Client: Infrastructure Ontario

Overview

Hours of the Day recognizes a rarely considered but essential part of modern society: the correctional workers in Ontario and their ongoing commitment to public service.
The gruelling days and hours logged by correctional workers in the larger context of public safety represented by an abstract sundial, consisting of a central spine from which fan bronze ‘fins’, the position of each fin corresponds to an angle of the sun throughout the day.
This monument contributes a contemporary expression to the time-honoured tradition of architectural monuments. Its striking form presents an abstract, three-dimensional recording of the day-lit hours of an entire year from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice, based on the vectors of the sun (azimuth) as they shift hour by hour through the sky. The resulting form is like a big living calendar, registering time from the shortest to the longest day and back again. Skyward and optimistic, the Monument suggests growth and upward motion, a recognition balancing light and dark.
The monument is sited near several other memorials to civil society, within Whitney Block at Queen’s Park, which is the institutional seat of government in Toronto.

Dimensions: 13’H x 4’W x 4’D
Materials: Bronze, granite and stainless steel.

Goals

Paul Raff Studio was commissioned by Infrastructure Ontario to create a permanent monument to recognize the contribution that correctional services staff makes to Ontario’s justice system. Without containing names of correctional workers who have fallen in the line of duty, the Correctional Workers’ Monument was created to celebrate contributions and to respect all areas of corrections operations.
The Correctional Workers’ Monument presents themes that reflect the professional lives and responsibilities of Ontario’s 6000 Correctional Workers.
One theme is time – the unifying and collective experience of time, as the hours, days, seasons and years spent in patient public service march on. A related theme is how time is made visible – through measurements and systems for recording the passage of time. A third important theme is the idea of many individual components come together to make a whole. The central Sculpture is titled Hours of the Day.
The Sculpture was constructed in bronze and stainless steel, for an artistic expression of durable and monumental character. The pedestal and benches are granite, in two finishes. The pedestal (base of Sculpture) contains a Time Capsule prepared by the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.