Arts or parts? Two visions of a hospital demo

The demolition of the old St. Catharines General Hospital captured the attention of two area residents: Mike Starnino, owner of Starnino Environmental Recovery Inc., the company contracted to demolish the site; and Jon Shaw, an artist and St. Catharines, Ont. native who had recently returned following a 10-year stay in Vancouver.

How they connected with the former hospital site represents two unique visions.

The hospital was established in 1865 and served the city for almost 150 years. A new hospital commissioned by the Niagara Health System to serve the city opened in 2013 and the old site was temporarily abandoned.

Developer Queenston Oakdale Ltd. bought the 4.4-hectare site in 2016 with plans for a mixed residential development and contracted out the demolition.

“When I first visit a site like this, I don’t see buildings,” says Starnino. “I see 1.6-million square feet of hospital in front of me in terms of a massive structure made of tonnes of concrete and steel material that will be recycled and will have another life in future projects. It presents a challenge to recycle as much as we can.”

Asbestos had already been removed from the site in a remediation effort. Actual demolition began in January 2019. The structures were made almost entirely of concrete and rebar, with very little wood and other materials present.

The demolition contractor is razing the entire site at the same time as crews are uncovering bits of development history, confirmed by bystanders who gather outside the gate each day to offer one detail or another. The community of observers represents something of a collective history of the old hospital.

“Our crews have rescued plaques and encountered a lot of abandoned steam tunnels once used to heat the buildings,” Starnino says. “We also found a swimming pool underneath the parking lot, as confirmed by some of the people who come here to watch.”

The demolition crews also preserved the hospital’s front entrance doorway. Local contractors, including Starnino, will donate their time and effort to dismantle the doorway, move it and reassemble the heritage structure at the new hospital.

Starnino fielded seven workers at the peak of demolition activities. They operated two high-reach excavators and an assortment of shears and concrete pulverizers. With demolition activities now completed, rebar, steel beams and copper have all been shipped to scrapyards for recycling. Crews have almost finished crushing the concrete, which will be left onsite to be used as granular backfill.

Starnino says he’s proud of the recycling effort.

“Almost the entire building has been recycled,” he says. “We limited waste to 20 trailer loads of trash.”

For Shaw, the site represents a reacquaintance with space and place and a return to St. Catharines. He’d already developed a following for gritty works of art representing Vancouver’s changing urban landscape.

“When I returned here two years ago, the first thing I encountered was that hospital that everyone around here is aware of,” he says. “It was perfect timing as the site was just about to be demoed.”

Shaw was born at the hospital in 1984, so it represents a personal connection for him as well. Although he takes commissions, he had no buyers in mind when he began the hospital demolition art project.

“It was simply an exercise of pure joy and personal interest,” he says. “I was re-rooting my connection with the city after being away for so long. I stopped at the hospital once a week to photograph the site. Those visits were a mixture of documentation and esthetics. Each week, I would edit through hundreds of photos to narrow down what I thought was conceptually interesting, zooming in and cropping the images. The images I selected in terms of shapes and colours represented pure satisfaction.”

Shaw’s work is ink on wood panel with acrylic overpainting. The largest pieces are four-by-five-feet and the smallest are eight-by-10 inches. He’s completed about 15 larger works and plans to finish more.

Shaw’s work was featured last November and December at the Niagara Arts Centre in a show entitled Transfigurement. He recalls receiving a phone call from Starnino asking about the art project and expressing his interest in attending the show’s opening.

“I don’t believe I met him that day, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there,” says Shaw. “It was a very busy event.”

But whether or not they crossed paths that day, one aspect of the project resonates for both men.

“The demolition of the hospital represents the ever-changing face of the city itself,” Shaw says. “There’s a lot of interest in this city in change and positive growth. Many of us were waiting for that to get going.”