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Decommissioned power station in Toronto, Canada

The Richard L. Hearn Generating Station (named after Richard Lankaster Hearn) is a decommissioned electrical generating station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The plant was originally fired by coal, but later converted to burn natural gas. The plant has been described as "Pharaonic in scale", and encompasses 650 thousand cubic metres of space—large enough to fit 12 Parthenons inside. The plant is located at 440 Unwin Avenue in Toronto's Port Lands area, directly south of the foot of Carlaw Avenue, across the shipping channel and next to the recently opened Portlands Energy Centre. The Richard L. Hearn Generating Station, together with the nearby Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant sewage sludge incinerator stack and the Commissioners Street waste incinerator stack, stand as towering landmarks of a bygone industrial era in the Portlands area of Toronto (all three facilities are no longer in operation, but their towering smokestacks still stand). The property was sold to Studios of America in 2018.

The R. L. Hearn Generating Station was the site of Canada's first 100 MW steam turbo generator set. The station sits in what was once Ashbridge's Bay, a shallow marsh that was filled in with rubble from downtown construction sites from 1911 to 1950s. The station was officially opened on October 26, 1951, by Leslie Frost, Premier of Ontario, with the first two units in service. Four units were in operation by 1953. The plant originally burned coal which was transported on ships through the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The station was designed by Stone & Webster. The turbine generators were built by Parsons in England and the boilers were made in Canada by Babcock & Wilcox (Cambridge, Ontario) and Combustion Engineering (Montreal, Quebec). Construction on the station was not even finished in the 1950s when Hydro officials and the government began to talk about phasing out the plant with nuclear power and closing it. The early years were marked by difficult labour relations and several near strikes. Several unions were involved in conflicts with management and each other during the life of the station. The R. L. Hearn station was one of the founding locals of the Canadian Union of Operating Engineers and General Workers (CUOE Local 100) in 1960.

The Richard L. Hearn plant reached full capacity of for the first time on March 22, 1961. At full load the boilers burned about 400 tonnes of coal per hour, and the turbines and other equipment required about 36 million gallons of cooling water from Lake Ontario per hour. Total construction cost was The turbine hall was almost 300 metres long and was an impressive sight, viewed from the visitor gallery on the west side of the plant where the offices were located. Units 1–4 (100 MW) had one turbine generator each. The 200 MW units (5–8) had two turbine generators per unit—an arrangement called tandem cross compound—so there were a total of 12 turbine generator sets in the turbine hall. At the peak of the R. L. Hearn's operation in the 1960s the station employed up to 600 people. Many Ontario Hydro (later Ontario Power Generation) operators, maintainers, technicians and professionals began their careers, and were trained at the station and then went on to work at other plants and Ontario's CANDU nuclear stations. The station at first had four smaller chimneys, one for each of the four boilers. The construction of the four 200 MW units added four more chimneys. The last three were a bit taller than the first five. The eight short chimneys were a source of air pollution in local neighborhoods and downtown Toronto and also fly ash and other particulates. The station contributed to Toronto's smog problem. The eight chimneys were demolished and electrostatic precipitators were added for the 200 MW units when the large smokestack was built. The new single tall smokestack was built in response to pressure to reduce smog in Toronto by the emerging environmental movement in the late 1960s. It stands 215 metres tall and was one of the tallest in the world, costing $9 million when it was completed in 1971. Air pollution in Toronto from the station was greatly reduced and the area around the plant became known as a good fishing and recreation spot.

The nearly abandoned plant attracted photographers and urban explorers who published their work on websites and in photography exhibits in recent years. On June 15, 2008, Ryan Nyenhuis, an urban explorer trespassing in the plant fell three storeys into a coal chute, and was trapped for three hours when he became pinned under a steel plate. He suffered serious injuries and died two days later in hospital. During the 1990s the Hearn Generating Station was used as a filming location in many Canadian television productions, including Goosebumps (it served as the Dark Falls Chemical Factory on the Season 2 episode Welcome to Dead House), Once a Thief and Animorphs. It was usually used to substitute as an industrial factory because of its basic industrial appearance and its iconic tall smokestack. This trend decreased in the early 2000s but the generating station still appears on TV from time to time, including in 12 Monkeys from 2015 to 2018 as Raritan Valley National Laboratory, the home of a time machine in a post apocalyptic world. In 2010, the station was used as the backdrop for the climactic scene of the movie RED, other scenes of which were shot in the Toronto area. In 2018, the station was also used for a location shoot for the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Brother". Additionally, it was used as a film location for Shazam! (film). Furthermore, the station was also used as a filming location for Disney Channel original films (DCOM) Zombies 2, known formally in the Disney trilogy as Seabrook Power and is where the musical number 'Flesh & Bone' takes place. On June 5, 2014, the building was used for the Toronto Luminato Festival Big Bang Bash, their 2nd annual fundraising gala. It also featured the Yves Saint Laurent Opening Night Party later that evening. In 2015 the building was used for UNSOUND hosted by Luminato Festival. In 2016 Luminato Festival used the building for its festival hub where Sunn O))) performed for the first time.