Ontario Place

Few Toronto landmarks have swung from beloved to abandoned to politically radioactive quite like Ontario Place — a genuinely striking piece of 1970s design that's currently at the centre of a real, ongoing fight over what the waterfront is for.

A Modernist showpiece (opened 1971)

Ontario Place opened in 1971 as the provincial government's answer to Montreal's Expo 67 — a cluster of futuristic pod-shaped pavilions built out over the lake on artificial landscaped islands, designed by architect Eberhard Zeidler with landscape by Michael Hough, and home to the world's first permanent IMAX theatre. It drew more than two million visitors a year in its early decades.

Decline and closure (2012)

Rising operating costs led to a slow retreat: individual attractions closed through the 1990s and 2000s until the site's main attractions shut entirely in 2012, leaving most of the park unused for the following decade, even as its Modernist landscape design earned growing architectural-preservation recognition.

The current redevelopment fight

In 2019 the Ontario government announced plans to redevelop the site, culminating in a 95-year lease to Austrian company Therme to build a large indoor waterpark and spa on part of the property. The plan has drawn sustained public protest and legal challenges, and in a 2024 report the province's auditor general found the bidding process that selected Therme was "not fair, transparent or accountable" — while the public price tag for supporting infrastructure has grown substantially past its original estimate. As of the mid-2020s, the dispute over the site's future remains unresolved and genuinely contested, unlike most of the settled history covered elsewhere in this guide.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Ontario Place
• CBC News — Ontario Place Redevelopment Not 'Fair, Transparent or Accountable,' Auditor General Finds
• Toronto Life — A Nostalgic Tour of the Glory Years of Ontario Place

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