Bird’s eye view as window cleaners tackle 2,000 panes of glass at CMHR

Blink – and you might miss them.

Just ahead of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights’ grand opening next month, window cleaners work 100 metres above the street, to make the glass shine.

“The first cleaning we’re doing is a post-construction, so it’s a lot of work. You’re cleaning off a lot of residual debris from building the museum,” cleaner Silas Chipelski said.

And it’s a big job, requiring rappels from various points and a cherry picker for those hard to reach places. Chipelski says it’s sometimes hard to imagine it all gets clean with just a brush and a squeegee.

More than 2,000 glass panes require cleaning inside and out – taking the team of eight two months to complete the entire project.

“You can see the shape of it is pretty out of this world,” Chipelski said.

Museum construction began in 2009, and the final pane of glass was set in 2012. And while heights are certainly a factor for the group, the cleaners say they’re not scared at all , and that something else bugs them more.

“As nice as the sun is, that’s really the number one thing – the hotter it gets, the water dries, so we’re starting really early in the morning before the sun comes out,” said Toban Reimer, operations manager.

Reimer said while it’s not certain yet how often window cleaning will take place, a building the size of the CMHR usually will be cleaned twice a year, in spring and fall.