Future of Toronto's iconic Lever Brothers soap factory mural in limbo
Sunlight Mural, which captured factory's inner workings, a snapshot of Toronto's industrial past
The search is on for a new home for the massive mural that, for decades, was well known to drivers on the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway.
Sunlight Mural is an almost four-storey-high painting that overlooked the highways from its spot high on the western wall of the Lever Brothers soap factory from 1987 to 2023.
The colourful mural, which showed the factory's inner workings, was painted by artist and teacher Phillip Woolf, while he worked on the factory's assembly line in the 1980s. Woolf, who went on to become a well-known art teacher at Seneca College, died of cancer in March 2023.
The plant closed in 2009. In 2023, the mural was transferred from Woolf's canvas onto 24 panels, each of which is five metres by 1.2 metres as the site was being levelled in preparation for the new East Harbour transit-oriented community project — a massive redevelopment still largely in the planning stages.
"The mural showed people making soap which was a huge industry in Toronto — it employed generations of Torontonians," said Leslie Barnes, a member of the Toronto and East York Community Preservation Panel (TEYCPP), which has been trying to find organizations willing to display the mural.
Barnes said her group has been in touch with the Lever and Woolf families, and both have expressed an interest in the mural being placed in a public area.
"Everyone wants this beautiful mural put somewhere. They want public access to it. They want people to enjoy it," she said.
The question is where.
A past that deserves to be memorialized: councillor
Michael McClelland, a heritage architect not connected with the redevelopment project, said it's important the mural be placed in an industrial setting, in keeping with it its past.
"I'd like to see it stay on the site, because it's really a good representation of a part of the city that doesn't really exist there anymore," he said.
That part of Toronto — near the foot of Broadview Avenue and extending east along Eastern Avenue — was once a thriving industrial area, said Coun. Paula Fletcher, who's represented the neighbourhood for more than 20 years. And that past deserves to be memorialized, she said.
"I think it's important to recognize what built our city," she said. "I don't know how much manufacturing we'll ever have any more, so it's pretty historic, and I'd love to find a place for it."
Although it was for decades a gritty industrial area, the 25-hectare site is now considered prime real estate with a massive new development in the works that will include more than a dozen office and condo towers, parks, shops, and bike paths as well as a transit hub, which is being built by Metrolinx.
Both Fletcher and the TEYCPP said they'd heard Metrolinx had been contacted about the mural. Metrolinx said in an email to CBC Toronto that it's working with Cadillac Fairview to decide what, if anything, it can do with the mural.
Unclear exactly where the mural is
In fact, it's not even clear where the mural is.
Emily Ngui, an account director with North Strategic, Cadillac Fairview's media relations contractor, told CBC Toronto in an email "the mural was taken down in November 2023 and is safely stored privately." However, she refused to let CBC Toronto take pictures of the mural in its storage facility.
CBC Toronto has also asked where specifically the mural is now and in what conditions it's being stored. Ngui has not yet responded to those questions.
The TEYCPP also has also been contemplating other ideas for a future home for the mural, according to chair Adam Wynne.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, the 401 Richmond Street West Arts Hub, or former industrial silos along the waterfront could also be appropriate homes for the mural, he said in an email to CBC Toronto.
Barnes said a new park planned for Regent Park could also house the mural eventually. The biggest challenge, she said, is the mural's size:
Fletcher agreed the mural's size could be the biggest challenge to finding it a new home.
"It's very large. That might be the only hindering aspect," she said. "I'm hoping those who love this mural will ask the city, through the preservation board, for some help, and suggest we look for a location for this (mural)."