[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s aging Ontario Place on cusp of mini-revival as it hosts dual festival"

[rfmcdonald]

I'm entirely in favour of this, as reported by James Adams in The Globe and Mail.

The site, opened in May, 1971, after more than two years of construction, was the brainchild of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government which, like the rest of Canada, had been enamoured of what Montreal had wrought on the St. Lawrence River with its fabled Expo ’67. The Tories were keen to have something equally far-out and futuristic for Toronto and Ontar-i-ar-i-ar-i-o.

Funny thing about the future, though: it gets old; it gets scuffed; it gets weedy. Or at least its emblems do. What once seemed the very incarnations of the future – at Ontario Place, this would be the geodesic Cinesphere, the pods-on-stilts structures on the centre island and the diamond-shaped pavilions on its west island – become, over time, the fodder of nostalgia, saying more about the era in which they were conceived than what they seemed to portend.

Which perhaps, in part, explains why, after additions and fixes, including a $10-million refurbishment in 2010, then sundry redevelopment and enhancement proposals, Ontario’s Liberal government closed Ontario Place in February, 2012, and punted its future into, well … the future.

Now, however, the site appears on the cusp of a mini-revival, or at least the six hectares that make up the complex’s western island are. Beginning Sept. 15, the former amusement park site is going to host the first In/Future art festival and the 15th annual Small World Music Festival.

A symbiotic exercise, the dual festival is set to run over 11 days and feature at least 60 art installations, indoors and out, plus more than 45 performers appearing in concert and wandering the locale.