A Place To Rebuild

One story during my blog interregnum was the new plans for Ontario Place. I’m reminded of that now because some of the nostalgia accounts I follow on social media have run pictures from its beginnings in the early seventies.

Ontario Place redevelopment wasn’t a big deal to me; I don’t really have a personal connection with it. My experience is the same as many in southern Ontario; I’ve been there a few times as an adjunct to a trip to the CNE, and that’s about it. But the announcements of the new plans for the site stuck in my mind for a very notable reason: It made me feel sorry for Doug Ford.

Yes, I detest our premier, but I couldn’t help but have sympathy for him for the same reason I feel sorry for all politicians in office: they have to work in reality, while the rest of us compare that to faulty memories of the past or unrealistic imaginings of the future.

This was a great example of that pattern. His government announced an uninspiring but reasonable plan to revitalize the park, and that was greeted by howls of complaints about how he had ruined one of the great amusement parks of the world. People, we’re talking about a park that’s been closed for a decade. It was closed because it was losing money so fast that a Liberal government thought it wasn't worth keeping open. So when people wax nostalgic about the park, I have to wonder where they've been recently. Or more specifically, if people were so happy with how the park was, how come it wasn't more popular.

I have at least learned a bit about the history of Ontario Place. It always seemed like an oddity in the entertainment world I grew up in, with low-fear rides and semi-intellectual attractions in a world where most amusement parks were competing to have the scariest roller coasters and as many licensed-characters as possible. 

Fun fact: Ontario Place opened less than four months before Disney World.

I just assumed that Ontario Place was what happened when the theme park concept was filtered through government. But no, it turns out Ontario Place was an attempt to recreate Montreal’s Expo 67. I guess it should have been obvious: artificial islands with a geodesic dome as the crown jewel; sounds familiar.  Rides have been added over the years to bring in more visitors, but it never truly became a ride-oriented park like Canada's Wonderland. 

Fun fact: Canada's Wonderland has 17 roller coasters, which is tied for second most in the world. 

Personally, I was cautiously optimistic about the new plans for the park. Like I say, the plan wasn’t that great. It was sort of like when Ford announced new license plates: “A Place to Grow” wasn’t the greatest plate motto ever, but it seemed like Shakespeare given that we were bracing for something like, “Open for Business.” With Ontario Place, the proposed assortment of attractions announced was a bit uninspiring, but because we were expecting casinos and condos, the plan came as a relief.

I have to be honest, if we look at this realistically, I doubt there’s any saving Ontario Place, and it’s all because of the location. Driving there means going through some very busy thoroughfares. It’s not well-served by public transit. Putting up condos on the land would be disappointing and boring, but at least it would be successful.

Hold This Thread As I Walk Away

Scotiabank has been promoting a new book they're sponsoring, called The Hockey Jersey. The commercials make the point that it's to promote inclusion and tolerance. That's something everyone in hockey agrees is important,  but isn't too good at actually doing. And although Scotiabank are selling physical copies of the book, you can also download a digital copy for free from their website, which is the nicest thing a bank has done since, well, ever. 

It's about a bunch of young girls who come together as a team after they get their own hockey jerseys, which somehow look better than at least half of NHL uniforms. Of course, that title is similar to The Hockey Sweater, the classic story by Roch Carrier, about a boy in Quebec who is mistakenly given a sweater of the hated rival Toronto Maple Leafs, not the Montreal Canadiens sweater he wanted. There is also an animated version from the National Film Board available for streaming.

(As an aside, I love that in the middle of the Wikipedia synopsis of the story, they point out the plot hole: the fateful sweater was ordered from Eaton’s, and Eaton’s pioneered the money-back guarantee, so the mother could easily have returned or exchanged the sweater. Don’t ever change, Wikipedia.)

This being hockey, a lot of people will surely resent something new piggybacking on something old. But I think it gives us an opportunity. Can we finally give The Hockey Sweater a rest? When I was a kid it was really over-used in school. The story was drilled into us so much, one time in junior high, when the teacher announced that we’d be reading a wonderful new story called The Hockey Sweater, the whole class groaned. She was honestly surprised we had not only heard of it but were already sick of it. Now, I find out it was only written in 1979, and thus was a little less than a decade old at the time, so I can understand her not realizing how fast it had saturated the school system.

But it's easy to get why teachers were eager to use it: it's a perfect storm of sports, Canadiana, and situations relatable to kids. Also, looking back, I can appreciate how much of mid-twentieth-century Quebec life he squeezed in: People forced to do business in English, the towering authority of the church, the place of Maurice Richard as a hero. In the eternal quest to find things that will engage students, it sounds like quite a find. 

But there's a problem with The Hockey Sweater that really bugged me - I mean besides it being overused. I've been carrying this around with me ever since, so get comfortable.

It's not really a kids' story. Yes, I know, it's about children, but that doesn't mean they're the target audience. A story can be about children or through the eyes of children without being intended for them. To Kill a Mockingbird, Angela’s Ashes, Lord of the Flies, etc.

Like those books, The Hockey Sweater is pretty dark, when you look at it. The main character doesn't do anything wrong, but ends up a social pariah. His mother doesn't care about his situation. His religion blames him for his problems. And then there's the subtext that his people are trapped in a system rigged against them. Add a murder and it would be hailed as a classic of existentialism. 

An adult can appreciate a story of frustration and futility, but at the time, I found it really depressing. At a young age, children are still expecting stories to have a moral, or at least, to not be a nihilistic commentary of on the futility of life. 

That recounting of unfair situations is also the kind of thing that is best appreciated with a buffer of a few decades to protect you from the raw reality. Sure, now I can read a story about a kid ostracized for wearing the wrong clothes. That’s a common trope of stories about young people. But back then, it was your average weekday. Seeing that happen in a story, with no comeuppance for the bullies or actions by the adults in charge was, well, again: your average weekday. When his only hope for justice is divine-intervention moths, and that’s presented as the punchline, it just seemed hopeless.

So let's retire the Hockey Sweater. Print it on a Syl Apps jersey and lift it into the Bell Centre rafters beside Richard's number 9. That girl in the Scotiabank book can annoy future generations.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #43

Eventually, the NFL will just drop the pretence, and make the Pro Bowl into a flag-football game.

Good Artists Copy

In my post on A.I. art, I tried to create a picture in the style of Roy Lichtenstein, which gives me the rare chance to use the sentence,  "Speaking of Roy Lichtenstein..."

If you're not familiar with him, he was a pop artist whose paintings were in the style of comic book art. I've always liked his work, but now I've seen some criticisms off him online. 

See, when I said his works were, "in the style of comic book art," that's only part of the story. In some cases, they were almost directly copied from comics. 

For instance, here's his much-celebrated painting, "Whaam!"

And it was based on this panel by Irv Novick, from "All-American Men of War." in 1962.

Later, comic artist Dave Gibbons (of Watchmen fame) made this spoof.

I suspect that some of this re-evaluation of Lichtenstein is due to the changing place comics take in our society. When that painting was made, I doubt anyone would have cared that it was copied from a comic book. To my knowledge, no one ever complained that Andy Warhol ripped off the anonymous graphic artist who designed the Campbell's Soup can. At the time, that soup can design was probably esteemed as much or more than the comic artist. I wasn't around for it, but I'm assuming that part of the impact of Lichtenstein's work was the audacity of proclaiming a selection from a comic book as art, just as it was with a grocery item. 

But today, it's quite different. It's not a universal feeling, but most people see comic artists as, well, artists. Copying from them doesn't seem like audacious recontextualization, it just seems like stealing from another artist.