William Meany knows how to get things back for people. Often it’s cars, boats or homes, and the recipient is a bank or other creditor.

This time, the 43-year-old Mississauga native who once ran Repo Man and Repo Depo has his eye on something that is unlike anything he’s ever recovered before.

It’s a memory that measures about 50 metres square and has a strong, woodsy aroma.

“We’re going to get the maze,” he says firmly on the phone from a hotel in Bogota, Colombia, where he’s on business.

He’s talking about a cedar hedge labyrinth — the only one of its kind in Toronto — that entertained children and adults on Centre Island for nearly half a century.

Last July, during the Calgary businessman’s annual trip to the Toronto Island park — one he has taken every year as an adult after his first tour as a 7-year-old left him with “Alice in Wonderland dreams” — his jaw dropped.

“It was gone,” he said. “The grass showed no marks of it even being there. I was astonished. I had thought momentarily that it had only existed in my dreams.”

But mazes don’t just disappear.

Meany called the City of Toronto.

MORE ON THESTAR.COM

Trees come down on Bloor, and condos will go up: Fiorito

Tommy Thompson Park restoration will benefit fish, mammals, birds — and us

TTC announces Spadina as first line for new streetcars

Warren Hoselton’s crew dug it up in the fall of 2011. Roughly 3,000 of the 3.7-metre Eastern cedars that were planted in a series of right angles in 1967 to honour Canada’s Centennial — a gift from the Netherlands Centennial Association — had finally lost the competition for sunlight to a cluster of 15-metre-tall Japanese Zelkova trees.

The maze of shrubs was beyond repair; not worth, in the city’s opinion, the $15,000 annual cost of maintenance. Trimming requires platform scaffolding, a team of five workers and the better part of a week.

“It’s hard to use ladders because you can only lean so far safely,” said Hoselton, parks supervisor on the island since 1998.

Parks manager Rob Richardson confirmed it was a money issue.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Money is not a problem for Meany.

He offered $200,000 to rebuild the maze according to its original specifications, in a better spot. He would also get naming rights.

Next Monday morning, the parks committee will decide whether to pass Meany’s offer to city council for final approval.

If council approves, construction will begin in the fall, Richardson said.

The new maze would be planted roughly 10 metres north of the old site, away from the killing shade of the mature trees, said Hoselton. The shrubs used would be in the 2-metre range so they’re tall enough to produce an instant maze.

Penny Lawler can hardly wait. She raised two daughters on neighbouring Ward’s Island.

“The maze was a big part of our life,” she said. “When they were little, I’d go in with them.”

As they grew, they had more fun tearing through the paths on their own.

“The maze was better than any babysitter,” she said. “You’d go down, sit on the rock outside, you send your kids into the maze and they come out an hour later. I would get to read about four chapters of my book. It was just wonderful.”

She’s expecting her first grandchild soon. She anticipates frequent trips to the maze.

That’s exactly what Meany was hoping.

“I want to see some kids running through it gleefully like I did in the past,” he said. “It’s just a really cool thing.”