Canada Malting Silos

The Canada Malting factory at 5 Eireann Quay (formerly 5 Bathurst Street) was designed by the engineer and architect John Sanborn Metcalf in 1928. The client was Canada Malting Co. Limited, a brewing and malting company with roots in Kingston, Ontario, stretching back to 1832.

Once the subject of an extensive proposal for adaptive reuse as a music museum by Metronome Canada that ultimately failed in 2004, the future of the Canada Malting silos has long been uncertain. Like its older brother in Montréal’s Lachine Canal, which was built in 1904 by David Jerome Spence and features silos made of a rare mix of clay tiles and iron rather than cement, the Toronto site has been abandoned since the 1980s. At the same time, the silos themselves at both sites are also designated under the Ontario Heritage Act. However, demolition of the Toronto factory’s adjacent kiln and germination buildings took place in 2010.

Despite fleeting hopes of revitalization over the past forty years, renewal for the site is again on the table in 2021. According to the City of Toronto’s current Bathurst Quay neighbourhood plan, “construction of a new public plaza on a portion of the city-owned Canada Malting property” will take place this year, with funding for major repairs to the silos themselves currently under review.

In the 21st century, the building’s nearly 40-metre-high malting towers have become a fixation for Toronto’s urban explorers. One of the many legends circulated about this cavernous lakefront landmark is that it contains a room packed floor-to-ceiling with stuffed animals.