Ali Weinstein’s documentary captures the final year of Toronto’s celebrated Ontario Place, as the beloved provincial park is sectioned off for redevelopment while visitors keep showing up to walk its trails, enjoy the lake, or just check on the tomatoes they’re cultivating by the shore.
It’s unlikely there’s a single Torontonian who doesn’t have an opinion about Ontario Place. Either the massive waterfront park is a failed attraction, its historic buildings crumbling from years of neglect, or it’s a still-vibrant green space that’s been serving the public ever since it opened in 1971.
There’s no middle ground, which became very obvious in recent years as the provincial government leased a large section of the park to the European spa company Therme and a group of concerned citizens formed Ontario Place for All in the hopes of stopping the redevelopment.
Ali Weinstein’s Your Tomorrow, which takes its title from the park’s own mission statement, captures the final year of Ontario Place as we know it, shifting between the protest actions and the efforts of staff to keep Ontario Place going for what’s almost certainly its final hurrah. Through it all, ordinary people keep showing up to enjoy the park, to walk its trails, enjoy the lake, or check on the tomatoes they’re cultivating near the shore.
If this really is the end of Ontario Place, Weinstein captures it for posterity, demonstrating that the park was still doing exactly what it was designed to do for Canadians, and anyone else who stopped by: give them a place to stand, and a place to grow.
NORM WILNER
Content advisory: mature themes, coarse language
Screenings
Scotiabank 3
TIFF Lightbox 2
Scotiabank 9
Scotiabank 5