Actually, it's less a matter of OSC *itself* inspiring architectural bad will in and of itself (which is a crock--though yes, the bottom building's basically a warehouse and the top building was monkeyed with in the 90s), as much as the champions of the move are implicitly or explicitly and opportunistically using hack anti-Brutalist sentiment in order to grease their anti-OSC argument. "Hey, folks: this is the same style as the Hudson's Bay Centre and all those other downtown bunkers you despise!"

I think it's a few things. Yes, clearly the exhibit building has no achitecture to speak of but even with what they did up top, the journey from the entry level across the bridge (when it was open) to the Great Hall and down as was still a unique creation which I would put in the same league as the pods and bridges. I just the latter is more picture-postcard friendly and so there's a lot of people, the kinds who don't hang out on UT, who don't understand the importance of what Moriayama did with the OSC because it's less "aesthetically pleasing," in a superficial fashoin.

Besides, if Ontario Place--the pods and sphere, I mean--were demolished, there really *aren't* presently any "facilities" to speak of that require moving uptown. And if there were, it'd probably involve effacing a good deal of the remaining original architectural integrity of OSC. So you'd be effed either way

Yeah, that's why I said my example didn't quite work :) But I still think the nature of your average person is to look at the Cinesphere and think it's cool and look at even the most impressive piece of Brutalism and be dismissive of it (and if we're talking about two equally great buildings, one in North York and one downtown, it likely goes without saying which one will get more attention.)
 
Can we get an eye roll emoticon on this forum?

I've already challenged you on this once before. When was anyone consulted on the fate of Osgoode Hall? When was anyone consulted on Ontario Place or the Ontario Science Centre? Show me the receipts.
I will pull the quote from the Ontario Line riverside online consultation in 2021 I think it was.
the Jimmie Simpson Park leader comes on and specifically and I quote, because it stays in my mind to this day, about how blatantly annoying nimby's have become. I might be able to grab the session recording by asking Metrolinx if you really want to reciepts

"if we as a community ask that you put the ontario line underground, will you do it? If not how can Metrolinx consider this a consultation"

This gets to the heart of what im saying, its why it just straight pisses me off because doing that would have cost almost another full billion dollars and 2 years of construction.
You were consulted on how the province can make things better for you. Riverside finally realized this 1.5 years later and asked for a noise wall design competition
That is what consultation means "how can we make this better for you"

Id like to turn this around now, Instead of me having to prove every time you think you weren't consulted, Can you show me the receipts of Metrolinx, Infrastructure Ontario or the Ontario Government using that definition above, refusing to consult with the community.

Or with memes:
tenor.png
 
How nice of you to completely ignore all of the examples in my post and bring up the one time there was a quasi public consultation, that I didn't bring up, specifically for that reason.

Perhaps next time you'll actually address the content of my post and not a strawman.

I'll ask you again:

When was the public consulted on Osgoode Hall, Ontario Place, or Ontario Science Centre?

The whole process has amounted to little more than the public being told "here's what's happening, if you don't like it, you can get stuffed". And if there exists an argument for doing that for a critical infrastructure project like the Ontario Line (I don't think democracy and rule of law should be suspended when it is convenient for you, but the OL is at least an important infrastructure project), there is no excuse whatsoever to unilaterally push these drastic changes for OP or OSC. It is a pure, undiluted vanity project, nothing more.
 
I will pull the quote from the Ontario Line riverside online consultation in 2021 I think it was.
the Jimmie Simpson Park leader comes on and specifically and I quote, because it stays in my mind to this day, about how blatantly annoying nimby's have become. I might be able to grab the session recording by asking Metrolinx if you really want to reciepts

"if we as a community ask that you put the ontario line underground, will you do it? If not how can Metrolinx consider this a consultation"

This gets to the heart of what im saying, its why it just straight pisses me off because doing that would have cost almost another full billion dollars and 2 years of construction.
You were consulted on how the province can make things better for you. Riverside finally realized this 1.5 years later and asked for a noise wall design competition
That is what consultation means "how can we make this better for you"

In point of fact, you're terribly confused about what consultation means.

Sure, one can consult only on the colour of the tile at the stations, and then say, "what do you mean you want no stations?"

That's not real consulting.

Yes, you can absolutely say, we're are uttterly immutable about whether this line will happen, and whether it will be above or below ground, and how long the platforms or the trains are, or whether our capacity calculations are correct, or the impact on potential HSR in the future................we're only here to talk about the shape and colour of the wall tile........

But is that really a good representation of the democratic ideal? Does it actually suggest an open mind on whether the best or most cost-effective solution has been arrived at?

I'm going to suggest to you that it does not. This isn't even an argument to rehash the merits of various choices. Rather, its a suggestion that Mx never seriously considered other choices, nor the merits of public critiques.

Your defense of that is offensive to many.
 
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Listen, I hope this forum really supports people who have differing opinions and not an echo chamber like reddit,
I do want to make myself clear here, This is my opinion, im not asking you to vote for me, I know im in the minority, Im not changing anyone's mind more than I doubt anyone can change mine.

I dont personally believe that if someone if slightly affected they should have a louder voice than the other millions of people who support that idea.
The idea that someone who lives beside a development should have a louder voice than those who live away from that project Is absurd to me,
Thats the basis of my ideal, Everyone should have the same voice

If the majority support a project then it should go through, Hell, id even argue that "consultations" go against that ideal.
Hell, maybe im arguing for direct democracy itself where everyone votes on every law/plan/government action

as for this
Does it actually suggest an open mind on whether the best or most cost-effective solution has been arrived at?
I dont think thats for you to decide, Thats for the public agency proposing the plan to the public. I read on reddit and elsewhere online, people calling Metrolinx litterally people from the lorax cutting down every tree possible.
How can you call into question intentions of a company that spent 2 years looking over a plan and refining it, when you found out about it and instantly went "wtf this sucks"
In the words of Captain Rex, "Experience outranks everything"

and for you t3g
when was the public consulted on Osgoode Hall, Ontario Place, or Ontario Science Centre?
Id prefer you prove the opposite but ok.
Osgoode Hall: metrolinx goes to community over a period of 2 years and asks hey were going to build this, what do you want. Instead of saying things like "tree protections" and "limited work hours" so they arent woken in the middle of the night by digging, they say "why havent you looked at alternative options, we need to see what you looked at before we allow this to go through". Metrolinx then does exactly that, they get that report showing their work, proving their work. They then go back on their word to metrolinx and launch lawsuits over metrolinx's refusal to outright cancel the project.
- metrolinx consulted, community didnt want consultation and were "suprise pikachu faced" when metrolinx went "ok no other objects to the project? good, moving forward"

Ontario Place: Pretty sure im repeating myself here, but i just straight disagree with your definition of consultation. The province has had multiple consultations, we have already changed the sand beach to a rocky beach because people asked for it during those consultations. Again, i dont much care for it, but some people want the rocky beach.

Ontario Science Center: I was skeptical at first, but now I reserve judgement until that previously mentioned business case is out, Again my ideal I mentioned above "if theyve spent years on this trying to figure it out, you have to trust them". Consultation in this case would be "which exhibits should stay exactly the same?" and "what should we add to make it better". All decided in the future.

Again, i dont expect anyone to agree with me, im just throwing my opinions out there because this is a public forum
 
I think it's a few things. Yes, clearly the exhibit building has no achitecture to speak of but even with what they did up top, the journey from the entry level across the bridge (when it was open) to the Great Hall and down as was still a unique creation which I would put in the same league as the pods and bridges. I just the latter is more picture-postcard friendly and so there's a lot of people, the kinds who don't hang out on UT, who don't understand the importance of what Moriayama did with the OSC because it's less "aesthetically pleasing," in a superficial fashoin.



Yeah, that's why I said my example didn't quite work :) But I still think the nature of your average person is to look at the Cinesphere and think it's cool and look at even the most impressive piece of Brutalism and be dismissive of it (and if we're talking about two equally great buildings, one in North York and one downtown, it likely goes without saying which one will get more attention.)

Actually, the *real* "problem", public-impression-wise, with OSC relative to Ontario Place has nothing to do with a Brutalist aesthetic, but with how, thanks to the valley setting, the primary photogenic aspects are hidden from common public view unless you're actually within the complex. Whereas w/Ontario Place it's "plain and simple" to the casual passerby. What the non-paying-admission public presently sees of OSC is basically the 90s-Zeidlerized frontage--and even when that had its Moriyama integrity, it presented a comparatively discreet, ground-hugging, fountain-and-greenery-shielded presence that wasn't, to the Don Mills-travelling passerby, "in your face". So one could say that as "monstrous carbuncles" go, it wasn't "carbuncular" *enough*--unlike, say, Robarts Library.

In fact, OSC has *always* been, in its own right, "picture postcard friendly"--the trouble is, the postcards in general are either aerial-view or focussed upon the "trillium" middle building, not aspects the common passerby see. (And the same aerial-view-friendly, valley-rather-than-street-elevation focus plagues that other 60s Brutalist opus in Toronto, John Andrews' Scarborough College. And even from within the valley, you can't really see it unless you come close because of all the forest and foliage. Which is as it should be; like, you don't clearcut the setting of FLW's Fallingwater to make it "visible".)

However, when it comes to "the importance of what Moriyama did": it isn't so much that, especially in our Doors Open age, that's inherently *lost* on people--rather, that it's being deliberately suppressed by those championing the move, who just want to present it as an old and dated facility that's had its day. Like they might as well be allowing the comparatively dispensable 90s frontage to guide the narrative here. (And "Brutalist-bashing" as a fallback in case anyone seeks to dig deeper)

And remember that the Ford gov't's tried that "deliberate suppression" tactic before--like, when this whole Ontario Place redevelopment pipe dream started, deliberately removing the province's "heritage page" on OP (and being called out for it once a concerned community member recovered it via the internet archive). Or their whole handling of the Dominion Foundry issue. Sort of like, bully-boy kicking under the table and "Heritage? What heritage? I don't see any heritage here."

But actually, re the whole 90s frontage vs original Moriyama elements thing--when you *really* think of it, maybe, especially these days, the kinds of casual Ford-voting Joe Blow demos either don't know the difference, or don't care? When they visit OSC, they disconnect *altogether* from any space-and-time conception of the architecture; other than generic notions of relative "datedness", what's of 1969 or of 1999 is lost on them. It's all just a readymade "package", maybe a bit more hifalutin but in the end little different from the sardine tin at Yonge & Dundas that contains Little Canada.

Maybe *that's* what Ford's banking on--and it might as well be the way *he*, with his professed Joe Average values, rolls.

But it's also a way that I find to be characteristic of cohorts that grew up conditioned within, shall I say, a Canada's Wonderland age--a different scale of stimulation. And I sometimes even see it innocently reflected in comments on UT, and it seems more "naturalized" among younger cohorts--like, there's something about the DoFo born-in-1964 perspective that might as well be born in 1994 instead, unless it reflects how the born-in-1994's were born to Generation DoFo and thus, either directly or by peer proxy, don't know better.

Thus when it comes to reverential memories of Ontario Place, I find that (DoFo cases aside) those who experienced it in the 70s, even as young Children's Village types, bring more of a "civic consciousness" to their nostalgia and fond memories--they're the ones who, even as children back then, intuitively "felt" the Zeidler-and-Hough idealism in their bones. Whereas to those whose nostalgia and memories are more recent, their fond memories are more front-loaded upon the Soak City-type kiddie attractions, to the point where you barely notice any Zeidler/Hough there. IOW Millennial Ontario Place nostalgia as more along the lines of Canada's Wonderland nostalgia--and unlike OP or OSC, Canada's Wonderland is strictly about corporatized "entertainment", always has been, capital-A Architecture is beside the point (even more so than w/earlier theme parks like Disneyland/Disney World, where there's always been more of a foundational World's Fair operating idealism), and if the property's owners decide to sell the site for redevelopment, it's all just the cycle of life even if the not-unjustifiably fond memories never die.

Which I think also relates to changing approaches to parenting--that is, in the 70s, kids were more "along for the parental ride", junior spectators in tow much as they'd be in family trips to the mall, walking the grocery and department-store aisles with Mom & Dad. Whereas subsequently things became more "child-focused"--sort of like depositing the kids in a Kiddieland while Mom & Dad went about their business; or even reversing the dynamic so that it's the parents "along for the kiddie ride" instead.

The unfortunate thing there is how it can turn childhood into a ADHD-massaging cultural silo, with very little meaningful, unmediated "bleed" from the adult world. Thus the vacuumland element of an Ontario Place visit excessively frontloaded upon the kiddie attractions with negligible relationship to the original OP idealism--like the junior version of the Molson Amphitheatre/Bud Stage squatting upon the OP Forum site: just a "facility", whereas the Forum aspired to "something higher". (And tellingly, the original Ford Gov't redevelopment scheming for OP left the Bud Stage alone--true, as an independently-operating cash cow, but also in a way that tells you where this gov't's values lie.)
 
And let's also not forget the government in charge beyond even such terms of foot-in-the-door thuggishness--that is, within present-day right-of-centre aesthetic-think-tank circles, it's *very* fashionable to ideologically hyperbolize the hatred of Brutalism where convenient. The Ford gov't might not be motivated by bringing back "traditional architectural values" a la far-right politicos elsewhere; but you can be sure that they're prepared to deploy the word "Brutalism" as a dirty word akin to "Socialism". Just drill it into people's heads that this is a Brutalist building, and that "people don't like Brutalism", and voila, they'll be fine with getting rid of it--that's the operating logic.

And they might claim; hey, you woke lefties have been doing the same brainwashing-the-masses-in-the-name-of-cancellation trick with Sir John A. and Ryerson.

 
Interesting news:


"City staff confirmed to the Star that, under the terms of the lease on the ravine land on which the Science Centre sits, the Ontario government can raze the building — but it can only rebuild another science centre."

When I read this line I immediately heard the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" music playing in my head.
 
But it's also a way that I find to be characteristic of cohorts that grew up conditioned within, shall I say, a Canada's Wonderland age--a different scale of stimulation. And I sometimes even see it innocently reflected in comments on UT, and it seems more "naturalized" among younger cohorts--like, there's something about the DoFo born-in-1964 perspective that might as well be born in 1994 instead, unless it reflects how the born-in-1994's were born to Generation DoFo and thus, either directly or by peer proxy, don't know better.

Thus when it comes to reverential memories of Ontario Place, I find that (DoFo cases aside) those who experienced it in the 70s, even as young Children's Village types, bring more of a "civic consciousness" to their nostalgia and fond memories--they're the ones who, even as children back then, intuitively "felt" the Zeidler-and-Hough idealism in their bones. Whereas to those whose nostalgia and memories are more recent, their fond memories are more front-loaded upon the Soak City-type kiddie attractions, to the point where you barely notice any Zeidler/Hough there. IOW Millennial Ontario Place nostalgia as more along the lines of Canada's Wonderland nostalgia--and unlike OP or OSC, Canada's Wonderland is strictly about corporatized "entertainment", always has been, capital-A Architecture is beside the point (even more so than w/earlier theme parks like Disneyland/Disney World, where there's always been more of a foundational World's Fair operating idealism), and if the property's owners decide to sell the site for redevelopment, it's all just the cycle of life even if the not-unjustifiably fond memories never die.

Which I think also relates to changing approaches to parenting--that is, in the 70s, kids were more "along for the parental ride", junior spectators in tow much as they'd be in family trips to the mall, walking the grocery and department-store aisles with Mom & Dad. Whereas subsequently things became more "child-focused"--sort of like depositing the kids in a Kiddieland while Mom & Dad went about their business; or even reversing the dynamic so that it's the parents "along for the kiddie ride" instead.

The unfortunate thing there is how it can turn childhood into a ADHD-massaging cultural silo, with very little meaningful, unmediated "bleed" from the adult world. Thus the vacuumland element of an Ontario Place visit excessively frontloaded upon the kiddie attractions with negligible relationship to the original OP idealism--like the junior version of the Molson Amphitheatre/Bud Stage squatting upon the OP Forum site: just a "facility", whereas the Forum aspired to "something higher". (And tellingly, the original Ford Gov't redevelopment scheming for OP left the Bud Stage alone--true, as an independently-operating cash cow, but also in a way that tells you where this gov't's values lie.)

First thing, regarding Ontario Place, I do think what you are saying is rather offensive to those who experienced as "Millennials" who you are trying to vilify. Ontario Place clearly had a different vibe and approach in the 1990s then it did in the 20-aughts. Most Millennials who went as kids would have experienced Ontario Place as it was in the 1990s, with the original concepts like the Children's Village and Water play area still being there. While the Pods didn't have any educational exhibits anymore, they were at least used for attraction space, the Nintendo Power Pod, the LEGO Discovery Pod, and a Laser show in another pod.

As for a kid who played in the children's village back in the 1970s versus someone like myself who went in there during the 1990s, I don't think we as children really understood the Zeidler vibe entirely, it was merely just a fun place to play full of punching bags and cargo nets. A bunch of tube slides and what else. The visions of Zeidler's architecture I never caught on at all as an impressionable 7 year old in the Summer of '95.


I'm not sure what you're rant on Wonderland and it causing ADHD has to do with all of this. There are a few outright problems with this. I do have a soft spot for the theme park industry, and I know quite a bit of history about how amusement parks came to be. The reason why they are usually referred to as "parks" despite the modern image of them being a totally developed image full of rides, because the earliest such amusement places with rides were literally in parks. Cedar Point in Northern Ohio, regarding ride quality usually considered one of the best or the best in the world for rides, started out simply as a park at first. Eventually rides were slowly added, first with a log flume and then other rides. The point being, this place was a place for amusement, it wasn't a World's Fair type concept you are trying to get at it Disneyland or "Disney World". (which is actually 4 different parks but we'll get to that later) You can think of early Cedar Point as being an almost Centreville type place, Centreville doesn't have an admission barrier or front gate, it's just a bunch of rides within a park.

Toronto's long lost amusement parks, Sunnyside and Hanlan's Point were like how we see Wonderland today, places for amusement first, and this was long before the "ADHD cultural silo" of us evil millennials that you are adamantly against. As for early theme parks, I think by a "World's Fair" type model, you are thinking mostly of the Epcot theme park at Disney World I think. You could argue very loosely that the Tomorrowland section of Disneyland originally wanted to have that vibe but it doesn't really. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A theme park usually had that name because the amusement park itself was based around a theme or several themes. Such as with the case with Disneyland, there was the entry area called Main Street USA which was kind of like a hub space, and four other themed areas, Frontierland, Adventureland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. The Magic Kingdom, the original theme park in Disney World in Florida is heavily based on the original Disneyland theme park. Again, as I said, Epcot was more of the World's Fair ideal that you speak of.

A quick history lesson regarding Wonderland, the company that built Wonderland, Taft Broadcasting, was that who built Kings Island who were clearly inspired by Disneyland. In Cincinnati, there was a riverfront amusement park called Coney Island (originally named Coney Island West as not to confuse it with the place in Brooklyn it wanted to be like) and it often flooded, so the owners decided to move north and establish a new place for their park in Kings Mills, OH. Thus the new name for the park was decided by combining the new municipality with the old name of the park to create Kings Island. This park, instead of Main Street USA which Disneyland had, opted for International Street, and thus it's centrepiece was a 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, buildings designed and originally featuring products from the architectural style of the buildings, I can't remember the four buildings which makes up KI's International Street, but one is the German building. The rest of the park had different themes, such as Hanna-Barbera Land,, Oktoberfest, Coney Mall (an area trying to recapture the original vibe of Coney Island and even had a lot of the same rides which were moved up from there), and Rivertown. Other than International Street, the rest of the park didn't have really a world's fair vibe.

Now that brings us to when Taft wants to open its third park, they built another one from scratch outside Richmond, VA with a similar layout called Kings Dominion, and thus had their eyes on building one in what we now call the GTA. it too would have an International Street, but instead of an Eiffel Tower, they opted for a man made mountain, Wonderland's I-Street would have an Alps building, Scandinavian building, Mediterranean building, and Latin American building. Originally there was heavy theming for the stuff inside these four buildings, but it sort of waned over the years. More on that in a second. Wonderland's themed areas were to be Hanna-Barbera Land, Medieval Faire, Grande World Exposition of 1890 (yes, a section that was supposed to be a World's Fair in 1890) and Frontier Canada (which was never actually built as intended). So yeah, Wonderland which you blame so much, actually had two arguable design elements of a World's Fair type place, the World Expo section of the park and International Street. What happened to this theming, you can mostly blame Paramount for that, they killed the theming of the park by placing rides after movies which didn't fit in with themed areas whatsoever. In recent years, there has been a mild push to try to reclaim some of the theming, at least in Medieval Faire, but it's a start.

That's my rant on this topic, I just wanted to point out that amusement parks have always been well for amusement, how Ontario Place slowly became one is a bit different. But I think it's a total cop out for you to blame ADHD on the existence of Wonderland.
 
As for my more personal thoughts on Therme now, I do like the concept of the park in theory, I'm sure most of us do, but I've always thought such an attraction, something I've floated back in my mind for many years would be better suited for Downsview Park, now especially since it's been said the Ontario Science Centre is moving on the grounds. Honestly, the Science Centre would be better for something the size of Therme and it could have some unique natural exhibits on the space as well.

The idea what I had for Downsview Park was something along the lines of "Tropical Islands" in Germany, a sort of indoor tropical resort that's in a former hangar. The argument someone hear posted about the consultation regarding Ontario plants in Therme rather than tropical plants kind of makes sense when it's called Ontario Place. This made me think that such a tropical indoor waterpark is more better suited for somewhere else.

But my Downsview Park idea was to transform the space there to an entertainment space, with an indoor NFL stadium being part of the complex (yes, a pipe dream, but I'd only entertain building such a place if the league went through with its plan to instantly expand to 40 teams) With the NFL stadium and indoor waterpark to be the anchors of this place, it's got everything you need up there, subway, GO transit, and relatively easy accessibility by vehicle.


The real fish out of water if Therme wasn't in Ontario Place and the Science Centre was, is the existence of the Molson Amphitheatre, to be fair it's kind of in an unusual setting if the area around it are public parks and institutional attractions.
 
They test marked the NFL here a few years ago and couldn’t give the tickets away! No one outside the US seems to really care so I wouldn’t even consider it a pipe dream. Sorry! Now how about a cricket stadium?!
 
They test marked the NFL here a few years ago and couldn’t give the tickets away! No one outside the US seems to really care so I wouldn’t even consider it a pipe dream. Sorry! Now how about a cricket stadium?!
The last of the games in that series happened 10 years ago, and I can mention many reasons why that series was a flop, but that’s worthy of its own thread.

You’d be surprised how popular the NFL is among the current demographics of Toronto. You’ve seen my age in the posts and I’m a student of engineering and thus often interact with the younger crowd. Among them, by the amount of gear seen worn and topics of interest, the Raptors are the most popular of Toronto teams with many wearing blue jays hats. You see almost no Leafs gear, let alone Argos gear.

I mean I occasionally go to Argos games, you usually see the vast majority of attendees to be baby boomers, and the CFL brand has no relevance to younger people in the city today.

Ask a younger person to name CFL teams, or even the rules that are different from the NFL and they’d be shocked, then ask them how many NFL teams they know, there is clearly latent interest in the NFL here. A Toronto team would be 75,000 strong in Downsview Park on any given Sunday.
 
We're really going off on tangents in some respects here but a few random points in no particular order:

-The failure of the Buffalo Bills games at Rogers Centre neither proved nor disproved the viability of a Toronto NFL franchise in its own stadium.

-As to this whole amuseument park debate... I don't think we have to get overly sociological. Wonderland is a particular kind of thing and Ontario Place is a different thing. By sometimes in the mid-80s, Ontario Place had kind of outlasted its original intent and it got caught in between trying to find a new purpose. One thing they tried was to be, not-quite Wonderland but definitely a bit in that direction, with stuff like the wilderness ride and upgraded water park. But it was pretty half-hearted. Whether that blame should fall on the government(s) or the people who ran the park is inside baseball I don't know. But the park did try a lot of things and it did ultimately fail.

-That said, they created an amazing space with a lot of potential. It was a failure of governance and marketing, I suppose but it lasted probably a full generation after its raison d'etre had expired and it tried to be too many things to too many people.

-There may be some indirect things to say about video games and more generally how the culture changed (I think you could really say that about the Science Centre, which kind of went from ahed to behind the tech curve) but ultimately Ontario Place was never supposed to compete with Wonderland or Centreville (basically kiddie wonderland). It was meant to be like Expo 67 but as the name implies, Expo was not meant to be a permanent fair. The facilities that are still in Montreal from Expo have been substantially repurposed (including, gasp, a casino).

-Children's Village was not a Zeidler creation. It was designed by the very interesting Eric McMillan

For my part, I feel pretty lucky to have visited the OSC and OP in their primes. I enjoyed both places in more recent years too but we haven't doen enough to keep these places where they should be.
 
-As to this whole amuseument park debate... I don't think we have to get overly sociological. Wonderland is a particular kind of thing and Ontario Place is a different thing. By sometimes in the mid-80s, Ontario Place had kind of outlasted its original intent and it got caught in between trying to find a new purpose. One thing they tried was to be, not-quite Wonderland but definitely a bit in that direction, with stuff like the wilderness ride and upgraded water park. But it was pretty half-hearted. Whether that blame should fall on the government(s) or the people who ran the park is inside baseball I don't know. But the park did try a lot of things and it did ultimately fail.

-That said, they created an amazing space with a lot of potential. It was a failure of governance and marketing, I suppose but it lasted probably a full generation after its raison d'etre had expired and it tried to be too many things to too many people.

-There may be some indirect things to say about video games and more generally how the culture changed (I think you could really say that about the Science Centre, which kind of went from ahed to behind the tech curve) but ultimately Ontario Place was never supposed to compete with Wonderland or Centreville (basically kiddie wonderland). It was meant to be like Expo 67 but as the name implies, Expo was not meant to be a permanent fair. The facilities that are still in Montreal from Expo have been substantially repurposed (including, gasp, a casino).

-Children's Village was not a Zeidler creation. It was designed by the very interesting Eric McMillan

For my part, I feel pretty lucky to have visited the OSC and OP in their primes. I enjoyed both places in more recent years too but we haven't doen enough to keep these places where they should be.
Bingo, at least that’s what I was kind of trying to articulate. Ontario Place wasn’t meant to be the successor to Hanlan’s Point or Sunnyside’s Amusement Park, it was as you said it’s own thing.

However, what was actually on the West Island before the Wilderness Adventure Island and Ontario North?

In my personal opinion which I posted back on KI Central, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, I thought the Children’s Village was initial catalyst that eventually set Ontario Place into amusement park mode. The original water area came after the children’s village right, a few years after? That’s to say, the blue and pink water slides which were there for a long time, do you know how long? There’s clearly no educational value in those water slides, that’s clearly for amusement purposes. It’s fair to say that there was no turning back after a certain point, when do you think this was, mid 80s?

I’d be fascinated to know if someone knows year by year what got added and removed to Ontario Place.

But as I said time and time again, OP in the 80s and 90s was more set around “doing” rather than “riding” for the most part.
 

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