My journey with the Kawamata Toronto project began in 1987 at Documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, where I encountered his work, Destroyed Church. This extraordinary piece stopped me in my tracks, sparking the ambitious notion of bringing an artist of Kawamata's calibre to Toronto to realise a major outdoor work in our city centre.

The initial challenge lay in simply establishing contact with Kawamata, whose nomadic nature had him travelling continuously from country to country. For several months, I found myself tracking his movements, sending messages through a network of curators and directors across various countries. When his response finally arrived, indicating interest in discussing a Toronto project, it felt like the first real breakthrough.

A month later, Kawamata arrived in Toronto with Mika (his extraordinary project director and partner), eager to explore potential venues and discover the city's unique urban personalities. Following this initial reconnaissance, he proposed two projects—one of which quite literally took my breath away. Its scale was staggering, larger than anything he had attempted before. While initially unnerving, this audacious proposal would ultimately become the magnificent work we realised together.

His site selection process revealed the depth of his artistic vision. Each location captured his imagination for different reasons, from philosophical and conceptual implications to practical and aesthetic considerations of the surrounding architecture. The final choice, Colonial Tavern Park, was particularly compelling—a space that architecture design journalist Adele Friedman would poetically describe in the Globe and Mail as "a ghost floating between two neoclassical shells." This astute observation would later become the closing chapter of her remarkable book of essays, Sightlines.

Within nine months of accepting his proposal, I found myself overseeing Kawamata's most ambitious project to date, supported by a stellar team working alongside the artist. Yet the path to realisation wasn't without its dramatic moments. One particularly memorable instance occurred in June 1989, just three months before the scheduled public opening, when the project's fate hung precariously in the balance at a Toronto City Council meeting.

I sat there with Morden Yolles of Yolles Engineers, whose firm had generously donated their time and expertise to the project, as we faced the final hurdle of Council approval. The tension in the room peaked when one Council Alderman asked if we could guarantee the structure would be earthquake proof. My heart sank at the question, but Morden responded with characteristic wisdom: "If you can show me any building on that street that has proven to have the structural engineering to be earthquake proof, then we could do so as well."

In the end, we reached a practical compromise: the wood would be treated with fire-retardant paint or coating to reduce fire risk. With this final concession, the project moved forward, transforming from an ambitious vision into reality.

This project, like any of significant scale and challenge, was possible because of an extraordinary team at Mercer Union. In particular, I would acknowledge the support, contribution and commitment made to this project by Mercer’s Associate Director Carolyn Bell Farrell and Kawamata's assistant, Mika Koike, along with these other key contributors including: Linda Genereux, Rosemary Donegan, Detlef Mertins, Micah Lexier, Reid Diamond, Rebecca Diederichs, Gary Evans, Martha Hodgson, Lucas Liepins, Mary Purdon, David Warren, Robert Windrum and Doug Whitton, as well as the important contributions made by Morden Yolles and Rolly Bergman of M.S.Yolles and Partners.