What is that?: Haunting sculptures stand on Toronto’s waterfront
Posted April 13, 2016 1:59 pm.
Last Updated May 27, 2016 12:33 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
What is that?: Toronto sculptures explained is a new series looking at a different sculpture in the city every week. Have you seen a piece of public art in your daily commute and wondered what it was about? Me too … so I’ve decided that I’d learn a little bit more about my own city and share it with you.
“Arrival” sculptures at Ireland Park | Eireann Quay, east of Bathurst
His frail hands reach out, almost touching the CN Tower if you look at him from the right angle.
He’s the “Jubilant Man” and he lives at Toronto’s waterfront.
He’s joined by four other bronze sculptures, situated next to a fence with signs warning of falling debris from the Canada Malting Company’s vacant grain silos next to them.
I walked into the park on a sunny day, past several “do not enter” signs belonging to Billy Bishop airport next door. The area is eerily silent, even though planes are lining up to take off nearby.
In 1847, dubbed “Black ’47,” 38,560 Irish famine migrants arrived in Toronto by boat. Nearly 1,186 of them died then or shortly afterward. Toronto’s population was reportedly only 20,000 at the time.
The “Arrival” sculptures symbolize those migrants.
The “Orphan Boy” is a child
The “Pregnant Woman” holds her belly
The “Apprehensive Man” cringes
The “Woman on Ground” lays dead
The sculptures were designed by Irish artist Rowan Gillespie and are based on his series of famine sculptures in Dublin, called “Departure.”
An Irish architect who lives in Toronto named Jonathan M. Kearns designed the 45-metre-by-25-metre park and invited Gillespie to create the new sculptures for Toronto’s waterfront, portraying the migrants’ arrival, symbolically linking Dublin and Toronto.
Ireland Park opened on June 21, 2007.
A huge wall, made out of limestone shipped from Ireland, sits behind the sculptures, where 675 names are engraved. If more names are discovered, they will be added to the wall.
The park’s location, at the southeast corner of Eireann Quay (formally Bathurst Quay) at foot of the pathway leading to the waterfront, is also symbolic. It sits west of where the migrants arrived, at Dr. Reese’s Wharf. The Wharf is near where the Metro Toronto Convention Centre sits today. The park is situated south of where the convalescent hospital was located, at Bathurst and Front streets.
The Great Famine lasted from 1845 until 1851, killing one-million Irish people and emigrating two-million more.
The park was closed to pedestrians between 2010 and July 2014 due to construction of the airport tunnel and demolition of part of the grain silos. It’s now open, except there’s no public access between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday.
