, however, little known to outsiders. The interiors are just as opulent with marble entryways and vast halls filled with pools of water and filtration equipment. The plant has thus earned the nickname ''The Palace of Purification''.
In 1992, the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant was named a national historic civil engineering site by the
Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. It was designated under the ''
Ontario Heritage Act'' in 1998. The plant appeared on a stamp issued by
Canada Post
Canada Post Corporation (french: Société canadienne des postes), trading as Canada Post (french: Postes Canada), is a Crown corporation that functions as the primary postal operator in Canada. Originally known as Royal Mail Canada (the opera ...
in 2011, in a series showcasing five notable Art Deco buildings in Canada.
Use
Despite its age, the plant is still fully functional, providing approximately 30% of Toronto's water supply. The intakes are located over from shore in of water, running through two pipes under the bed of the lake. Water is also
chlorinated
In chemistry, halogenation is a chemical reaction that entails the introduction of one or more halogens into a compound. Halide-containing compounds are pervasive, making this type of transformation important, e.g. in the production of polyme ...
in the plant and then pumped to various reservoirs throughout the City of Toronto and York Region.
Access
The facility grounds have been made available to the public. Despite some concerns of vulnerability to an attack on the water supply since the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
, the grounds have remained open to the public, but security has been increased. In the summer of 2007, construction began on the installation of an underground Residual Management Facility allowing processed waste to be removed before discharging into the lake. This construction has since been completed.
In popular culture
The R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant has been used in dozens of films and television series as a prison, clinic, or headquarters.
*The building of the plant is vividly recounted in
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje (; born 12 September 1943) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller P ...
's ''
In the Skin of a Lion''.
*The headquarters of "The Man" in the 2002 comedy ''
Undercover Brother''.
*A prison in the
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
comedy ''
Half Baked''.
*An
asylum
Asylum may refer to:
Types of asylum
* Asylum (antiquity), places of refuge in ancient Greece and Rome
* Benevolent Asylum, a 19th-century Australian institution for housing the destitute
* Cities of Refuge, places of refuge in ancient Judea
...
in the 1995
horror film ''
In the Mouth of Madness''.
*"The Centre," a nefarious
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
in the television series ''
The Pretender''.
*Base of operations for Genomex, an
antagonistic corporation in the television series ''
Mutant X''.
*The Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane (next door to Elsinore Brewery) in the 1983 film ''
Strange Brew
''Strange Brew'' (also known as ''The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew'') is a 1983 Canadian comedy film starring the popular '' SCTV'' characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, portrayed by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, who also served ...
''.
*The
Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that ...
Centre for the Criminally Insane, as seen in ''
Robocop: The Series''.
*The Langstaff Maximum Security Prison, as seen in ''
Flashpoint'' in the episode ''Just a Man''.
*The Mellonville Maximum Security Prison, as seen in an SCTV episode (1982).
*A prison in the Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal episode "Solitary Confinement."
*"Lake District Federal Prison" in ''
Between'' in the episode ''School's Out''.
*A prison building in the ''
Conviction
In law, a conviction is the verdict reached by a court of law finding a defendant guilty of a crime. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland, there can also be a verdict of " not proven", which is cons ...
'' episode "A Different Kind of Death."
*A prison in the closing scenes of ''
The Big Heist'', when Donald Sutherland's character enters to serve a 20-year sentence.
*"Ekart County Jail" in the 2015 movie ''
Regression''.
*"U.N. Penitentiary Chesapeake Conservancy Zone" in the 2020 season of
The Expanse.
*A Children’s Hospital in Guillermo Del Toro’s 1997 film ''
Mimic''.
*The office of Richard Jenkins' character, Ezra Grindle, a factory executive with a dark past, in Guillermo Del Toro’s ''
Nightmare Alley''.
*Womens Prison in
Mayor of Kingstown
References
External links
*
{{Toronto landmarks
Art Deco architecture in Canada
Municipal buildings in Toronto
Buildings and structures in Scarborough, Toronto
Water treatment facilities