Last week, suddenly, the Ontario Science Centre was closed for good. It was already public knowledge that the science centre’s days were numbered. A backlog of repairs had been accumulating for many years, and the province had already announced plans to close the current facility and create a smaller centre as part of the Ontario Place redevelopment. The site of the current — or I guess we should now call it “original” — science centre is slated to be redeveloped into housing.
I suspect that others will write fuller and more heartfelt obituaries to the science centre. I do not count myself among its most passionate fans, but I do have fond memories and will miss it. It was a place I remember taking school trips to as a kid. And as a parent myself, living as I do in midtown Toronto, it was a place we often visited as a family. It was a perfect, fun, and accessible place to go when we needed to get the kids out of the house for a couple of hours. It was also a place where they could and did attend summer camps. It was visibly rundown in those more recent memories, which I found bleak, but the kids never failed to have a good time there, and I always enjoyed our visits. I’m a little bit sad that I won’t have a chance to make a final one.
I was planning to write a column today about infrastructure spending. It’s been a recent theme of mine, as readers may have noticed. But I’ll save the bulk of that for a future column. Suffice it to say, for our purposes today, that what happened to the science centre did not happen suddenly or without warning. Premier Doug Ford will get most of the blame and deserves much of it. The engineering report that underlined the rapid closure landed on his watch, and the buck stops with him. That’s what democracy is for.
But I will offer him this partial and extremely limited defence: it didn’t all go wrong on his watch. My frequent return visits to the centre began very early during the first full majority-government term of Liberal Kathleen Wynne. By the time she took office with her majority, her party had been in power for more than a decade. And it was during those visits that I first began to notice how decrepit and rundown the facility was.
It seems silly to recall this now, or at least hard to believe, but the science centre used to be something Ontarians were proud of. By the time I was a kid and visiting, it had lost a little bit of its original lustre, but I’ve heard from family members that it used to be a place where people hosted big events. I’ve heard of weddings, business functions, and other large personal and professional parties using it as a venue specifically because it was a cool place to go and an impressive setting.
I never had that impression of it when I was a kid visiting on school trips. But that might speak just to youthful attitudes. I can’t say for certain that the science centre ever stopped being a venue for fancy events, though I certainly don’t recall any in recent years.
And, honestly, that’s a waste. It could and should have been a pretty cool place. It’s in a rapidly growing part of the city, directly accessible by the often-mentioned Eglinton Crosstown, which, as I always take pains to note, will theoretically open someday. Indeed, one of the stations on that theoretical LRT line is named, wait for it, Science Centre. I guess that one will need to be reconsidered.
The location is in a fast-growing area, atop not one but two future mass-transit lines, and right on the border between affluent established neighbourhoods and booming communities full of new Canadians — it seems absurd the government would decide to give up on the science centre. And you can be certain that the government will feel the heat. Neighbourhood associations will be angry. The young workers who expected to have summer jobs there, and their families, will be angry. The families of children enrolled at summer camps there will be angry. There are already campaigns underway to reverse the decision and offers of donations to cover the emergency repair costs.
And we all know how well Ford copes with being the target of public backlash. So expect all the usual deflections and evasions of responsibility. I’d be shocked if Ford chooses to look with a steely gaze into the television cameras and say, “The responsibility is mine and mine alone.” It remains possible he’ll reverse himself, as he has so many times before. So by all means, keep on him whatever pressure you feel is warranted.
I’m simply asking you to remember that some of the public anger is better directed elsewhere. The closure of the science centre last week is a perfect real-world demonstration of that old saying I find myself thinking of so often these days, for so many different reasons: How did we go bankrupt? Gradually, then all at once.
The science centre fell apart gradually. It took many years and many premiers of different political affiliations, but that combined neglect, gradual as it seemed while it was happening, eventually and inevitably produced the sudden closure. There is plenty of blame to go around there, and we should spread it appropriately across all the politicians and parties that bear direct responsibility. But we should also save a healthy measure of it for ourselves, as voters. We are the ones entrusted to hold elected officials to a reasonable standard of behaviour. We haven’t done our job, which is ensuring that they remain fearful enough of our wrath to do a good job doing theirs.
We should remember that. I hope we do.
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