Marlon Wesley had only been at work for half an hour when he discovered the noose.

A piece of standard yellow rope had been carefully wound and tied in the threatening knot, and was draped across his lift on the half-built Michael Garron Hospital in east end Toronto. A second one, he noticed, was slung over a nearby equipment cupboard.

As a Black pipe welder, Mr. Wesley had learned to stay silent about the racism he’d encountered over 13 years working in Ontario’s construction industry. That’s what his mentors advised him to do, and it’s what they had done before him. But this time, things felt different. It was June 10, 2020, and protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality were raging across North America in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police just two weeks earlier.

It was around 7 a.m. and there were only a few people on site at the time. But as Mr. Wesley looked around, he felt dizzy. Construction work is dangerous. You’re high above ground, using heavy machinery. It’s teamwork, and in that moment, he questioned who he could count on. He decided to report the incident to a supervisor.

“You have to know that the people around you are commendable men and women,” he said.

The incident that morning would mark the start of a disturbing trend. Over the course of the summer and through the fall, at least a half-dozen nooses were reportedly found on Toronto construction sites. At Michael Garron Hospital, two more nooses were reported at that same worksite in September. And in October, someone scrawled anti-Black graffiti on the site hoarding, using a racial slur and calling for a “purge.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor John Tory publicly denounced these acts of hate, and within the industry, too, contractors and trade unions pledged to crack down on anti-Black racism and hate of all forms.

A police task force was launched to investigate these cases, made up of officers from the Hate Crime unit as well as investigators from each of the local divisions where they’d been found. But more than one year later, Mr. Wesley’s case is the only one in which charges have been laid – and the man who was charged is now dead. Jason Lahay, 34, an electrician, was charged with mischief and three counts of criminal harassment, before he died in a single-vehicle car crash in March. (His lawyers did not respond to interview requests from The Globe, but confirmed Mr. Lahay’s death during a scheduled court appearance in April).

The charges had been reassuring to Mr. Wesley – an acknowledgment that what happened to him was a crime. He feels for Mr. Lahay’s family, but is also disappointed that there will be no opportunity for justice through the courts.

But ultimately, he said, this problem is much bigger than one noose, or even six. The incidents have laid bare a broader issue of racism within the industry, where workers say racist jokes and slurs are an insidious and endemic part of the culture. This exposure has sparked a reckoning at a critical moment, as the industry pledges to recruit more Black, Indigenous and other racialized or marginalized workers into the trades – a pursuit the provincial government has committed tens of millions of dollars towards in the past year alone.

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