Lot finds new life as lesson about public space
The Bloordale Beach is Toronto’s newest hot summer destination, and it isn’t crowded. That could be because there’s no water, but that’s beside the point. It’s a beach: the signs say so.
Located on the former site of Brockton High School at the corner of Brock Avenue and Croatia Street, just southwest of the Bloor and Dufferin intersection, the school was torn down last year and a big vacant lot is in its place. The fence surrounding the lot has been cut open a number of times since, allowing people to pass through, and in May, deep in lockdown, beach signs appeared, some the work of artist Shari Kasman.
“The site has real sand and I’d seen sandpipers there,” says Kasman. “Then I saw someone lying down on the lot, suntanning, and my friend said maybe making a beach could work. I said we should call it Bloordale Beach and he said let’s make signs.
“As a beach, it sounds like a very desirable place to be. Plus, it’s hilarious. The lot has become much more popular since it turned into a beach.”
On top of signs declaring it a beach, there are some advertising the “Beach Water Quality Hotline” and another that marks it as a “UNESCO World Heritage Site.” A “Danger: No Trespassing” sign has been changed to “Linger: So Relaxing” and there are others that warn beachgoers of sharks and swift currents.
Kasman recently arranged old lawn chairs on the beach in pairs, allowing for physical distancing. “They say ‘Property of Bloordale Beach’ on them, so ideally people will leave them on the beach,” she says. Kasman has more ideas and is looking for funding from wealthy, beach-loving patrons.
The signs are a kind of deadpan humour that some people will get, but likely leave a few confused. The Bloordale Beach is in the tradition of the Situationists, a French avant-garde movement of artists and intellectuals in postwar France who are associated with the slogan, “Sous les pavés, la plage!” (Under the cobblestones, the beach!) used during the 1968 protests.
Like Situationist activities, the beach is symbolic and has a bigger message. One is the scarcity of good public space in this crowded city.
Kasman points out that before the school was torn down, there was a well-used public right of way here that led from Bloor to Dufferin Mall. Though the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has repeatedly sent crews to close the fence due to overly litigious concerns, it is regularly reopened soon after and used like the former pathway was.
“When the fence was open I’d walk through, taking the shortcut, but I started to use the space more after the pandemic started,” says Kasman. “I’d walk around in circles and talk on the phone or collect artifacts, interesting stones and things. It’s close to home and I could stay distant from everyone. A friend started calling it the Social Distancing Compound.”
The empty lot also hints at other question of public space and resources. Brockton High was part of a cluster of three schools at the corner of Bloor and Dufferin along with the Kent Public School and Bloor Collegiate Institute, both handsome buildings designed by in-house school board architects. These latter two schools have been sold to developers who plan to keep just bits and pieces of them while developing the site for commercial and residential uses. A new Bloor Collegiate will be built on the Brockton site, where the beach is now. New housing by a subway station is a good thing, but TDSB and its trustees have been terrible stewards of our great architectural heritage, letting so many buildings decline to the point where razing seems the only solution. (Bloor Collegiate was initially intended to move into a renovated Brockton.)
Provincial funding is certainly one culprit, but there’s seemingly nobody raising environmental and public heritage concerns within. Nothing is as wasteful as tearing down a building just to rebuild it. What kind of sustainability message does that send to students?
Local residents and businesses have formed an alliance called “Build a Better Bloor Dufferin.” Groups like this often attempt to keep new people out, obsessed with building heights and using words like “luxury” to describe any new development. Hyped up, hot air condo marketing doesn’t help perceptions, but the only true luxury in neighbourhoods like this are houses with yards. In apartments corning Toronto, that’s never recognized.
Instead, the Bloor Dufferin group puts much of its effort into pushing for more affordable housing, more community space and more open public space — a model for how other organizations should act to make inevitable development, allowing new people into the neighbourhood and city, better and more inclusive. They even supported the recent modular affordable housing project on nearby Dovercourt.
Keeping a closer eye on what our school boards are up to is another lesson here, but for now, there’s the beautiful beach.
Just bring your own water if you visit.
“As a beach, it sounds like a very desirable place to be. Plus, it’s hilarious. The lot has become much more popular.”
SHARI KASMAN ARTIST