The City Of Toronto has removed one of two monoliths that were mysteriously erected in close proximity along Humber Bay.
“The City removed it this morning,” Brad Ross, the city’s chief communications officer, told NOW. “It was installed without authorization. It had also been vandalized with hate material.”
With very little to do now that Ontario is in a province-wide pandemic lockdown, people flocked to the area along the Humber Bay trail in recent days to take selfies with the hollowed-out metallic structures.
The monoliths resemble the structures with god-like presence from Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, the austere sculptures appear as humanity faces an evolutionary period. Critics and Kubrick fans have hypothesized that aliens are behind the unexplained objects.
Finding monoliths has become a shared experience for the last couple months, a cute distraction during the pandemic. The Kubrickan homages have been popping up in Utah, India, Romania and California since mid-November.
The objects have gone viral on social media, with photos remixed into memes. Big brands like McDonald’s and Walmart have also jumped on the trend.
the monolith has fallen down the stair at the met gala pic.twitter.com/IZDYB9d3KF
— Leah Williams (@leahgwilliams) December 6, 2020
Humber Bay locals spotted the first Toronto monolith on New Year’s Eve. By New Year’s Day, the sculpture had already been vandalized with spray paint. Images posted on the Facebook group Humber Bay Shores Discussion show people cleaning up the graffiti.
The city confirmed that the vandalized monolith, which they removed, is “currently secured in a city facility.” But the officials did not get to the second structure, which was discovered on Friday in a considerably more challenging spot not far from the first.
The second monolith is currently standing on a Humber Bay breakwall.
Kayaker Alan Wechsler says reaching the second monolith involves a considerable walk along the wet and slippery breakwall.
“I simply walked across a particularly shallow stretch of water and hopped up onto the wall,” says Wechsler, who provided NOW with the photos he took. “I felt like [British athlete] Roger Bannister when I got back to shore. Nobody thought it was possible and then they all lined up to go out there after me.”
He says he watched a woman take a waist-high plunge into the icy cold water trying to reach the second monolith. She was safely removed by friends immediately after.
Nobody knows who is erecting the monoliths.
