Duc Quang Buddhist Centre, Hamilton Road - London, Ontario - Buddhist Temples and Public Shrines on Waymarking.com

If the building wasn't there, you wouldn't know there was a Buddhist center in London. There isn't a direct website to go to about this building. However, the local newspaper did a piece on it. From the local paper:

As many times as you go by it, the sight is always a bit unexpected.
But there it is again, just around the bend, after you pass London’s Rectory Street heading east on Hamilton Road — a cluster of white marble Buddhas and what appears to be a giant pagoda under construction.
Part magnificent, part mess, the site has raised questions since it began emerging at the busy Hamilton-Egerton-Trafalgar intersection two years ago.
“Everybody wants to know what it is. I’ve had people ask me if it’s a Chinese Restaurant, people are always asking what it is,” said Jeff Greenwood, of Kohn Meat Market across from the site.

He tells them what he knows: It’s a Buddhist temple in the making.
Still not finished, the result of delays the project’s point man blames on broken contracts and zoning confusion, the Duc Quan Buddhist Centre is a spiritual home to about 20 Vietnamese Buddhists who pray there Sundays and 100 who come out for special feasts.
Plopped in the middle of a confusing intersection, it may seem an odd place for a temple. But the location is perfect, says monk Thich Chan Phap, who lives there with his black poodle, Tieuhac (Vietnamese for little black).
“The place was very holy — that’s why we wanted to make a Buddhist Temple here,” he says.
Before he started building his temple, funded by donations from the World Vietnamese Order, the site was home to Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church.
Chan began using the church to practice Buddhism in 2005.
When the 100-year-old building was razed in 2012, he decided to build a temple there for his small community.
Horns honking, engines revving — traffic chaos is never-ending outside the temple.
But inside, there’s soft drumming and the rhythmic, melodic chanting of a nun. Wearing brown and gold robes, her head shaved like Chan, she sits at an altar in a hall with eight-metre-high ceilings painted to look like the sky.
Open daily, the hall fills with about 20 worshippers on Sundays, said Chan. Facing a 285-centimetre Buddha, surrounded by several smaller ones, they pray for two hours before heading down to a basement kitchen to eat together.
Chan says his prayers have already taken their effect, to make life better at the notorious intersection.
“The traffic here, every day they have trouble,” said Chan, adding he’d often see crashes when he started worshipping at the site.
So he did what he does best: He prayed for peace and “a good life” for the neighbourhood.
“I prayed for the Buddha to help — no more accidents — and there were less and less and less,” he says.
Police, for the record, couldn’t immediately verify if there have been fewer crashes at the notorious intersection.
Chan, who’s lived in Canada since 1988, including in Toronto and Montreal, enlisted the help of the World Vietnamese Buddhist Order, through which Buddhists from around the globe have donated funds to help build the temple. It was supposed to be a $885,000 project when he began it in 2012.
Donations have also covered shipping costs for 18 marble sculptures out front, representing the followers of Buddha.
But Chan says there have been problems with contractors and city rules, and he’s out of money with about $200,000 worth of work left to do.
Community members volunteer daily to fix some of the problems in the temple. A congregation fundraiser is planned next month to help.
While the service and prayers are conducted in Vietnamese, Chan says the temple is open to the public.
“We don’t discriminate against anybody,” he says. “If people come here we give peace in their mind and they’ll be happy.”
But asked if he hopes for more members, he smiles and shrugs.
“If they want to come, they can come. If they don’t, that’s OK.”

Open to visitors?: Yes Photography Permitted Inside?: No Statue of the Buddha present?: Yes Related Website: [Web Link]

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