ACC’s historic carvings are slowly fading away
Fine details of Art Deco panels damaged by carbon pollution
The historic stone carvings adorning the outer walls of the Air Canada Centre are going to pieces — literally.
The Art Deco panels bring into vivid relief the icons of industrial progress and modernity — a train, steam- ship and airplane — as well as figures of early Canadiana, from mushers to voyageurs. But deterioration of the carvings, especially those sitting parallel to the Gardiner Expressway, has erased fine detail and given portions a porous, sponge-like appearance.
Salt spray and carbon pollution from the Gardiner have gnawed away at the limestone panels, corroding the integrity of pieces chiseled by a preeminent 20thcentury Canadian sculptor and protected under the Ontario Heritage Act.
Documents obtained by the Star reveal a two-year back-and-forth between the city and site owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE). So far, that has produced no tangible protection measures for the bas-reliefs, parts of which can crumble at the swipe of a hand.
“The work’s ruined,” says Louis Temporale, Jr., son of the sculptor behind the 78-year-old artworks, Louis Temporale, Sr., who died in 1994. “It has gone past the point of no return.”
He says MLSE has shirked its duty to preserve the heritage pieces, adding the city should have pushed the sports giant harder in recent years.
The younger Temporale re-carved and restored portions of the 35 panels in the late 1990s, shortly after the ACC property owners signed a conservation contract with the city. That heritage easement agreement from 1996 obliges the property owner to “minimize the deterioration” to the former Postal Delivery Building’s facades and protect them from “damage from inclement weather.”
Toronto Heritage Preservation Ser-
“The work’s ruined. It has gone past the point of no return.” LOUIS TEMPORALE JR. SON OF SCULPTOR BEHIND 78-YEAR-OLD ARTWORKS
vices alerted the MLSE board of governors to the “severely deteriorated state” of the reliefs, an apparent breach of contract, in a letter dated June 14, 2014. Then-acting head of Heritage Mary MacDonald reminded them of their obligation to maintain the historic carvings.
Since then, no protective covering, temporary or otherwise, has been installed.
Narrow overhangs above the panels are “not performing to keep rain off the artwork,” wrote Toronto preservation co-ordinator Mary Pedersen in an email last month to MLSE, which encompasses TV stations, real estate and sports teams such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors.
“We’ve been working with Heritage Preservation Services since the first inquiry in 2014 to come up with both a short-term and a longer-term strategy for the protection of the carvings,” ACC building operations director Bryan Leslie told the Star earlier this month.
Sean Fraser, director of programs and operations for the Ontario Heritage Trust, noted the sculptures — “a touchstone for the past and something to inspire us in the future” — are “non-renewable.”
“Like all cultural heritage, you get one chance to fix these things . . . Once you lose them, you lose them forever,” he said.