TCHC vows to 'resolve' chemical wasteland site in Swansea
· Toronto Sun
See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
Frank Mangion looks out from his balcony and wonders what’s going to happen to the water.
Visit sportbet.rodeo for more information.
From his home, perched way up above High Park, he can see all of the Swansea Mews — or what’s left of it, anyway. The townhouse complex, owned by the City of Toronto but vacant for years now, lies in ruins, waiting to be replaced by much taller buildings.
He welcomes the idea that people might return to that corner of Toronto, but he’s heard the soil underneath those homes is full of chemicals. To the south is Lake Ontario, with the Humber River not far to the west and High Park’s Grenadier Pond and the smaller Catfish Pond to the east.
He can’t understand how anyone can build a 35-storey tower without the filth underneath leaching out into the water all around.
“I don’t want you to think I’m against this revitalization of Swansea Mews,” Mangion told the Toronto Sun . “I’m all for it — but it needs to be done with consideration to the people that used to live here, and is it safe to build on this land? How is it going to affect the neighbourhood, and especially the runoff into Grenadier Pond?”
The Toronto Community Housing Corp. property, which sprawls over a couple of hectares at The Queensway and Windermere Ave., was vacated after a concrete slab fell from a bedroom ceiling onto a resident in May 2022.
In the four years since, it has sat boarded up, its 154 homes empty. At a meeting of city hall’s planning and housing committee in February, city councillors were told most of the residents have been scattered into empty spots at other TCHC properties.
’Build up, have to go down’
At that meeting, the councillors — including ward representative Gord Perks, who also served as chairman of the committee — approved a much more vertical future for the Mews.
The plan is to build 649 rental units, including 154 geared-to-income homes to replace what was lost at Swansea Mews, plus 42 new affordable homes. While one of the two towers would stretch 35 floors above the ground, developer Bousfields has said everything is being built above the water table, including parking.
That doesn’t bring much comfort in Swansea.
Last week, Swansea Matters, a group of concerned citizens in the neighbourhood, published explosive claims about the elevated levels of chemicals found at the site.
On their website , they say one type of lead was detected at a level more than 30 times greater than the standard, while cadmium levels exceeded the standard by more than 22 times. Mercury and arsenic were also said to be well in excess of the acceptable amounts.
Greg Homonylo and a few dozen other residents make up the Swansea Matters group. Homonylo told the Sun the figures were compiled from application documents posted to the City of Toronto’s website.
“There’s an aquifer under there,” he said. “When it rains, there are certain volatile areas of this city, and we know that there’s flooding that occurs. … C’mon. You build up, you have to go down.”
AGAT Laboratories, which conducted the tests, said it was aware of the website but could not comment further. The TCHC didn’t confirm the group’s interpretation of the numbers, but didn’t dispute them either.
“Two environmental assessments of Swansea Mews were conducted in 2025 … As the resident group has identified, those results showed pollutants on the site that need to be remediated,” the TCHC said in an emailed statement. “We appreciate their concerns and it is our intention to resolve them.
“Part of the next steps for Swansea Mews includes a risk assessment to address or remove any contamination on site, aligning with Ministry of Environment standards. There are no documented health concerns related to the items identified in the two environmental assessments.”
Dirty history
It’s unclear what the cause of contamination could be, but in the area’s more industrial past, the intersection was home to a Stelco plant.
The Swansea Mews itself was built in part on what was once a pond. Swansea Matters says on its website that the pond was used to store tailings — a form of industrial waste — but the Sun has been unable to confirm that.
The claim has long been included in a Wikipedia page about the neighbourhood. That information appears to originate on a web page once hosted by Parkdale Community Legal Services, which said Swansea Mews was “plagued with cracked walls and foundations due to the settling of the fill.” (The web page is no longer active and the legal centre did not respond to an inquiry from the Sun .)
In February, a bureaucrat told Councillor Josh Matlow, who sits on the planning and housing committee, that it hadn’t been necessary to study the site’s condition since it was switching from one residential use to another.
“Required or not,” Matlow said, “is there somebody here who can just kind of conclusively, authoritatively say that there are no health concerns regarding the past uses of the site, and that it will be healthful and safe for new residents?”
The councillor didn’t get the reassurances he appeared to be seeking, as city staffers told him the safety of the site still needed to be assessed. (A representative for Matlow said while the councillor would be unable to comment on the matter to the Sun , he has learned nothing further about the contamination at Swansea Mews.)
The development would also be a massive act of densification, and that was also criticized by residents early this year both in written submissions to city council and speeches at the committee meeting. Councillors on the committee were told that the proposed courtyard looked, in the eyes of a resident, “more like a prison yard.”
’Developers always win’
Mangion doesn’t deny that densification is a concern.
For example, mere steps from the Queensway-Windermere intersection, a development called Southport, roughly the same size as the proposed Mews replacement, is also set to go up. He worries that local schools will be overcrowded.
Homonylo, meanwhile, worries the local infrastructure wasn’t built for these towers, and said transit can only fall short.
“Sometimes it’s frustrating,” Mangion said, “because you see the developers always win.” In perhaps an even greater frustration, Homonylo gets the sense that city hall keeps gliding past the controversies when it comes to Swansea Mews, pollution being just the latest one.
While Perks was a supporter of the project, he’s retiring, which gives critics a chance to find an advocate of their own in October’s wide open council race.
Diana Chan McNally, a housing activist who was one of the first candidates to announce a run in the ward, called the proposal “exactly what’s needed” in remarks at February’s committee meeting.
Homonylo said he hopes when word spreads about the chemicals at the site, it might serve as a political “wedge.”
“If they had built more modestly,” Homonylo said, “and tried to put something more modestly together a while ago that didn’t need to disturb the aquifer, they could have had people living there.
“These people have been displaced for four and a half years, and they’re still waiting for truth.”