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On Sept, 29, over 60 community members gathered to rally at Edge Park in Scarborough.
In an interview leading up to the rally, Floyd Ruskin, co-chair of the Save Ontario’s Science Centre grassroots organisation, said that adults and children across Ontario have teamed up to write over 88,000 letters to the premier.
“The people of Ontario deserve a full, properly funded science experience here in Toronto,” said Ruskin.
Ruskin explained that relocation was not an adequate solution. He said that a location at Ontario Place would be less accessible to both the local community and those who travel to the centre from outside of the city due to traffic and other events.
He described the planned Ontario Place location as a “three to four-story building plopped in a parking lot,” pointing out that many features of the previous centre could not be replicated in the space the Ford government had planned.
Families told stories of their experiences at the centre, while teachers and scientists raised concerns about the future of science education in Ontario.
In an interview leading up to the rally, Anna Camille Tucci Patterson, a frequenter of the centre, told the story of her son’s reaction to the closure.
When Tucci Patterson explained the closure to her four-year-old son, he proposed a simple solution: he would become mayor and fix the problem himself.
The centre abruptly closed on June 21, after the Ontario government announced its closure earlier the same day.
The government’s news release stated that the reason for the closure was an engineering report finding serious structural issues with the building, including the potential for roof failure in the coming winter.
“Through planned diligence with our facility managers and engineers, we discovered material issues,” reads a quote in the news release attributed to Michael Lindsay, CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, “in addition to existing issues, at the Ontario Science Centre that would require significant investment and a vacant facility to remediate.”
But Ruskin said that the reasoning doesn’t add up.
“54, 55 years is not old for a building that was designed to last,” he said.
The report included options for repair that did not involve shutting down the building – despite Premier Doug Ford’s statement at an event back in July that repairs would shut the Centre down.
“That place is absolutely just a total mess from top to bottom, to front to back,” said Ford at the July event, where he also said that the new centre is set to be built in Ontario Place and is expected to open in 2028 at the earliest. In the meantime, a temporary centre will open in 2026 at a much smaller, yet-to-be determined location.
Tucci Patterson said that she and her son will mourn the features that will be lost, including the outdoor play area, interactive “dinos in motion” exhibit, and easy access from their home in the east end. The original location of the centre had been a short 12-minute subway ride away, allowing them to go on a weekly basis.
“It was so interactive, so much for them to do. It was so safe and so child-focused and not in a cheesy ‘kids don’t know anything’ type way,” she said.
Reporter for On The Record.
