Copy excerpt from The Trill: The Ontario Science Centre is no more — at least as Ontarians have known it for the last 55 years. On June 21, the provincial government closed the building, citing an engineering report that said small parts of the roof were unsafe and needed urgent repairs. The government chose to shut everything down rather than try to fix the problems and keep the institution open while a new science centre is built at Ontario Place. And while the province has promised a temporary science centre in the interim, it's expected to be just a fraction of the size of the recently closed facility. Critics, however, haven't drawn the same conclusions from that report. The decision — like almost every move made during the years-long science centre saga — has garnered fierce opposition. Lesley Lewis, who served as the centre's CEO from 1998 to 2014, and Kevin von Appen, who worked for the centre for almost 35 years, including as its director of science communication, join us to walk through the organization's history, slow-percolating troubles that doomed its facility, the current site's future, and its relocation.

Some key quotes from the episode:

Kevin von Appen:

(On keeping the current Ontario Science Centre)...It is better use of public funds, based on the data...as people look at the data, look at the figures...that people will begin to see that the numbers simply don’t add up and it is not the good use of public funds to follow the current course...

(On the Therme Spa Project)The science centre’s brand is being leveraged to distract from a removal of public accessibility to a public trust, which is the water front...a public trust like a Science Centre, which is what it is, it is much more like a library or a park than it is an amusement that one public trust (Science Centre) is being used in degrading another public trust (waterfront)...

...You don’t need to close the building (for repairs)...the nature of the roof panel repairs are that they don’t encompass the entire roof. They are region specific places. Most of the places where the repairs are critical are not even over the actual public exhibition places...

...It is common practice, and you can walk up to the Royal Ontario Museum to see it in action now, to complete repairs and maintenance while continuing to run your business...

It’s past overdue for us to look at places like the Science Centre and say ‘what do we need them to be now, what do we need them to be next’? While honoring all the collective memory and all the collective success of an institution like the Science Centre. There is tremendous scope for something really quite wonderful to happen. I think it could break into a couple of stages. The first stage is the collective realization that the Science Centre, with all the things that needs fixed is head and shoulders the the best option to continue to deliver the civilizational impact of a modern interactive Science Centre that helped invent the field and has innovated throughout. There is a tremendous store of passion and expertise in the Science Centre’s staff. One of the great risks of what’s happening now is there simply won’t be the room and there won’t be the commitment to core creativity which is actually what the Science Centre is really about. It’s more than it’s exhibits it’s more than a great building, it’s about people who can build stuff and think of things that no one else can think of. Within the boundaries of that existing building which is purpose built for exactly that kind of activity there is an opportunity for a tremendous renaissance and I would argue a cost effective one.

Lesley Lewis quotes:

...From what I read in the provincial auditor’s report, it was easier and also we did not experience as many of the serious issues as have emerged which is natural. Buildings get older, you expect the landlord to repair them, the landlord does nothing and then the landlord blames the tenant. Well, that’s just not fair. It wasn’t the Ontario Science Centre that led the building to require these repairs, the landlord didn’t take care of it...

...The (engineering report) documents show that you do not have to close the entire building....

Today we live in a time when science literacy has never been more important and that science literacy I’m not just talking about scientists. We need science literate taxi drivers and poets and we all need basic science literacy and it’s as important today as fundamental literacy and reading and writing. Think about the issues we’re facing, issues of climate change, issues of pandemics, issues of vaccines, we need places like the science centre, we can’t afford not to have a science centre because if we do we are going to exude that knowledge base among the general population.