A couple of days ago, Tuesday I think, I was reading e-mails while having morning coffee.

Among the messages was one  from Mark Kay of torontoist.com seeking my reaction to the tearing down of the block-long mural depicting Toronto’s history on the Front Street side of what used to be the Toronto Sun building (the building’s still home to the Toronto Sun; it’s just owned by somebody else now).

My reaction was simple: Huh?

Google Streetview of the mural, above, and the same view — minus the wall and the mural — today.

Huh? because I was unaware the brickwork bearing the mural had been dismantled last weekend as part of a renovation and redevelopment of that part of the complex which used to house the Sun’s great roaring presses.

So I really had nothing to add to Mark’s fair, balanced story on this passing of a (minor?) Toronto landmark. You can read the torontoist.com story here.

There seems to be a certain amount of gnashing of teeth over the mural’s destruction. I have a hard time building up that level of intensity: I miss it more because I love the history of Toronto than I do because of any nostalgia for what it represented about the “old” Sun and its place in the fabric of the city.

Surprisingly, I seem to be in the company of the artist, John Hood, who designed and painted the mural between 1991 and 1993 with his sister Alexandra: “I don’t blame the new owners, that’s their right. To put a positive spin on this, it lasted 20 years. That’s a good lifespan for a mural,” John told torontoist.com’s Mark Kay.

I got to know John Hood a bit in 2008 when I put together a retrospective tribute to the mural on the 15th anniversary of its unveiling, so I can hear John saying those words in my mind. I’m sure he does feel a great sense of loss — probably as much because of memories of those bitterly cold winter days in the early ’90s up on that scaffolding —  but he also is realistic about the mutability of art — especially art structurally attached to a commercial urban building.

I was down at the Sun earlier today on some other business and went around back to check out the mural — or lack thereof, to be more precise. Yep, it was gone.

I puttered around, picking up bits and pieces of brick with remnants of mural paintwork for myself and my friend Rita deMontis.

Then I noticed something interesting: About a quarter of the mural — the first quarter — is still there, hidden behind a blue tarpaulin.

Here’s a bit of the mural peeking out from a flapping corner of the covering.

And here is a closeup of the section as it once was in the full mural.

So it seems we still have the mural covering the period from early aboriginal settlement through the first French trading post to the “purchase” of the north shore of Lake Ontario by the British government to the founding of York by Simcoe to the Small-White duel, up to the invasion of the city during the War of 1812, maybe even a bit of waving hat from the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.

Here is basically what’s left:

I certainly hope the new owners of the property have decided to keep that segment. I’m pretty sure that’s the case because there is no reason they would not have torn it down already when the rest of the wall was “deconstructed.”

When push comes to shove, a quarter of John Hood’s mural is better than none.

Tags: john hood, mural, toronto sun