Ontario Place documentarian Ali Weinstein

Send us Fan MailAli Weinstein is the writer/producer/director behind "Your Tomorrow," a look at Ontario Place the summer before it was shut down after 52 years. For over five decades a 155-acre Toronto waterfront sanctuary, it is being radically redeveloped. Gone are 850 West Island trees. Instead we get a spa with a killer view of Cinesphere.In a moving, observational documentary,Weinstein captures the place in its final days as a full-on family retreat. Even after falling into disrepair, it was still treasured as a bird sanctuary and even a beach.The documentary is rather personal for me. As a student, I worked there as a bus boy for three summers, 1972, '73 and '74. Out the front door of the West Island's Blockhouse restaurant, between shifts clearing tables for two dollars an hour, I watched the CN Tower rise above the Toronto skyline.It never seemed possible back in those halcyon days of summer that Ontario Place would wind up, fifty years later, looking like an abandoned mall. Weinstein's documentary, shot mainly during the park's last active summer of 2023, throws a bright light on that reality. Was Ontario Place purposefully left to rot? Hear Weinstein on that and the making of this doc, which premieres on TVO March 23 and streams on TVODoc starting March 21.