Name: Bunge Location: Toronto, Ontario Status: Being Demolished Accessibility: Easy Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Do you smell something? While with a group of friends enroute to Barrie, we were driving along Keele Street on our way to the 400 when I spotted a large fire damaged office building, the office was just one of many abandoned buildings littering the property. As I don't end up in this part of the city often and we were just driving by I made sure to check it off as something to visit later. It wasn’t two days later that I returned with Tomms. The two of us had time to read a bit about the factory and a few other explorers had described the building as being extremely well secured. Forewarned we decided to give the property a once over and go around full circle before jumping any fences. As we almost went around the entire property we couldn't help but think everything looks quiet and strangely unsecured, there wasn’t even barbed wire on the fences for christ's sake. Just as we get prepared to jump a fence to get a closer look a security guard walks by, maybe this will be tougher then we expected? But seconds later as we walk by the fire damaged office building, facing the busy street, Tomms spots an open door. And we’re talking completely ajar. Cautiously we approach the door and enter into the garbage littered basement of the arsoned building, we’re careful to avoid making a lot of noise by crashing into charred debris in case security is lurking just around a corner. Approaching a door we see it leads out into the rest of the property allowing us to avoid even climbing a fence to access the other buildings. Curiously this door has been propped open as well. Infact every door is open. It occurs to us that security may do a patrol through the buildings and we decide to move away from the main floor and stairways, and we venture further into the factory. Luck must have been on our side because a few storeys higher we learn that a bridge connects the office building to part of the factory, and low and behold another bridge connects this building to the much larger building. It turns out there’s only a handful of small warehouse buildings that are disconnected and neither Tomms nor I are particularly interested in combing through every last building on site. We get out our cameras and begin photographing the offices, laboratories, pipes, and elaborate machines with never an encounter with security. It was an ideal exploration with only one draw back, the place smelled terrible. Even for abandonments it was pretty bad. But I’d take a bad smell over a trespassing charge any day. September 22nd, 2008 BACK