The Doug Ford government has given Torontonians an unexpected gift — the longest blackboard in Canada, and possibly the world. It stretches for some 800 metres along the Martin Goodman Trail on the south side of Lake Shore Boulevard, shielding the ongoing construction at Ontario Place from prying eyes. (The longest reported rival blackboard, at Shinjuku Train Station in Japan, was a mere 14 metres long.)
The eight-foot-high plywood hoarding has been painted jet black, and is perfect for chalk. Every weekend since mid-December citizens have been busy writing protest messages, posting photos, and making chalk drawing of some of the 192 species of birds and wildlife observed at Ontario Place, including 15 listed in the Endangered Species Act, such as the bank swallow, barn swallow, chimney swift, eastern meadowlark, eastern wood-pewee, horned grebe, least bittern, and northern map turtle.
Every Monday morning, crews (paid with taxpayers’ dollars) are dispatched to scrub and paint over the offending chalk drawings from the construction hoarding.
The black wall is a fitting symbol of the secrecy that continues to surround the Ontario Place redevelopment project. I have contacted the Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure, Minister Kinga Surma’s office, Infrastructure Ontario, and the general contractor, EllisDon numerous times, and received no response. Over three months I have asked when contractors will start cutting down the 850 mature trees on the West Island of Ontario Place – but none of my emails has been answered. Usually, government communications folks feel compelled offer a response to the media. Often they do not answer questions directly, but provide some sort of “word salad” via email. In this case, nothing. Nada.
In the meantime, the mature forest on the West Island of Ontario Place is still standing. But for how much longer? Doug Ford seems determined to proceed with his legacy project of building a mega-spa at Ontario Place, and is spending billions of tax dollars and passing unprecedented legislation to clear all roadblocks to ensure the project proceeds.
Opponents of Doug Ford’s mega spa at Ontario Place have faced a series of setbacks over the past few months.
First Premier Ford showered Mayor Olivia Chow with Christmas presents to the tune of $9 billion – reversing course and agreeing to upload responsibility to the province for maintaining the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway, plus funding for transit and shelter for the unhoused – though much of this was dependent on the feds kicking in matching taxpayer cash as well.
Faced with this cash payday, Mayor Olivia Chow broke two of her campaign promises – to fight privatization of Ontario Place and the elevation of the eastern section of the Gardiner Expressway. Chow agreed to drop her opposition to the mega-spa and the secret 95-year lease to an Austrian company on the West Island of Ontario Place. The City of Toronto still had two arrows in its quiver to fight the mega-spa: it owns a strip of 16 acres of land and waterfront just south of Lake Shore Boulevard. Chow agreed to let the province expropriate this land without a legal challenge – the city could have held up development of the mega-spa for months if it had decided to fight this expropriation. (Councillor Josh Matlow had proposed donating the 16 acres of city land to the federal government – provincial governments cannot expropriate federal land.)
And Chow agreed to drop the City of Toronto Planning Department’s evaluation of the development proposal. If City of Toronto planners had recommended major changes to the mega-spa proposal and Council had agreed, the province could still have overruled the City of Toronto, but this would have given opponents of the mega-spa a huge amount of ammunition. By repeating at their joint press conference Ford’s talking point that “It’s called Ontario Place,” Chow has given her blessing to the mega-spa. She also threw under the bus the thousands of Toronto residents who participated in the city-led public consultations on the future of Ontario Place. In good faith, they showed up at in-person and virtual meetings, and submitted letters and presentations as requested to the Toronto Planning Department. When she was campaigning for mayor in June 2023, Chow posted a video of herself paddleboarding at Ontario Place, and declared, “As the mayor, I will not back down on keeping Ontario Place public.”
For months Chow said the Ontario Place redevelopment would be subject to Toronto’s normal planning approval process. Then she folded her cards, bribed by Doug Ford with billions of taxpayers’ money. Now we will never know how the city’s professional urban planners assessed the revised plans for the mega-spa.
Then on December 1, 2023, the federal minister of the environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault, announced he would not undertake a federal environmental impact assessment of the Ontario Place redevelopment. Given the federal mandate to protect migratory birds and fish habitat in the Great Lakes, this was a disappointing abdication of federal responsibility.
On January 8, 2024, the Ford Government closed all public access to the West Island of Ontario Place, which it plans to clearcut, bulldoze, and expand with 10 acres of landfill to build a private spa and waterpark. Without advance notice, fences were erected and signs posted blocking all public entrances to the West Island.
On a recent unseasonably warm February day I walked the Martin Goodman Trail along the shore of Lake Ontario, dodging a stream of runners and bicyclists. Through a chain-link gate I could see a beehive of construction activity — cranes, front-end loaders, and construction workers in florescent yellow-and-orange vests. Sunlight glittered on the waves and, across a narrow channel, the mature trees on the West Island of Ontario Place, planted more than 50 years ago by landscape architect Michael Hough, were still standing. But for how much longer? Every time I visit Ontario Place I feel like I am visiting an old friend in hospice care. By the time the Ontario Auditor General releases her report on Ontario Place in December 2024, it will likely be too late to save the mature trees and its ecosystem on the West Island of Ontario Place.
Photos by Ian Darragh
