I briefly mentioned speaking to one of the on-site workers below. I still struggle with the panels of bright orange grill fencing which surround the project. I suppose this is an improvement over the wooden walls (with tiny viewing holes cut in them) that surround the large projects in Toronto. I can understand that restriction though. There is generally a huge hole in the ground followed by building construction on a large and potentially deadly scale, even to those who work on the site.

Nonetheless there is something about fencing and gateways of access and speaking to people through a grill that is still alien to me. I make the images below by pressing my camera lens up against the grill. There is just enough space between each strand to allow for my image. I cannot avoid the grill if/when I want to speak with someone working on the building. I cannot avoid the grill if I wish to make a broader image of the site.



Consider this: the notion of the gated community, the posted security guard, areas that are restricted from public access, all of these have emerged and become commonplace in the past generation. These restrictions have only become accepted in the past twenty-five years.


I will not burden the reader with a long, dry sidebar illustrating my detailed understanding of the correlation between the two, but, I relate the decrease in public access to increasing restrictions on personal freedoms and liberties. My simple little orange grill safety fence has become a personal metaphor for much of what is wrong with the world we live in. How did I make that jump?

Say what you will regarding the suburban, cookie-cutter neighbourhoods I grew up in, one thing was true, they were wide open. Everything from the property our homes were built on, to the public parks, to the commercial and industrial malls all over North York were free of fencing (made short cuts on foot really great).

There were no private fences till our homes had been up for several years. When the fences did go in a pair of neighbours would put up their own choice and style. Different fencing here butted up against different fencing there. There was no conformity. It was great.

There was very little restricted access of any kind to public, commercial, and industrial spaces for many years. For the most part the world I grew up in was wide open.

More to the point there was no good reason to waste money forcing people to 'walk this way' or move in that direction in public like sheep. It was also apparently unnecessary to prevent access to semi-sensitive areas in order to satisfy requirements of insurance companies.

It is no surprise to me that I feel alienated by the little orange grill 'safety fences and absolute lack of access to a small construction site such as this new SDM. Everywhere I turn I see similarly manufactured borders and restrictions. In my lifetime we have evolved from an open society into one where anything interesting at all is surrounded by Frost fence, metaphorically or otherwise.

Ultimately, who is the prisoner here and why?