The old botany building and adjacent greenhouses at College Street and Queen’s Park Crescent date back to the 1930s. Though originally ample for the botanists’ needs, all greenhouse space has long since been crammed full of faculty and student experiments, specimens destined for undergrad biology labs and a diverse collection of plants from all over the world.
Not only was space a serious problem, squirrels and raccoons had invaded the greenhouses and would eat the plants. The roof leaked. Once in a while, a passer-by would smash a pane of glass and reach in to pilfer a potted cactus.
In 1990 the faculty moved its offices to the new Earth Sciences complex, across campus on Huron Street. A trip from lab to greenhouse had become a 10-minute trek.
Just down the block on Huron St. is the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. Or rather, part of it. Because space is tight, members of the faculty are distributed among four different buildings on the U of T campus.
According to pharmacy dean Wayne Hindmarsh, the programme limits admission to 180 students each year because the capacity of the largest lecture space available is 181.
“We are only accepting about 20 per cent of the students who apply. We are the only school [of pharmacy] in Ontario, and we don’t produce enough pharmacists to meet the demands of our province,” said Hindmarsh.
Welcome to the 21st century
The old College Street greenhouses are now all but empty, their contents relocated to state-of-the-art, $7-million facilities newly built on the roof of the Earth Sciences building.
The new houses all have computer-controlled lighting and temperature, and automated systems for watering and fertilizing. Large sections are even gas-tight, so scientists can experiment with variations in air quality and composition.
U of T’s botany department can now boast “one of the most advanced growing facilities in North America,” in the words of the department’s chair, professor John Coleman.
Facilities like these have allowed U of T’s botany department to become the best in Canada, and one of the best in North America, Coleman claimed. “We have to provide [advanced facilities] to be competitive with the big schools in the states, where most of our competition is. And we are able to do that.”
Prior to the move, some had feared the biodiversity collection, including old and rare specimens, would not survive the disruption. But the staff began preparing the plants months in advance and has succeeded in preserving them. The collection is now housed safely on the roof of the Earth Sciences building.
Meanwhile, British architectural firm Foster and Partners is finishing plans for the new edifice that will occupy the north-west corner at College and Queen’s Park–the Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building. The pharmacy faculty has raised 58 of the 70 million dollars the project is expected to cost. Less than $15 million came from Leslie Dan and Novopharm. As for the $12 million still outstanding, “we’re working on it,” said Hindmarsh.
In 2005, when construction is expected to finish, the pharmacy faculty’s size will increase by 20 people as more researchers are hired, and the first-year class will grow to 240 students. Staff and students will all have more space. The increased number of pharmacy students should help reduce the nationwide pharmacist shortage.
Of the College Street greenhouses, only the oldest will be saved. In a deal between the university and the city of Toronto, the old greenhouse will be dismantled, moved down the road to Allen Gardens and reassembled beside a similar structure that exists there already. In its new incarnation, the greenhouse will contain an educational plant display, to be organized with help from the U of T botany department. The other old greenhouses will be demolished and cleared away.
The botanists have only sentimental ties to the old structures. “As a place to do research they are not good,” said Coleman. “We desperately needed updated facilities. That’s why the new growth facilities were solicited, and that’s why we got them. Not because we were losing [the old] houses–that wasn’t even part of the arrangement at the time.”
So where’s the problem?
You could blame the university administration for the loss of historic buildings and green space on campus. But it’s trying hard to support research and education, and it even struck a compromise that will preserve one of the oldest structures.
You could blame Leslie Dan for buying his way into an academic institution, but he’s just making a good investment and helping out the school that educated him and made his success possible. You could blame the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy for selling out, but it’s just trying to do the best for its students and researchers.
The botany department could equally be accused of accepting corporate money with strings attached, since some of its research funding comes from biotech companies. The botanists want to do the best research they can, and that means moving out of the leaky old greenhouses.
The original greenhouse will go from being an impediment to botany researchers and an obstruction for the pharmacists to being an asset to the city and a place for public education. We lose a little piece of history and a little more green space from campus.
Nobody’s perfectly clean in this story, but nobody’s very much tainted either.
Photograph by Kara Dillon
