Toronto mourning loss of iconic giant telescope landmark but people don't need to worry

Toronto residents have started to notice a glaring hole where a giant telescope belonging to a local store has stood for decades as a North York landmark — but there is some surprisingly good news about its disappearance.

For years after the Efston Science store near Yorkdale Mall shuttered in the mid-2010s, the comically large telescope that marked its location remained a familiar, if completely obsolete, part of the streetscape.

It perched atop the building at 3350 Dufferin Street for nearly a decade until this past summer, when it was suddenly removed, to the dismay of locals.

Based on recent social media posts, some are only now realizing that it has gone missing and are wondering where the heck it could be, worrying it has gone the way of the city's KFC bucket-turned Timmie's cup that was taken down two years ago.

But the tenants of the building say it's actually quite the opposite.

A post in the Weird Toronto Facebook group last week mourned the loss of the telescope, with many reminiscing about the landmark and the defunct science store it represented.

"We're fixing it, it's in the shop for repairs," the owners of Hamov Fine Food, a restaurant in the complex, tell blogTO.

Both Hamov and neighbour Sarkisian Jewellery are among a group working to restore the mammoth apparatus to its former glory before hopefully reinstalling it in the coming months, if possible.

But that's a big if, dependent upon what the professionals restoring the fixture can do for it.

So for anyone driving by and wondering what is off about the grey-and-black plaza — which also houses a Popeye's Supplements, a pet store and a salon — now you know that all hope of seeing the telescope again is not lost.

With luck, it will reappear much like the jumbo lizard sculpture that long graced the Menagerie Pet Shop storefront on Parliament Street, which was just refurbished and relocated to the Geary Avenue Warehouse Project after a brief absence from the public realm.