One year after four men restoring a highrise balcony plunged 13 floors to their deaths, advocates for the rights of migrant workers held a vigil in their honour.
"There's a statement in the injured workers movement that says, 'remember the dead and fight for the living,'" activist Jessica Ponting told reporters on Friday.
The vigil started at 2 p.m., in front of the apartment building at 2757 Kipling Avenue south of Steeles Avenue where the incident occurred.
The four men died and another was seriously injured when the scaffolding from which they were working collapsed on Christmas Eve last year.
A total of six men were working on the platform at the time, repairing concrete balconies. When a seventh stepped onto it, the stage snapped in two.
Aleksey Blumberg, 33, Vladimir Korostin, 40, Fayzullo Fazilov, 31, and 25-year-old Aleksanders Bondarev all fell to their deaths. Twenty-two-year-old Dilshod Marupov also fell, but he survived with a broken spine and two broken legs.
Flowers were placed at the spot where the men landed.
A sixth man, the only one of the group attached to a lifeline, was rescued. The others were wearing safety harnesses, but they weren't secured.
In addition to the two companies involved -- Metron Construction Corp. and Swing ‘N' Scaff Inc. -- several officials are facing a slew of charges related to the deaths.
Ontario's government launched a safety blitz in the aftermath of the tragedy, but Ponting noted that 429 workers in the province died on the job in 2010.
