Keywords: Ruins of the remaining grain elevator on Toronto's old rooster squat -a.jpg There is a seven acre parcel of land at the South-West corner of Cherry Street and Lakeshore Boulevard at the mouth of the Don River in Toronto This parcel was centered around two large complexes of grain elevators But in the 1970s the leaseholder abandoned the property Unknown to its neighbours a community of squatters started to live there At a certain point adventurous squatters scaled one elevator and painted a 20-30 meter mural of a rooster on the side one elevator When Toronto was an applicant for the 2008 Olympics the site was to be part of the Athlete's village The grain elevators were to be demolished It is cool to watch buildings implode on TV In this particular case the owners didn't warn the neighbours The explosions were scheduled for 8am on Sunday mornings Advocates for the homeless hosted a dinner and invited us neighbours to meet our homeless neighbours Touring the site was extremely interesting But i didn't have a camera Several dozen homeless people were living there -- mainly young -- mainly supporting themselves by squeegeeing commuters car windows on the nearby expressway on-ramps Eventually a hundred or more homeless people set up a tent city on the site -- lived there for several years The site then provided considerable privacy because after decades the site had become overgrown with scrubs and small trees One day a combined force of Police private security guards and construction workers secured the squatters and bulldozed the vegetation A surprising amount has grown back in the last half dozen or so years Ironically the developers of the site who kicked out the homeless Home Depot http //www flickr com/photos/55289779 N00/2829137277/ Rooster squat 6 2008-09-03 16 17 http //www flickr com/photos/55289779 N00 booledozer https //ticket wikimedia org/otrs/index pl Action AgentTicketZoom TicketNumber Ticket 2012092210003274 OTRS ticket 2012092210003274 cc-by-sa-2 0 booledozer http //flickr com/photos/55289779 N00/2829137277 23 15 12 March 2011 UTC cc-by-sa-2 0 2008 in Toronto Rooster Squat Abandoned buildings in Canada Photographs by Geo Swan Taken with Kodak EasyShare C813 |