Malachy Grant
As the city of Toronto lights up along the Canadian coastline, many find themselves awe struck at the sight of the world’s tallest building, the CN tower. It seems to be common knowledge that the CN tower; standing at a whopping 1,815 feet tall is in fact that tallest building in the world. In 1976, this magnificent structure was built by Canadian National to demonstrate the power of the Canadian industry by building a tower taller than any other in the world. Generally celebrated as Canada’s most recognizable icon, what is not commonly known is that an Irish man built this eighth wonder of the world. As a child growing up in Northern Ireland, Malachy Grant never imagined that he would play a major part in the creation and construction of the world’s tallest building. Born in Newry, County Down, Grant would later go on to receive his formal education at St. Mary’s College, Dundalk and the Bolton Institute of Technology in Dublin. After starting his building career with his father’s company in Dublin, he began to grow frustrated by the economy. He noticed that there seemed to be little room for growth and Grant knew he needed to move to a place that held a promising future for building activity so that his talents could excel. After marrying Marie Celine Kavanagh in 1952 and the birth of their three children, Grant left Ireland for Canada. In 1957, he settled his family in Montreal. In an attempt to satisfy his insatiable desire for knowledge, Grant continued his education upon his arrival to Canada at McGill University. A driving force behind the planning and development of the Expo ’67 in Montreal (which would later be hailed as the most spectacular of Canada’s 100th anniversary celebrations which presented over 50 million visitors with a prediction of the future) Grant began to build his reputation as a talented and innovative designer even before the development of the CN tower. He also had a hand in the creation of the National Arts Centre in St. John’s Newfoundland.
At the time, Grant had his own consulting firm stationed in Montreal and was invited to Toronto to design as well as construct the $1.5 billion Metro Centre Development Project. During the course of the Metro Centre Development Project the idea to create the CN tower was born. In the late 1960’s Toronto’s newly growing skyline began to conflict with signals from conventional transmission towers. Signals bounced off the city’s skyscrapers and created a plethora of problems. Television sets had the biggest problem; weaker signals would compete with stronger ones, giving viewers the illusion of watching two television programs at once. To remedy this problem, Canadian National Railways (commonly called “CN”) suggested that a transmission tower be built that would surpass the height of Toronto’s buildings.
Settling on the design for the present structure, Grant undertook the great task of designing and constructing the building (as it is today) in 1972. Work on the tower’s foundation began in 1973. To ensure the overall quality of the tower, Grant took great care in examining each and every proposal with the world’s leading construction designers. In order to prove the foundation was safe enough to build on, he sent soil and geological experts down in special cages 100 feet under the bedrock to examine the security and sturdiness of the construction site. There are no qualms about it; Grant was concerned with the quality of his work, cutting absolutely no corners when it came to safety and excellence.
Although it only took Grant and his team of experts four months to complete construction on the tower’s foundation, the enormous task of insuring the tower’s groundwork was anything but easy. Backhoes dug up more than 62,000 tons of terrain and shale to a depth of 50 feet from along the shore of Lake Ontario in Toronto harbour. Pressed concrete and reinforced steel were arranged in a Y-shaped pattern, 22 feet thick! Grant’s design allowed for each leg of the Y to support an evenly distributed amount of the 130,000 ton tower.
The height of the tower proposed a challenge that designers and builders were never faced with before; how would regular concrete withstand the weight of such this extremely tall building? Was it even possible? Grant and his team were on a mission and they succeeded by designing a huge mould known as a “slip form”. Concrete was poured 24 hours a day, five days a week! As the concrete solidified, the mould moved upward due to a ring of hydraulic jacks. The rising slip form gradually decreased in breadth, giving the tower its conical shape.
In the 190-acre Metro Centre development between the city’s existing business core and the Lake Ontario, peeking down from 1815 feet and 5 inches, April 2, 1975 saw the tower’s completion. As the last section of the tower was being installed, Grant stood side by side with the chairman of The Guinness Book of World Records, proud yet modest. The chairman confirmed the tower to be the tallest freestanding structure in the world right then and there!
Recognized as a bargain compared to other modern structures of its stature and importance, the CN tower cost only $57 million to build. In addition, the tower was also classified as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1995.The World’s Tallest Building shares this honour with the Itaipu Dam on the Brazil/Paraguay border, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Panama Canal, the Chunnel under the English Channel, the North Sea Protection Works off the European coast, and the Empire State Building. Even though Grant was an Irish man, he really did put Canada on the map!
After the tower’s completion, Grant remained President of Malachy Grant Associates as well as a member of the Canadian Institute of Quality Surveyors, and the Project Management Institute among many other prestigious associations within Canada. Finally retiring after finishing his last big project, the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre refurbishing, a friend soon convinced Grant to invest in a golf course. He later purchased Lynn Meadows Golf and Country Club near Port Dover where he spent the rest of his life.
Malachy Grant was a humble man. An extremely humble man at that and this was no secret. Credited with the success of the CN tower, Grant made it a point to always insist it was a team effort. Grant was the director of design and construction, a hefty title indeed but he always retorted with the fact that “it was a team effort; it wasn’t just one person’s ideas”. After an accomplishment as grand as the creation of the CN tower, Grant’s saint-like reputation began to precede him. Even in his last days Grant still took an unassuming look at the impressive achievements he made throughout his life.
Spending every day she was ill by her side, Grant’s beloved wife Marie passed away in November 2003. Not but a month after the loss of his wife of 51 years, Grant himself was diagnosed with lung cancer which would eventually take his life. The kind hearted boy from County Down who went on to become a pioneer in the worlds of design and construction is sorely missed by his family, friends and all those who ever came in contact with him. Bringing recognition to both his homeland of Ireland and Canada as well, Grant’s achievements are noted in both Irish and Canadian history.
His legacy lives on even after he has passed. For everyone who takes a glance upwards at the Toronto skyline, a little piece of him will be here with us forever.
