CAMERON BAILEY

My sister Maxine and I landed from Barbados in 1971. We’d been apart from our parents for four years, living with grandparents as one small slice of a vast trans-Atlantic migration that linked the Caribbean, Great Britain and Canada. We were strangers to our mother, and strangers to our new home. One summer weekend, our mother took us to Ontario Place. It was like stepping into the future. We did everything: the boats, the food, the games. But it was when we stepped into the Cinesphere and watched the pioneering IMAX film North of Superior that I was truly awed by the scope and beauty of this place. I never forgot that experience, and every time I sit in the dark, dwarfed by a big screen, I can recall myself as a dazzled newcomer to Ontario. Cameron Bailey is the artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival.