Unlike the salmon depicted in a piece of civic fine art, the water hasn’t been running in a fountain tucked in between the Rogers Centre and the CN Tower, allowing it to be tagged multiple times by vandals.
The Salmon Run fountain sits at the southern edge of the Bobbie Rosenfeld Park, next to Bremner Boulevard, amid thousands of daily visitors. Toronto’s website describes the location as “a small open space with a beautiful ornamental fountain and is a great spot to wait for friends before heading to the ball game.”
But the current state of the fountain would make the average person wonder exactly what the purpose of the fountain is.
With the water shut off for an extended period, the fountain itself has been the target of vandals, with several stretches of spray-painted slogans scrawled over every flat surface. On top of garbage accumulating in the well, the tile work of the structure is also chipped and in need of repair.
Tourists John and Lorraine Sydorko, visiting Toronto to mark their 50th anniversary, sat on the edge of the fountain and considered how much nicer it could be if the fountain had been kept up.
“I would imagine there’d be a lot more people sitting around it if it had not been for the garbage laying around,” said John Sydorko. “Graffiti’s never nice, unless it’s well done in a proper place.”
The condition of the park has also caught the eye of former Toronto mayor David Miller, who publicly called out the city for the fountain’s upkeep. His tweet garnered the attention of the city’s 3-1-1 services, which asked for patience to address the issue.
The park the fountain connects to is named after one of the country’s leading female athletes, Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld, who in the 1920s became one of the country’s first gold recipients at the first Olympic Games to allow women to compete.
Rosenfeld went on to advocate for women in sport and was voted Canada’s female athlete of the half-century by the Canadian Press in 1950. She’s now a member of several halls of record, including the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame (OSHOF), which thinks her namesake park should be receiving more TLC.
Mark Gravett is the CEO and president of the OSHOF and said he contacted the city about a year ago, hoping to see the condition of the fountain improved.
“Sadly we didn’t hear back,” said Gravett. He’s hoping renewed interest in the graffiti will not only improve the shape of the park but gain Rosenfeld a few more fans.
Gravett, like others, also notes the fountain is in the middle of one of the most frequented areas by tourists and should be improved for economic reasons. “You want people to go home with happy stories and positive stories about Toronto,” Gravett said.
“This is city artwork in the face of tens of thousands of people every year and I think it needs some attention.”
Susan Schelle, the artist behind the work, said the fountain had run well for a while before “maintenance or stupidity” led to it falling into a state of disrepair.
She said she had warned the city during the spring the fountain needed a fence around it to keep people out and to stop it from being used as a washroom, particularly on days baseball was being played at the Rogers Centre.
“This has happened over and over and over again, it should not be that complicated,” Schelle said. “But somehow, they can’t handle it. They can’t handle it.”
Global News requested an interview with the City of Toronto, which declined. Instead, a city spokesperson said the city is aware of the graffiti, which it attributed to recent action. While the graffiti is scheduled to be removed on Tuesday morning, spokesperson Bradlee Bomberry said in an email that the city “also has plans for more extensive conservation work on the Salmon Run.”
A timeline for that work, along with the returned flow of water to the fountain, will have to wait on the pending construction of another nearby tourist attraction. Bomberry said in an email that the water will remain shut off until the FlyOver Canada entertainment complex is completed, which he said is currently scheduled for sometime in 2024.
— with files from Global News’ Isaac Callan
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