Relic Park takes inspiration from Campbell House Museum’s permanent exhibition Lost & Found: Rediscovering Fragments of Old Toronto, located in the garden.
In the postwar era, many of Toronto’s iconic downtown buildings were demolished to make way for modern office towers. Rosa and Spencer Clark, passionate supporters of the Arts and Crafts movement and eager to preserve examples of handcrafted masonry, rescued architectural fragments from some of these buildings and relocated them to their Scarborough home, now known as the Guild Park and Gardens. Some of the salvaged stones were transformed into sculptural installations that can be seen on the grounds of the park today. Other pieces, however, were relegated to long-term storage. For the first time in fifty years, a selection of these salvaged stones has returned to the downtown core.
Lost & Found features six groupings or single handcrafted carved stones from such iconic heritage structures as the old Toronto Star Building, the headquarters of the Bank of Toronto and the Bank of Montreal, and the Imperial Oil Building. Positioned throughout the Campbell House garden and juxtaposed against the modern cityscape, Lost & Found inspires the viewer to look up and around and to wonder what the city will look like in another 50 years.
Select photos from the Lost & Found installation process:
