Wing’s food products / Mono lino typesetting
275 Albany ave / 420 Dupont street
Toronto, Canada
Summer 2018
Mono Lino Typesetting was founded in 1912 as Addison & Mainprice. Initially operating out of 154 Pearl street in Toronto, it was the first company in Eastern Ontario to offer a monotype (type casting) service.
The company grew over the years and the move to 420 Dupont came in 1963. Prior to that, the site was the office of the H J Heinz company (of Ketchup fame), then briefly used by a furniture seller, J, Levinter Ltd., and also a company that sold vacuum cleaners by mail order, President Electric Ltd.
Mono Lino ceased operations on the 27th of April, 1985 brought upon by a few years of declining sales, the loss of half its salespeople to other companies, and the changing market brought upon by new technology. Around 70 people lost their jobs.
Wing’s food products was founded in 1953 as Wing Hing Lung Ltd., a producer of noodles for Chinese restaurants. They operated out of 275 Albion since at least 1977, and prior to that the site was an engineering office or works for the Toronto Star. Wing’s took over the former Mono Lino building to be used as a warehouse shortly after Mono Lino closed for business.
The complex at 420 Dupont / 275 Albany was in operation producing fortune cookies, noodles and sauce until Wing’s food products moved to Etobicoke around 2017. It was the last manufacturing operation in the neighbourhood and has been demolished. Condos are being built on the site at time of writing.
1. An overview of the site. Imagery from 2017.
2. We’ll start with a quick walk around. The main entrance is on the north-west corner (towards the left of the frame). Across Albany are a carwash and a dry cleaners.
3. On Dupont, looking north, we can see the sign advertising the condo to be. To the right (out of frame) is the fenced entrance to the truck yard.
4. The front entrance of Mono Lino. The Mono Lino Typesetting sign was displayed here well beyond the closing of Mono Lino, and was only removed around 2013.
5. East side of Mono Lino. This graffiti mural was maybe 2 months old before this wall was torn down.
6. The north side of the complex along the railroad tracks seemed appealing – there were a few doors, the nook pictured above, and most importantly, was out of the eyes of traffic – but it turned out to be a dead end.
7. We start on the east side of Mono Lino. The middle section of the Mono Lino has been demolished and the various different bits of former building have been sorted neatly into piles.
8. The Mono Lino Typesetting sign. You can see how it used to look (with a BMW 2002 in front of it) in this picture
here.
9. A fortune cookie machine at right amongst the rubble.
10. From here we’ll go up the stairs in the south east corner to the second floor of Mono Lino.
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13. Not a whole lot left to see here. We'll go back down and make our way over towards Wing's.
14. Counterweighted sliding door. I wonder why these seem to have gone out of fashion.
15. Wall on the north end of the Mono Lino building. Pretty cool gradient going on.
16. And now, into Wing’s foods. This is in the middle section of the complex, where there is a truck loading bay, a freight elevator and some air compressors.
17. Beefy screw-type air compressor with maintenance notes stuck on it with Dymo labels.
18. From the loading bay, we head up the stairs beside the freight elevator. This is what we find at the top - some sort of packaging machine judging by its name plate.
19. It's incredible to me to think that this machine, and likely the compressor we saw before are scrap. Surely this is worth more than scrap to someone? Amazing, the things that we throw out...
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21. Freight elevator. One of the managers clearly liked to write notes for the employees, as we'll see later.
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23. We're now in a large open room on the west end. In it, are 5 of these fortune cookie machines. They're mechanically controlled by cams and levers as seen here - no computerization.
24. Side of the fortune cookie machine. The batter is injected by the front of the machine, and the top of the mould closes with these ramps seen here, and then the moulds travel under burners which cook the batter. Back at the front of the machine the cookies are taken out of the mould cooked but not hard, folded with the fortune inserted, and cooled to harden in shape.
25. The back of the machine showing the burners.
26. Machines in place with ventilation.
27. Old fortunes.
28. View of the fortune cookie machine room from the north end looking south.
29. Hand lettered electrical enclosure.
30. In a smaller room on the north end of the building. This room had another air compressor in it.
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32. We'll take the stairs in the north west corner to the top floor. This looks like another hand lettered sign.
33. Noodle room. This had to be the coolest thing about this building. There’s a chain conveyor mounted on the ceiling (maybe 5’ off the ground) and everything is driven by a few electric motors through bicycle chain synchronized with line shafts. Presumably room was set up to dry noodles.
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37. Noodle chainsaw?
38. The noodle conveyor ends (or starts?) at this air driven knife thing.
39. Top floor, west side. This is directly above the fortune cookie machines. Big, open room with wooden trussed roof. In the centre towards the left of this view is a ramp that goes to the second floor. The north end of the building with the noodle room is towards the left.
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42. Towards the east end of Wing's.
43. Ramp going from the third floor to the second floor, to where the fortune cookie machines were. Above the ramp is a flour mixer, and beyond that is the noodle room. We'll take this ramp and the ramp directly below it down to the ground floor before going to the roof.
44. Storage tanks under the 2nd floor ramp.
45. Ground floor layout.
46. Tanks on the ground floor, towards the loading bay.
47. A washroom on the first floor.
48. View towards the main entrance on Albany.
49. Old offices in the north west corner.
50. We take a different set of stairs in the north west corner down to the basement. Not much to see here either, so let's go to the roof and catch the sunset.
51. El croppo. Should just taken a photo of this instead of the whole washroom but oh well.
52. View to the south east. Mono Lino slips away into the sands of time.
53. View towards the north east. The castle towards the left is Casa Loma.
54. North end. (Some of you might recognize this guy.)
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56. It's getting dark, so we'll slip out while there's still light. We'll leave through a door on the north end, which spits us out in this pit by the train tracks.
57. And that's a wrap.
References / further reading:
- Mono Lino history:
https://www.archei...pany-limited-fonds(Photographs and documents from Mono Lino are kept in the Ontario Archives...! )
- Monotype system video:
https://www.youtub...atch?v=eEySiAcFmso- Monotype system:
https://letterpresscommons.com/monotype/- Mono Lino closing date, and misc: Toronto Star archive
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