Your Tomorrow: A Reminder of The Fragility of Forever

By Chris Knight

Rating: A

I was recently remarking on all the fantastic post-apocalyptic dramas that played the Toronto International Film Festival this year, including The End, The Assessment, U Are the Universe, 40 Acres, Rumours, and Can I Get a Witness?

Well, it turns out I missed one. That would be Your Tomorrow, filmed during the last days before the closure of the dormant remnants of Ontario Place’s West Island for the construction of a giant spa and waterpark. The only differences are that this film is a documentary, and the post-apocalyptic times are right now.

Ontario Place opened in 1971, during a seven-year stretch that also saw the unveiling of the McLaughlin Planetarium (1968), the Ontario Science Centre (1969) and the Toronto Zoo (1974). It’s like they knew Gen X had arrived! Premier Bill Davis called the new park “a stimulating and permanent symbol of the work and achievement of the people of Ontario.”

But time has not been kind, and “permanent” is a politician’s dream. The Planetarium closed in 1995, Ontario Place in 2012, and the Science Centre last June. (Less a closure than a sneak attack by the provincial government, after it announced one Friday afternoon that the place would shutter at the end of the day.)

Filmmaker Ali Weinstein spent three months filming at Ontario Place, capturing summer students, concertgoers, and a ragtag group of artists, birders, nature enthusiasts and others who tried to stop Therme, an Austria-based multinational, from moving in to re-develop the already developed land. Spoiler alert: They tried in vain.

She trains her eye dispassionately on all these people and more, crafting an even-handed portrayal of a land in flux. To give viewers who don’t have their own memories of Ontario Place in the old days a sense of “before,” she occasionally cuts to grainy footage of the old grassy bowl that was The Forum, or the candy-coloured Children’s Village playground, or just the crowds that used to bedeck the retro-futuristic architecture on a sunny summer weekend in the 1970s.

And then — wham — back to the future. By which I mean the present.

Of course, the final history of Ontario Place has yet to be written, but the latest chapter doesn’t look good. The film ends with the West Island fenced off, the Japanese Canadian Centennial Temple Bell dismantled, and all the trees razed. Where’s a Lorax when you need one?

Your Tomorrow is, appropriately, the re-opening night film of the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, which shut its doors last summer amidst a staffing and financial crisis. The theatre is currently for sale, but organizers hope the new owners will keep its documentary programming alive.

It’s worth noting that the Hot Docs, formerly called the Madison, was built in 1913, demolished in 1940 and rebuilt as the Midtown. Since then, it has been a first-run, second-run and adult-film cinema, under a variety of names. Nothing is forever. But sometimes the next thing turns out to be better than the last.

Your Tomorrow. Directed by Ali Weinstein. Screens December 6, 7, and 8 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto, and December 11 and 12 at the Fox Theatre in Toronto, before expanding.