Located on the Toronto waterfront a stone’s throw from where more than 38,000 Irish immigrants landed in 1847, newly opened Ireland Park has been conceived as “a modern yet emotive” rocky environment. Designed by Dublin-born architect Jonathan Kearns, a partner in Kearns Mancini Architects Inc., the park is meant to evoke memories of the desolate and ravaged conditions that existed in Ireland at the time. “This is not a typical Toronto park,” Kearns says. “It is an emotional and evocative place that might call up long-lost memories of destitute ancestors arriving from blight-ravaged Ireland with hopes for a new life in a new land.” Located on Eireann Quay, formerly Bathurst Quay, the $2.5 million park occupies a site defined on its south and east sides by Lake Ontario and on the north, by the Canada Malting grain silos.
