Many Torontonians miss the Ontario Science Centre, but one local producer has channelled his melancholy about the museum's closure into a "sonic eulogy" for the once-popular attraction.
Greektown native and producer Tony Price released his latest album, entitled Requiem for the Ontario Science Centre, on Friday.
In a press release, Price called the album "a very special project that’s close to my heart."
"This album serves as both a sonic eulogy for a bygone era in Canada’s history and an exploration of the disorienting, uncanny feeling of searching for the past and being unable to find it," he wrote on Substack.
The four-track album aligns with the ambient music genre and is intended to emulate the energy, sounds and vibe once found inside the Ontario Science Centre.
Price said he wanted the music to be reflective of the museum's "winding concrete corridors, interactive science arcades, and dramatic vistas that evoked a profound sense of wonder and discovery at every turn."
One track on Price's album is dedicated to the late Japanese-Canadian architect who designed the Ontario Science Centre, Raymond Moriyama.
Moriyama's brutalist design for the Ontario Science Centre was admired by many locals and tourists when it and opened its doors in 1969, up until the museum was shuttered by the Doug Ford government last summer.
Inside the centre, Price said he's always admired the "retro" feel of exhibits, like the tactile science arcade and rainforest room that once housed poison dart frogs, turtles and other wildlife.
"Besides teaching me things about how the human body and the world around me worked, the Science Centre was also the first place that let me interact with the future, as it was the first place I had ever used a computer connected to the internet," Price reminisced in a statement.
The province shuttered the Ontario Science Centre without notice on a Friday afternoon in June last year while guests were still inside. A government-commissioned engineering report warned about deteriorating roof panels on the building but did not recommend its immediate closure.
Price, a native of the same Flemingdon Park neighbourhood as the science centre, said his album was "almost entirely" created on the same Friday the building was closed.
Ford’s government had earlier announced plans to permanently relocate the science centre to Ontario Place as part of the waterfront site’s redevelopment. There, the museum will have a smaller footprint and fewer staff when it eventually reopens.
"To some, the closure of the Ontario Science Centre is no big deal. Business as usual in a hideous city hellbent on development-driven progress with seemingly zero respect for the preservation of its own heritage," Price wrote.
"But to many, this marks a tragic loss for Toronto. The Science Centre’s closure is a cynical assault on the once given notion of the public’s right to a shared future anchored in knowledge, culture, and education."
Price called the Ontario Science Centre's closure "a totally callous and bitter symbolic annihilation of the scant remains of an optimism that once radiated throughout Canadian culture."
While the new Ontario Place location is under construction, temporary “satellite” science centres sites are operating, including one located inside the Harbourfront Centre. The location's KidSpark exhibit, an interactive play experience for children ten and under, is open to families six days a week until May 4, 2025.
The Ontario Science Centre's new permanent space at Ontario Place is slated to open in 2029.
— With files from TorontoToday's Alex Flood
