MARILYN CORNWELL: Marilyn's Photos - Oct 28 2026

n the 1960s, 70s and 80s, we thought of data centres as vast centralized facilities full of machines that were rectangles and squares. Everything gray and bland, like the picture below. Very neat and tidy with the raised white floor, freezing temperatures. We thought they were astonishing then.

So what about data centres now in the AI era? Don't the headlines tell us they are larger, much larger? Hundreds of thousands of square feet, housing thousands of server racks and hundreds of thousands to millions of compute units.

You can get a 3D sort of tour into one at this Financial Times article HERE. The article uses animation so it is fascinating to read. I guess I realized these facilities make our twentieth century factories like Stelco and the Oakville Ford Plant look miniature. Just like the data centres of the 70s and 80s, they will be neat and tidy and devoid of people. Just a few computer operators.

But my interest is the gray interior of these facilities. There is a lot of paint that will be needed. I guess it is going to be gray, black, and white. The paint is specialized industrial coating. It protects steel from fire. Floor coatings prevent static electricity from jumping around to machines.

Why is it gray? It looks like it is because the major paint suppliers - PPG and Sherwin-WIlliams - provide standardized, bulk industrial packages of this specialized paint. The cost of painting a single AI data centre ranges from $3 to $8 million. Subtle colour variations across warm or cool spectrums with subtle undertones - blue, green, violet, taupe or beige - not so important. Even the outside of this TOR1X0 Data Centre at SteelesTech Campus in Toronto is gray. It is at 3125 Steeles Avenue East at Victoria Park Avenue. How many people might work there? It will have 32 vehicular parking spaces, and bicycle parking spots. So that doesn't look like very many staff. The number usually given is between 50 and 400 long-term personnel. You can read about the site plans at urbantoronto.ca HERE.