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Location DB > Canada > Ontario > Toronto > JR Short Canadian Mills > Caught for the first time

Story Info
Wed, Dec 7th, 2005
posted by lopix
Caught for the first time

Actually not too much to the story...

I had been eyeing this place for a while now, never sure if it was abandoned or not. One day driving by, I noticed that it was looking scruffier than usual and pulled in for a closer look. Definitely abandoned now, time to plan a trip.

Sometime between noticing it being a good idea and actually going in, I met a woman who told me about it, said it was easy to get in and all. Gave me a link to some pictures and told me the address. At the time I had not put the two together, didn't realize they were the same place.

So I look at the pix and start looking for the building in the images, can't find it anywhere. So I went to the address she gave me and it is the same place I had been eyeing. But not the same place as in the pictures. Didn't matter, this place was MUCH better... And now I have to find the building in the mystery pictures, see where that is.

So, talked to Fedge and realized we had some time off this week, thought we would try a possibly stupid mid-week outing, during the day. Thought it would work if places were abandoned, plus there were some we were wondering about, so going during business hours would help answer some questions.

(Rest of the day was spent scouting, we were into JR Short by around 10:30am, so lots of time for exploring. Found a lot of places to be active, so they are off the list. Also found some new and interesting targets, ones that we think may be virgin. Two will likely be permission-based, though one may be doable. The other one is so active and crawling with people and a s**tload of cameras that anything other than permission is going be a large problem. Just being on the grounds had 2 employees checking us out!)

So in we go, explore around, check the main floor and then up the tower. Back down and into the basement, which was by far the coolest part of this exploration. Words and pictures just don't do it justice, this multi-storey underground bunker of a basement. Funny thing is, it must have risen 50 feet above ground, yet from the outside we could not for the life of us tell where this part was. So strange, such a large area, yet can't figure out its outside parts.

Anyway, after thoroughly enjoying the below ground adventure, we head back up and start to walk towards the door we came in... When we here a man say "Hello?" Then ask who's there and who we are. We freeze and these 2 guys come in from the front office area and stand there rather confrontationally. Fedge, always quick on his feet, says we are from the "Toronto Heritage Preservation Society" or something like that, which did not seem to go over very well. He continues about how this is a cool old factory and are they the owners or what. They did not look impressed or happy, so I start in asking if was a grain mill or cereal factory or what (some good paperwork around gave us some background) and whether it was built in the 1950s (1955 on the boiler) or earlier?

They seem to calm down a bit, I guess they had a good enough look at us and realized that we were not punk kids and that we had no paint cans or anything else. Cameras helped us with our explanation of photographing old buildings such as this. I think also they were pretty freaked out and took a minute to calm down, not expecting to find people in the building. The one guy does tell us a bit about another place that was very cool and that we should have gotten to, across the street and under where the Best Buy now is.

Then they tell us that they are the new owners and are there to board up the windows as they have had a lot of complaints about kids and the like. There was some graffiti and vandalism, but all in the front, in the most public part (never said the vandal kiddies were smart). Rest was mostly untouched. We are assuming that finding us in there likely increased their desire to seal the place up, sorry to everyone for that. 30 seconds more and we would have been out the door, where they could not have seen us and they would have been in. I have come close once but have never ever been caught before... a matter of 100 feet and 30 damn seconds...

Anyway, if you want to see this, go NOW. I have not been back yet and it has been about 3-4 days, have to recon it again soon and check if it is sealed or not. But if you want to check it out, now is the time to go. It is worth the trip for the basement alone!

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