First one to 10,000 feet above sea level wins!

I am by no means a deeply spiritually individual, but I can’t help but think of the parable of the Tower of Babel when I go outside and see the latest 40-storey abomination being constructed next door to my building near Yonge and Carlton.

According to the good people at Wikipedia, the Tower of Babel was:

“…a tower built by a united humanity to reach the heavens. Because the hearts of men were said to be inherently evil and disobedient, they were striving to make a name for themselves instead of worshipping the God who created them. Because of this open defiance, God stopped their efforts by confusing languages so that no one could understand each other. As a result, they could no longer communicate and the work was halted. The builders were then scattered to different parts of Earth.”

Ok, so the comparison may not be entirely apt because I’d wager that humanity isn’t united on this project. At least not the random sample of humanity that are within earshot when I walk past the site daily. In fact, I’m hoping that some other spiritual entity might impose his or her own Babel-like sense of justice on The Met at the corner of my block, because:

a) The construction has created a daily vehicular and pedestrian nightmare at ground level where lowly peasants such as myself must navigate
b) It’s completely blocked the sightline of downtown from several local buildings
c) It’s basically the biggest eyesore on the block and looks like its preparing to blast off soon after its completion.


Petty? Surely. The construction gripe is reasonably temporary as well. But it’s amazing how unaffected I felt about the issue of high-rise construction in this city until it literally started blocking out the sun on my trek home from school and work.

Now, I understand that this is all fair game in downtown development and that you may not be phased by this one cautionary tale about Toronto’s new addiction to “getting high”.

But if you’re planning on living downtown for the foreseeable future you may want to take a look at this post on the message board at skyscraperpage.com. You thought elevator wait times were bad now? Another poster on that message board also notes a new condo is sold in Toronto every four minutes so it’s not like supply is outweighing demand.

It might take a lot more than a language barrier to halt construction this time around.