The 70-year-old David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill — once
Canada’s leading observatory where scientists first discovered
black holes — has outlived its usefullness and will likely be
sold, say officials at the University of Toronto, which owns the
200-acre property. It really is sad because it is an incredible
structure. Instead Richmond Hill will gain another subdivision.
The lights of the city are simply too bright to let astronomers
see clearly enough into space for modern research. Donated to
the university in 1935 by the widow of mining mogul David
Dunlap, an astronomy buff, the telescope was built on farmland
that seemed far from the bustle of Toronto. But as urban sprawl
wrapped around its forested setting in the 1980s, astronomers
began to leave the Dunlap observatory for other countries.