Name: Procor Limited Location: Oakville, Ontario Status: Demolished Accessibility: Easy Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Something to do in Oakville The Procor plant in Oakville was always believed to be undeniably active as it's one of Oakville's largest businesses, it is one of Canada's leading manufacturers of tank and freight cars (a subsidiary of Union Tank Car), however one day when I drove by I noticed the exterior looked rather neglected. These claims were once again brought to my attention when a Hamilton explorer passing through town exclaimed that I was crazy for not checking this place out earlier. It’s not like we’re talking about the businesses national headquarters or anything. I had scouted the location in the day and saw more then enough activity on site to suggest the buildings were fully active or at least mostly active leaving a building or two to sit derelict off on the western side of the property. At the front gate sat a security guard and around back the Bronte GO Station was littered with heavy commuter traffic. Overall the area would be busy. It was late December and local explorer Wu, Arc Tangent and I pulled into the Bronte GO Station sometime in the evening; the carpark was deserted (as trains don’t go to Bronte on weekends). There were already a few dozen cars scattered throughout the lot covered in ice so we naturally pulled up along side of another and parked. Walking through the empty train station we emerged on track level, a freight train pulled past us and we waited briefly before jumping a fence. Suddenly it became clear that we were infact retarded, the fence we jumped led to a different set of train tracks (the fence didn’t even continue past the confines of the train station). Procor’s perimeter fence sat a few feet away down a small hill, walking along it we looked for holes in the fence or any points we could cross as to avoid crossing the barbed wire fence (we may trespass but we can be lazy too). Spacious (fancy way of saying empty) Finding a satisfactory entry point we quickly made our way to the western most building (the one looking the most derelict) we started to check doors hoping a worker accidently left one unlocked, and as we begin to walk toward the front of the building it was looking like our luck was running thin before a slight tug opened one of the side doors, success! We emerged into the warmth of the building and into the bright lights of the factory. Unclear what we would be up against we slowly lurked through the building, Arc wandered towards the guard shack while Wu and I set up our cameras and tripods. Arc soon re-appeared mentioning the road and guard shack was visible from one area. No matter, we would have to watch out for it later. The building was mostly empty, multiple cranes sat over head with dozens of pipes lining the walls, standard empty factory, any large machinary had already been sold or scrapped. But something caught our eye near the end of the building: a large yellow door. The door had written across it in large type “Caution Radioactive Area” so naturally our interest was peaked. To nobodies surprise these rooms were also empty, some pipes on the floor but little of interest remaining in the former train car X-ray rooms. The next rooms we saw were more office and laboratory like; this included a dark room and a fully equipped bathroom/shower with a steady amount of heat coming out of the vents. As we exited into the large empty space that we started in, I got a call from our explorer friend, Taco, asking what we were up to. She didn’t sound pleased that we had made a trip out to Procor with out her and I passed the phone off to Wu. Next we made our way east through the plant past the various motivational signs along the way. “Good isn’t good enough. Go for great!” “Areas that feel they don’t need to change need it the most.” Time to Go It wasn’t long before we found ourselves at the end of the plant; we made our way up a storey and into another set of offices before making the decision to exit. Ironically through a door that was ajar, and notably the door next to the first door we attempted to enter through. Once we exited the plant our plan was to meet up with Taco but she phoned us once more deciding it was too late and she was no longer interested. Well that’s the end of the idea. We decide instead to cruise around to the front of the property and take some exterior shots from the side of the road. It’s now getting late and suspiciously the security shack looks completely deserted, the front gate begins to slide open mechanically but no one is around. Seconds later a police car passes by and pulls a u-turn at the intersection. He stops in the middle of the road and calls us over, Wu greets him with a smile. Wu tells the cop we’re just taking some photos pointing over to me and saying “My friend got a new lens. We just want to take some night shots.” He looks confused and asks “Why here?” as we find ourselves standing in the middle of an industrial road in the middle of nowhere. We attempt to explain that there isn’t really much around, “Our choices are limited to the GO Station, these buildings, the road or whatever that factory is.” gesturing towards Procor. The cop leaves us with some final words of wisdom before taking off down the road “Well, don’t wander onto the street again.” Leaving us with an interesting conundrum, would we have wandered onto the street if he didn’t call us over? December 30th, 2006 BACK