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In 2008, Toronto’s city council voted to give $120-million in property taxes breaks to kickstart Woodbine Live, a $1-billion joint venture between the Woodbine Entertainment Group and a U.S. developer for shops, restaurants, clubs and a hotel next to the Woodbine racetrack in Rexdale.

“I went to meetings week after week after week,” said Rob Ford, then the area councillor, boasting of his efforts to bring jobs to northwest Toronto. “That’s how you get a vibrant city.”

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Four years later, the Woodbine Live project fell apart; the dreams of glittering palaces near the airport disappeared.

But there is silver lining to this tragedy: soybeans.

The vast property belonging to the Woodbine Entertainment Group, where they planned to put Woodbine Live, is now a soybean field.

In the spring, Bob Livingston drove his tractor down from his Southfield Farm in Mono and tilled these 140 acres, which spread west from the Woodbine racetrack to Highway 427, south of Rexdale Boulevard.