Canadian builders apply lessons learned from Grenfell Tower disaster

For about 50 years, the three brick towers have loomed large over the intersection of Dufferin Avenue and Eglinton Avenue West in Toronto, a monument to a previous generation’s ambition to provide affordable housing for low-income seniors.

But for most of the past five years, St. Hilda’s Towers has been the subject of a very different type of ambition – a so-called “deep retrofit” meant to make the 350-apartment complex much more energy efficient, comfortable and safe, especially from the kind of high-rise fire that ravaged a low-income London high-rise known as Grenfell Tower in 2017.