They don’t make fun like they used to
red-striped white socks and pale, skinny bare legs poking out of short-shorts. My mother agrees that it appears to be me.
But, if it isn’t, it could have been: This place was real, and children of my generation had it to romp in. And we did.
“What would I, as a child, like to do,” the playground’s designer, Eric McMillan, told HuneBrown. And that philosophy turned into a park that featured things lots of children did like to do. As the Local piece goes on to say, McMillan turned into a bit of an international playground-design superstar for a moment there.
I won’t rehash Hune-Brown’s whole wonderful piece — I’ll just recommend you read it, to revel in the memories if you are lucky enough to have been there, or marvel at what was if you weren’t. When it was published last week, it inspired a wave of happy memories on social media that — like my introduction above, expressing both remembered joy and some level of astonishment that this place could ever have been real.
Part of this is just pure sentimental nostalgia, obviously. Those good old days sure were good, weren’t they! They don’t make ’em like they used to!
But they really don’t make ’em like that anymore, and maybe we should, so our own kids can have good old days as fun as those ones. Maybe, with modern fears about safety and hyper-programming of kids’ activities, something like that just doesn’t fit in today’s world.
But there’s also a bit of mournfulness that comes because Ontario Place is currently in a long-suspended state of redevelopment planning.
And most of us can feel fairly certain that whatever they build down there won’t be half as good as what we had back then.
“What would I, as a child, like to do.” You could do worse as a starting point for planning a playground, and our provincial and city officials could do worse than adopting a similar philosophy. Leave the developers and lobbyists and various other self-interested hucksters outside for a while — heck, even put aside practical concerns to start the brainstorming process — and ask, “what would we, as residents, like to do.” Then begin adapting that wish into practical reality.
It’s a dream, I know. Like something conjured from a child’s idealized memories. But strolling down Children’s Village memory lane shows that at least occasionally, it’s a kind of dream that has at least sometimes been made into reality.