Part 6 -Oh Canada

The Bioshaft® Design Process – what is it and how it came to be.

Part 6 - Oh Canada

In October of 2009 I attended the Cities Alive conference in Toronto. I did not present at this event, instead I had arranged a meeting with Joe Pantalone, at the time Toronto's Deputy Mayor. I had met Joe in Boston at a previous conference and had the opportunity to discuss my work; we agreed that sometime in the future I could show it to him. When I found out that the Cities Alive conference was being held in Toronto I contacted him and he was gracious in honoring the agreement. Joe Pantalone was a familiar name in Toronto politics having served the city for three decades; he was a great advocate for the green movement. As I opened the familiar portals of Toronto’s City Hall I could not help think of how easy it had been to meet the deputy mayor whereas in Chicago the doors to city officials were still firmly shut to me. I had arrived a little early and took the time to take in the groundbreaking modernist architecture of Viljo Revell completed in 1965, a year after my parents and I arrived in Toronto as new immigrants; I was nine years old. After all these years the building still has no rival in Toronto for its imaginative use of concrete shapes and composition.  I stopped at the time capsule location in the lobby of the building and recollected the fanfare that went with selecting the articles placed inside. The meeting was a success; Joe suggested a possible pilot project at a new building construction site within the Canadian National Exhibition Grounds. I was elated; if Chicago was not the first place then Toronto seemed fitting. I had lived more than half my life in this city; I was still a fan of the Maple Leafs, could even remember the last time they won the Stanley Cup (1967) with Punch Imlach at the helm, Dave Keon stickhandling around opponents and Tim Horton’s wicked slap shot from the point.  Later how the country came to a standstill at the first Canada vs. Russia series, I was in high school and at game time all classes were suspended, the televisions in the classrooms turned to the hockey action and the ecstasy of seeing Paul Henderson of the Maple Leafs score the winning goal. The surreal scene on St. Clair Avenue West, the second Little Italy of Toronto, when more than 100,000 Italo-Canadians flooded the neighborhood in celebration of Italy’s 1982 World Cup Soccer win. Yes, Toronto was still in my blood, it was the place where I lived as an artist and where I shared my first experiences on sustainability, in particular a memorable project in the Annex neighborhood near the Bloor Street and Bathurst Street intersection. In 1994 I was a founding member of the Ecological Resource Group; we worked with the Albany Street neighborhood association to link neighboring private properties into a contiguous habitat system. It took a few years to make the project a reality (1996-1997) at first having to battle city ordinances and then having the satisfaction of witnessing Barbara Hall, Toronto Mayor at the time plant the first native species for the second year’s start to the project. However the most important and proud moment came when the legendary Jane Jacobs, who lived in this neighborhood, gave us her blessings and support. During this time we also completed a butterfly garden project at Humberside Collegiate and proposed a schoolyard greening project for Corvette High School in Scarborough. The latter was curtailed by the maintenance staff even though supported by the teaching staff, a real surprise to us on who had more leverage in these matters. In my own work I had generated concepts for the Don River and the Toronto central waterfront that provided aquatic habitats, the latter was included in an exhibit of the best concept plans. I persuaded CARITAS, a Catholic organization, to generate a proposal to include ecological restoration in their drug rehabilitation program. I saw a direct link between those who fought to be released from their drug dependency and liberating the environment from the use of pesticides, fertilizers and invasive species. At this time I was also promoting Kneip Therapeutic Gardens as part of my designs which bridged health with landscape. Later in 1998, a year after my move to the US, I proposed similar works in the Village of Schaumburg situated northwest of Chicago where I worked as landscape planner. I developed a strategy for creating green corridors through private properties to connect three major forest preserves at the periphery of the village, Busse Woods, to the east, Poplar Creek to the west and Paul Douglass to the north, after my departure the plan was shelved. As I drove back to Chicago in 2009 all these experiences coalesced in my thoughts and a more complete version of the Bioshaft design process emerged.

Shortly after our meeting Joe Pantalone entered the race for mayor, despite his popularity he lost to Rob Ford whose political stance was not as welcoming to green initiatives as that of Pantalone’s. With Joe’s defeat in the election the pilot project faded away.