Ontario Place fulfills key need
Ontario Place is a remarkable place.
Despite being poorly taken care of over the past decades, and having its main attractions shuttered in 2012, it still draws people. The 1971 landscape design and architecture remain unique and beautiful. World class, perhaps. Trillium Park, created on the east side of Ontario Place and opened in 2017, is a magnificent addition.
People walk and jog the perimeter path, they explore the semi-ruins of the old Wilderness Adventure ride, sit on the beach on the west island, and inhabit the other spaces in various ways. It’s summer so the marina is filled with boats, masts and riggings tinkling in the wind, and there’s chatter in the evening as people sit on their vessels. Couples make out on the old lake freighters that were filled with concrete to serve as breakwaters for the artificial islands.
There’s life and activity, in short. That’s important to remember as the provincial government proceeds with plans to redevelop the site. Last week, bids from three leading contenders were identified, including a European firm that builds large tourist spas. Throughout this government process there has been a sentiment to do something big, “world class” even — a phrase as elusive and meaningless as it is desperately aspirational.
Whether or not Torontonians will have much say in its future, presumably most of the people using the site now, remains to be seen.
The question of Ontario Place’s next life comes at a critical time for parks and parkland not just in Toronto, but Canada. Park People, an advocacy organization for parkland in Canadian cities, just released a report looking at the “trends, challenges and leading practices” in 27 cities across the country in five broad theme areas: nature, growth, collaboration, activation and inclusion. There’s a lot to dig into, but three top challenges were identified by cities across the country.
The first was keeping pace with growth. Toronto is no stranger to this, of course, and though we have a vast ravine system and some large parks, there’s a definite squeeze in many areas of the city. The need to be physically distant during the pandemic has revealed just how well-used the greenspaces we have are.
The report notes that Toronto is in a relatively good place, as it has a park master plan, the 20-year Parkland Strategy, along with a standalone biodiversity strategy.
The second and third big challenges across Canadian parks are related: aging infrastructure and insufficient operating budgets. Unless your local park has been recently rehabilitated, you can probably spot something in it that needs replacing.
One need only attempt to get to the Toronto Islands on a busy summer day on the elderly, if occasionally romantic, ferries to know that infrastructure needs constant updating to meet current demands.
Before the Ford government changed legislation, Section 42 of the Ontario Planning Act stipulated that large new developments either had to set aside five per cent of the site for parkland or the developer could provide cash-in-lieu to create a park nearby. It’s yet unproven if the new Community Benefits Charge will provide new space and funding, as the previous model did, to keep up with the city’s explosive growth.
Toronto has 2.7 hectares of parkland per 1,000 people, while Vancouver and Montreal have 2 and 2.6, respectively. Calgary has a whopping 6.6.
Overall, the operation budget for Toronto parks is $54 per person. Nearby, Hamilton is at $38, Mississauga spends $44 and Richmond Hill is at $41.
As for the other big cities in Canada reporting this data, for comparison, Vancouver is at $82, Calgary at $64 and Edmonton at $42. Montreal couldn’t provide budget data this year because of COVID, but last year reported $103 per person.
The numbers are interesting to think about, considering how much value they bring residents, and how often they are used. Although the report was largely prepared in preCOVID times, it includes a survey conducted last month that revealed parks are increasingly important to Canadians across the country.
Of the 1,600 polled, 87 per cent support increased funding to expand and improve parks as part of COVID-19 recovery, 82 per cent responded that parks have become more important to their mental health during the pandemic, and 70 per cent said their appreciation of parks has increased during this time.
Among other areas, the report covers is how amenities like washrooms make parks more inclusive for all people.
Although Toronto has opened some public washrooms, it’s routine to find others closed, or with limited hours, exacerbating a pre-COVID situation when there weren’t enough places to go, limiting the time people can spend in public. This isn’t a problem at Ontario Place. Even in winter, some of the vast, stadium-capacity washrooms are heated and open. An ideal situation, as these things go.
New uses need to be found for the historic modern structures and landscape, preserving them in the process, but this summer has proven Ontario Place as an open, public park fulfills some of the critical needs identified in the Park People report.