Ali Weinstein is the writer/producer/director behind “Your Tomorrow,” a look at Ontario Place the summer before it was shut down after 52 years. For over five decades a 155-acre Toronto waterfront sanctuary, it is being radically redeveloped. Gone are 850 West Island trees. Instead we get a spa with a killer view of Cinesphere.
In a moving, observational documentary, filmmaker Ali Weinstein captures the place in its final days as a full-on family retreat. Even after falling into disrepair, it was still treasured as a bird sanctuary and even a beach.
The documentary is rather personal for me. As a student, I worked there as a bus boy for three summers, 1972, ’73 and ’74. Out the front door of the West Island’s Blockhouse restaurant, between shifts clearing tables for two dollars an hour, I watched the CN Tower rise above the Toronto skyline.
It is still the best job I ever had and the one where I worked the hardest. Several high school pals joined me the last two years, including Dave Kerwin, Pat Bullock and a dozen or so of his brothers. Among the waitresses whose tables we cleared was Elaine Loring, who went on to a 20-year stint on Global, anchoring their Entertainment Desk.
You never knew whose tables you might clear. Several Toronto Argonauts, who played across the street at Exhibition Stadium, would stop by the Blockhouse, along with coach Leo Cahill, for a jug or three of draft and the french fries you were required to buy with your booze on a Sunday. I lost count of the number of draft beer steins I had to fish out of the West Island’s reflecting pool.
It never seemed possible back in those halcyon days of summer that Ontario Place would wind up, fifty years later, looking like an abandoned mall. Weinstein’s documentary, shot mainly during the park’s last active summer of 2023, throws a bright light on that reality. That West Island where I once worked was unrecognizable with The Blockhouse, the German pub Edelweiss and the other eateries all long gone. In its last decade, tall grass, a broken down log flume ride and lots of graffiti gave it more of an urban ghetto landscape look.
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Was the place purposefully left to rot? Every good movie needs a villain, and stepping into that role –quite by accident says Weinstein — is Ontario premiere Doug Ford. Claiming ownership for the province and cutting a 95-year lease deal with an Austrian company, his government hurried through a $2 billion makeover of the people’s waterfront oasis.
Does this jive with the original, utopian vision of the park as dedicated in 1971 by another conservative premiere, Bill Davis? Juxtaposing some carefully chosen archival footage, Weinstein’s doc would suggest not. It also reveals that there is some irony to Ford’s current profile on CNN and other American new outlets as Canada’s saviour in terms of standing up to land-grabbing government aggression.
You can hear Weinstein on the making of this doc by listening to her now at brioux.tv: the podcast, just a click away on the white arrow in the blue dot above. Then catch the premiere of Your Tomorrow on TVO March 23 or stream it even earlier on TVODocs starting March 21.
