‘The biggest betrayal’: A year on, staff grieve Ontario Science Centre’s snap closure

One year after closing the Ontario Science Centre, plans for a new site face delay, the roof remains intact, and staff call the shutdown a “manufactured crisis.”

In the year since the abrupt closure of the Ontario Science Centre, the cost of a new site at Ontario Place has escalated, its opening date has been pushed back, there is no sign of a temporary location – and the old building’s roof that was said to be at risk of collapse appears to be intact.

Workers say they’ve dealt with a rodent and raccoon infestation at a building where science centre materials are stored, and the department that builds exhibits is at a virtual standstill. It’s been a year of demoralizing changes, they say.

Government officials announced midday on June 21, 2024, that the science centre at its original, east Toronto location would permanently close at the end of the day, citing an engineering report on the state of the building’s roof.

Critics have blasted the decision, noting that the report presented several options other than full closure, and have suggested the whole plan to move the science centre to a revamped Ontario Place was designed to lessen the heat a more controversial tenant — a waterpark and spa by European company Therme — has generated.

Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma has said she did not want to jeopardize anyone’s safety with the science centre’s roof panels at risk of collapse.

The workers do not buy it.

Toronto set a weather record in 2024 with 1,145 millimetres of precipitation, which included two “once-in-a-century” storms that flooded thousands of homes last summer and the city’s snowiest winter in years.

“And the science centre is still standing,” said Raluca Ellis, the president of Local 549 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.