They may not all be on the night shift, but these Toronto workers all do it in the dark — and most of Toronto is in the dark about who they are and what it is they are doing.

They’re the mostly unseen workers who help keep the city moving, keep it clean and keep it lit. Most of us give what they do little thought.

The Star set out to meet some of these “invisible” people who work behind the scenes, below our feet or under our radar.

The Cleaning Company

Guy Mercier is at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton at 10 p.m., getting ready to dispatch his workers. Their vehicles are lined up, traffic cones in place, GPS set for wards in the northwest quadrant of the city.

There’s the husband-and-wife team of Julio and Maria Patino. Sandy Fiqueredo. And Thomas Wesolowski, who just the other day was on the job, cleaning some of Toronto’s 9,000 pieces of street furniture, when he felt a gun in his back and saw his truck stolen.

“This is what you have to expect in the city,” says Mercier, rattling off the surprising dangers faced while removing graffiti from bus shelters and washing off waste cans.

“I had a gun pulled on me at Dundas and Runnymede,” interjects Mercier’s burly project manager, Joseph Cilardi, who doesn’t look like somebody anyone would want to mess with. And yet, earlier this year, he was knifed at Parliament and Queen.

Mercier’s family-owned and operated The Cleaning Company is contracted to Astral Media, which in turn is the street furniture contractor for the city. He has about 100 employees. They not only maintain the benches and recycling bins in Hamilton, Mississauga and Toronto, but also clear access to bus shelters in winter and change the ads they carry.

During the day, he has emergency crews on standby in case painted-on profanity is reported, or an ad company suddenly decides to change up its “creative” at the last minute.

Mercier is careful how he deploys his workers. For example, they clear out of the downtown core entirely Thursdays through Sunday. Too many people partying cause too much trouble.

“The worst thing is the traffic,” he explains. “Every day, 20 or 30 people lower their windows and swear at us.”

“That’s why we have safety meetings and teach people to be non-confrontational,” says Cilardi.

“You have to be aware of your surroundings at all time,” adds Mercier.

Toronto Hydro pits

The humidex reads 99 degrees Fahrenheit and Anna de Langley, Toronto Hydro construction supervisor, is covered, from her hard hat to work boots, in orange waterproof duds.

She needs all of that to go through the hole just south of the Greenwood subway station, no more than a metre square, created by a propped-open grate. Then it’s down a ladder, four metres, into the black water below, where 300-watt bulbs make the chamber at least another 10 degrees hotter.

Anything could be in there. Paint and engine coolant dumped illegally. Creepy crawlies. Money. Jewelry. Used condoms. Hypodermic needles and other sharps.

“I once saw a rat this big,” says pit inspector Jeff Currie, his arms spread wider than you might want to consider.

“Yeah, you find rats, alive and dead,” adds de Langley. “I rescued a chipmunk the other day. We once found evidence of a homeless person living down there.”

Their job is to pump and clean out the mess, ensure the transformers are in order, install and remove cable, and maintain the system so that Toronto doesn’t go dark.

Three crews cover the city, descending into 15 pits a day, five days a week. The infrastructure is aging, and that can pose the occasional electrical hazard.

And then there are the dangers above.

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“One of our guys got hit by a vehicle last night,” says Peter D’Onofrio, who also describes the occasional electrical arcing in the pit. “Thank God nothing has ever happened. Touch wood.”

Rescue operations centre

There’s a nondescript concrete bunker somewhere on the east side of town where security is so tight you have to enter through a cage to access the elevators.

The Star is not permitted to reveal its location.

Upstairs, in a cavernous room lit up by a wall of 60 TV screens, is where Toronto drivers are being watched 24/7. These are the pictures you might see on TV, or news websites.

Except if there’s an “incident.” Then the related feeds to the media are blocked.

“You get people getting out of their cars and running around on the expressways,” says senior engineer Linda Lee, adding that, between the crashes and the crazy, some 12,000 traffic incidents per year are spotted and managed, in cooperation with police and emergency services.

Lee oversees the system and the three young men sitting below her.

They’re in front of control panels, manipulating the 76 cameras on the expressways and certain dangerous intersections, using joysticks to pan, tilt and zoom in on traffic jams and accidents, and put up notices of slowdowns and lane closures on the electronic variable message signs (vms) over the traffic.

It’s a dizzying panorama, requiring calm and concentration. The operators work quickly and quietly, coordinating their moves so that the most congested and accident-prone areas and intersections are closely monitored on larger screens at all times.

“We get used to it after a while,” says operator Edwin de la Vega, when asked if it’s difficult to remain focused.

Do the guys ever get tempted to post things like, “Hey you, in the red Beamer, licence plate XYZ123, you’re driving like an …?”

“Yeah,” Vega jokes. “I have that message on my computer.”