The report has it about right, but it nevertheless seems a
vast waste of time and energy.
The government of Ontario does not have the means to do what
it did in the early 1970s.
And, yes, even in the 1970s, transportation was a problem.
The original project was actually not well thought out.
I remember Ontario - read: Toronto - was desperate to
compete with Montreal after the World's Fair.
Indeed, a funny little-remembered anecdote recalls this.
Toronto had built some modernistic benches to contribute the
site of Montreal's fair.
They were not of a very nice design, with a chunky flat
wooden seat held by two large cement pyramids, whose points were above the
seat, on each end, not the sort of thing to invite sitting.
But at the end of Expo, Toronto went to the expense of
hauling them back from Montreal to place in some of its public sites. It seemed
genuinely petty.
It was just how provincial we were then.
Ontario Place, I'm sure, was conceived as Toronto's answer
back for the glamour of Expo.
When it first opened, it was pretty boring, architecture on
the lake with little to do.
The design of the pods sitting on the lake never made much
sense: when you walked around these structures, there was absolutely nothing
there, just structure to look at.
As they added attractions to the site, it began to generate
a following.
However, it was all heavily subsidized, and as charges for
things later climbed and as other attractions competed with it - new stuff at
the Island and Canada's Wonderland - and as transportation links were not good,
it withered on the vine.
Nothing has happened to change that situation, and the
government doesn't have the proverbial pot in which to piss
