The TVO Original documentary Your Tomorrow provides an intimate portrait of Ontario Place as it faces a controversial redevelopment.Supplied
- Your Tomorrow
- Directed by Ali Weinstein
- Classification N/A; 94 minutes
- Streaming on TVO Docs starting March 21
Critic’s Pick
Perhaps destined to be Doug Ford’s least favourite movie of the year, the wonderful new documentary Your Tomorrow is a loving and wistful look at the remarkable legacy and uncertain future of Ontario Place – a vast waterfront park whose controversial redevelopment has somehow become one of the defining elements of the Ontario Premier’s political agenda.
Compressing 95 days worth of observational footage – which was captured during Ontario Place’s final year of large-scale operations – Canadian director Ali Weinstein has crafted a warmly nostalgic film that is as much an ode to a certain time and place as it is to an idealized vision of civic engagement.
There is plenty of twinkly-eyed history on offer – including some delightful archival footage from when the public space first opened in 1971 as a quasi-utopian destination – but also moments of quiet and sustained reflection. Without ever directly asking the question, Your Tomorrow gently pushes its audience to consider whether society is cursed with a tendency to brush aside the past in its rush to build the shiny, new future – no matter the ultimate cost.
Eschewing a more traditional documentary structure that would use exposition-heavy narration to break up interviews with semifamous talking heads – a politician here, an activist there – Weinstein instead adopts a poetic fly-on-the-wall approach, familiar to such acclaimed documentarians as Allan King and Frederick Wiseman. Across a leisurely paced hour and a half, Your Tomorrow introduces viewers to not only the magnificent 155-acre space itself but also to the many people who make (or made) use of the area year-round, from security guards to joggers to families to eccentric rabble-rousers.
While the doc’s political leanings are obvious – Therme Group, the private Austrian company that the Ford government has partnered with for Ontario Place’s redevelopment, is depicted here with the most skeptical of eyes – the film is neither a didactic lecture nor a self-righteous act of protest. It simply illustrates the unique power of public space, allowing audiences to decide what value should be placed on them.
Weinstein delivers it all with such an informative, loving touch that the doc deserves to be played as mandatory preshow entertainment for anyone who might enter the mega-spa, and its massive parking lot, that will soon be built atop Ontario Place’s bones. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, after all.
