Wednesday February 25, 2015
Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 25, 2015
The ‘sophisticated’ Toronto ‘mystery tunnel’ no one can explain
It’s damp. It’s dim. It’s underground. Welcome to the Toronto “mystery tunnel.”
On Monday afternoon, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a breathless dispatch soaked in intrigue, underground hovels and mystery. They had found a tunnel! And no one knows why it’s there!
Nearly eight feet tall, the tunnel extended more than 20 feet near York University in north Toronto. Sitting close to the Rexall Center, which will host the Pan American Games this summer, the tunnel was equipped with lights, a power generator, reinforced walls and ceiling.
Unnamed sources told the Canadian journalists that unknown persons had spent weeks of work on the tunnel of unknown origin. The operators had hauled away the dirt to veil their tunnel-making process. The National Post, another Canadian news outlet that hopped on the story in terrorism-rattled Canada, estimated someone had spent “thousands of dollars” on the tunnel.
So who was behind it? Well-heeled drug dealers looking for a secluded spot to cultivate a drug empire? No, the CBC found. Not that: “Authorities have essentially ruled out the possibility that the tunnel was going to be used as a drug lab or marijuana grow-op, according to sources…Toronto police have refused to comment on the mystery tunnel.”
Many questions went unanswered. “First and foremost is the question around the context of the tunnel – where is it positioned?” Ray Boisvert, a Canadian security intelligence expert, asked the CBC. “How deep was it? How accessible was it? And what sort of things could be sent through that tunnel, being people or material?”
Boisvert discerned darkness in the mystery tunnel. It seemed to be too close to the Rexall Center. “I would want to be able able to have some sense that we know what the purpose of that particular tunnel was and who was likely – if not who, precisely – was behind it,” he said.
The mystery tunnel, which the CBC called “sophisticated” and has since been filled in, was discovered when a member of the grounds crew saw a slab of corrugated steel and inspected further. He lifted the metal and found a tunnel nearly nine feet beneath the surface. A snow-trodden path led to a nearby tear in a fence, pictures showed.
Authorities are holding a news conference today to discuss the tunnel. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)