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With Science Centre closure, Ford government sticks to absurd notion that buildings can’t live past 50
Fifty is not old.
I feel the need to make that clear for a couple of reasons. In part, it’s because I turned 40 last year and suddenly 50 doesn’t seem so far away. I’m clinging to youth.
But mostly it’s because I’ve been really annoyed lately about how Premier Doug Ford’s government plans for the 54-year-old Ontario Science Centre have been treating the building like it’s some ancient relic — so ravaged by age that it must be shut down and replaced.
It’s ridiculous rhetoric, divorced from the plain facts in their own engineering reports. It’s also a dangerous precedent. Are we supposed to just take it for granted that buildings like the Science Centre have a 50-year shelf life?
This is the same basic script Ford’s crew followed with Ontario Place. At just 53 years old, Ontario Place is even younger than the Science Centre, but the public was still told that many of the buildings and structures on the site were simply beyond saving, and that the only sensible move was to bring in the bulldozers to demolish the old and make room for the new.
