Hi,

Most of us want to see the immediate results of our work. When we take on a project, switch jobs, or invest in a community, we naturally hope our effort pays off while we are around to enjoy it.

Yet, real progress often depends on laying foundations for a future we will never see.

On our upcoming ExperienceTO: Bay Street Historical Tour on Saturday, November 14, one of the final stops will be at the South West corner of Bay and Harbour Street.

Today, the stone building located there looks completely out of place. It sits landlocked behind the Gardiner Expressway, cut off from the lake by traffic and office towers, with Harbour Sixty steakhouse on the ground floor.

When it opened in 1917 as the headquarters of the Toronto Harbour Commission, the water came right up to its front steps.

Over the years, the shoreline was pushed south from it.

In the early 1900s, cargo ships were getting larger, but Toronto's waterfront was too shallow for them. The shoreline was cluttered with decaying wooden piers and choked with mud, meaning modern freighters could not pull in to unload without running aground. In 1911, the city established the Toronto Harbour Commission to solve the problem.

The commissioners realized they could fix both issues with a single plan in 1912. To let modern cargo ships dock, they had to make the water deeper. To give the city room to grow, they needed more land.

They used heavy pumps and pipes to dig millions of tons of sand and silt off the shallow floor of the bay. Then they pushed that material toward the shore, packing it with stone and rubble to raise brand-new, dry ground thirty feet above the lakebed.

That work created brand-new land where there was only water. It produced modern Queens Quay, the Portlands, Bathurst Quay, and the ground beneath Billy Bishop Airport.

It also gave Bay Street room to grow.

Today, that filled ground supports the southern expansion of the Financial District, including the two CIBC SQUARE towers. Organizations like Microsoft Canada, Boston Consulting Group, CPP Investments, and CIBC now work on land that was open water a century ago.

The people who mapped out the 1912 plan never saw those glass towers. They spent years moving dirt so that future generations would have room to build.

Their work offers us a lesson: visionaries build for a future they may not get to see.

Are we focused only on what pays off today, or are we laying foundations that will outlast us?

Here are three things you can do today:

1. Join us for the ExperienceTO: Bay Street Historical Tour to see the Toronto Harbour Commission Building and other aspects of Bay Street in person.
2. Learn more about the Toronto Port Authority (the modern successor to the Harbour Commission) at their website. You can even check out their current employment opportunities across Billy Bishop Airport, the Port of Toronto, the Cruise Ship Terminal, and the Outer Harbour Marina.
3. Reflect on your own work: Take 10 minutes today to identify one task or project you are currently working on that might not benefit you directly, but will make things easier for whoever takes over from you.

Thank you for taking the time to read and reflect.

Until next time,​
​Alex Rășcanu​
​

P.S. If you'd like to read the past e-newsletters focused on life lessons, you can find them here.

P.P.S. See you at one of the upcoming monthly ExperienceTO historical tours, such as the Bay Street one on Saturday, November 14.