Wall built to hide work at Ontario Place is a great place to mock it
It’s the Great Wall of Ontario.
Installed as construction of the Therme spa project began, the wall that conceals the Ontario Place redevelopment has actually become a place where a very public argument plays out.
Considering that Ontario Place was created as a celebration of all things Ontario, it’s perhaps fitting that the protest against the spa is just as bold.
At first the construction barrier was made of tall wooden boards painted matte black that stretched along Lake Shore Boulevard for hundreds of metres. It may not have occurred to the wall builders that it looked an awful lot like a giant chalkboard — an invitation if there ever was one.
It soon became absolutely covered in chalk messages, all with the same underlying message: save Ontario Place. Some were overtly political, taking aim at the public cost of the privatization in terms of money and open space, while others simply celebrated the beauty of the place: drawings of trees, animals, people.
It was like the lyrics of “A Place to Stand,” the Ontario theme song written a few years before Ontario Place opened (for the Expo 67 Ontario pavilion) served as inspiration: “A place to live / For you and me / With hopes as high / As the tallest tree.” Some might scoff that the lyrics are earnest and hokey now, but they represented the official sentiment of the province back then — one led by a Progressive Conservative government — and the wall protest now embodies the same sentiment. How wonderfully “Ontari-ari-ari-o!”
Close up, people could read dozens, perhaps hundreds of chalk messages. From a car, it turned a rather ugly, hulking thing into a beautiful, colourful protest. That these messages were impossible for passing motorists to ignore has some irony.
Nearly a year ago while being interviewed on “CBC Metro Morning,” Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma revealed some of her understanding of the site came from a distance. “I believe that Ontario Place has been sitting there, no one has been going there,” Surma said. “Since becoming a minister, and even before that, I have been going to Ontario Place. I drive by it frequently, and it’s not enjoyed. I think people drive by or walk by the site and think, ‘What a shame we left it to deteriorate.’ ”
A drive by reveals very little of how well Ontario Place was used. Those who actually visited — went in, rather than by — know better. April is when we start to stretch our spring and summer muscles on the intermittent days where the sun shines and the temperature is warm. A year ago on these beautiful days, the west island of Ontario Place would have been busy with people.
The messages on the wall said as much, and the government responded by washing them off — only to see them return. The back and forth continued, with much effort expended both ways. Visiting last weekend, I found a few hundred metres of the wooden, chalked wall had been taken down, reinstalled with a chain-link fence and fabric backing, all of it preventing new messages from going up.
Worse, the new fence blocked the multi-use path, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to squeeze along a narrow, uncomfortable detour. The lakeshore trail is the expressway of human-powered transit and extremely busy, so the lack of care here is typical of how this project treats public space. The two pedestrian bridges crossing Lake Shore Boulevard are also closed.
Other parts of the wall have now been covered with a photo mosaic of images from across Ontario. The blackboard is gone, but even with the visual busyness, protests are being registered by Sharpie pen and fluorescent orange tape. One reads “LIES,” another “A Place to Stand NO Place to Grow, Ontario-ariari-o.”
There’s even a message about the conspicuous lack of images in the mosaic showing the spa itself. Funny, you’d think the Ford government would be proud of what they’re giving to — or forcing onto — Ontario.
There’s a deep weirdness to the whole Ontario Place saga. The elaborate theatre around the wall is just one chapter. Take a step back and the absurdity is stark.
There’s the vague business case made by the government and the rather secret process in how the Therme deal came about. There’s the great cost to Ontario taxpayers in getting the site ready for the spa. There’s the loss of well-used public space. There’s the fact that the spa could happily and uncontroversially be placed in numerous cheaper, already serviced sites around the GTA.
In March, Ontario Place For All, the citizens group trying to prevent the spa, won a small legal victory to allow a judicial review of the project and process, something the Ford government was trying to stop. Another chapter begins.
Through all of this weirdness, all of this political turmoil, the Ford government continues to pound away at this project.
You have to ask, “Ontari-ari-arioh-why?”