Explore the interviews

Margaret ("Margie") Zeidler, is president and creator of 401 Richmond Limited, a vibrant urban community of diverse artists and entrepreneurs, located in the old garment district in the Spadina and Richmond area of downtown Toronto. She is a strong proponent of diversity and creativity in cities. Margie is the daughter of Eberhard Zeidler, the architect of Ontario Place.

Max Beck was the General Manager at Ontario Place during the 1990’s. Mr. Beck’s deep knowledge of Ontario Place, its political history, and the challenges of operating the large site provide invaluable insights into its future. Mr. Beck is a strong proponent of the arts, and believes that Ontario Place and Exhibition Place should be operated as one site. After his tenure at Ontario Place, Mr. Beck became the President and CEO of Easter Seals “Canada’s largest local provider of programs, services, and issues-leadership and development for the disability community.”

Charles Stankievech is the Director of the Visual Studies Program at the University of Toronto. His work as a Canadian artist has explored issues such as the notion of “fieldwork” in the embedded landscape, the military industrial complex, and the history of technology. His diverse body of work has been shown internationally at the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; MassMoca, Massachusetts; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Venice Architecture and SITE Santa Fe Biennales. In 2019, he guest curated The Drowned World for the Toronto Biennial of Art, an installation through which the Cinesphere “becomes a world within a world, merging film and sound art with scent and changing atmospheric conditions.”

Andrés Jiménez is the Urban Program Coordinator at Birds Canada, a non-profit charitable organization working to “conserve wild birds through sound science, on-the-ground actions, innovative partnerships, public engagement, and science-based advocacy.” Trained as a biologist, Andrés works to create opportunities for wildlife (specifically birds) to flourish in Canada’s urban environments. Using ebird, Andrés discovered 146 bird species at Ontario Place- including some species at-risk. These birds occupy naturalized environments on the site and have also created nests elsewhere on site, particularly under the Pods.

The Honourable David Crombie is a politician, professor and consultant. Mr. Crombie served as Mayor of Toronto from 1972 to 1978 followed by two years as Member of Parliament where he served in three different Federal Cabinet posts: Minister of Health and Welfare, Minister of Indian and Northern Development, and Secretary of State. More recently, Mr. Crombie has served in various advisory capacities to the city and provincial governments including the Chair of Ontario Place Corporation, Chair of Toronto’s Waterfront Regeneration Trust, Chair of the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and President of David Crombie & Associates Inc. From 2001 to 2007, he was the President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI), a non-profit organization mandated to provide solutions to important issues that impact the quality of life in urban areas and communicate those solutions to a wide audience through a variety of media. Mr. Crombie served as Chancellor of Ryerson University and was conferred the title of Chancellor Emeritus in 2006 and became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2005.

Eric McMillan, the “father of soft play,” is a Canadian designer who began his career designing exhibitions. In 1972, he was asked to design the iconic Children’s Village at Ontario Place, which has since been lauded as a visionary playscape. His design for the Children’s village left room for children’s imaginations- encouraging them to learn through play. Mr.McMillan’s subsequent designs include Captain Kid's at SeaWorld of Ohio, Sesame Place in Philadelphia, and a proposal for Parc de la Villette in Paris.

George Kash, also known as Mr. Oktoberfest has been a staple of popular culture in Toronto for decades. Mr. Kash began his career as a fixture of the Edelweiss Beer Garden at Ontario Place, where he believes he performed the first ever musical act on the site in 1971. Mr. Kash is an expert on Ontario Place culture, having performed on the site from 1971 to 1997. Since then he has received wide acclaim for his performances as Santa Claus of the Santa Claus Parade, Mr. Melon Head, and Mr.Coffee Bean Head.

Gunny Harboe, FAIA, Fellow US/ICOMOS, is a registered architect with nearly 30 years of experience and currently runs his own small firm. He has worked on many iconic modern masterpieces including numerous works by both Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright. Gunny was a founding member and is a current Vice President of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage, and was a founding member of Docomomo US where he remains on the board. He is also a current board member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and was a Regional Director of AIA National, and President of AIA Chicago. His projects have received numerous awards, and he was named a “2001 Young Architect” by the National AIA, “Chicagoan of the Year” by Chicago Magazine in 2010, and received the 2015 Award for Excellence in Heritage Conservation from the Society of Architectural Historians. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Jamie Carnevale was the manager of the Eco-Learning Centre at Ontario Place, where she spearheaded a series of environmental programs, including a recycling initiative which cut down on the site’s waste costs. Jamie credits her interest in the environmental movement with early trips to Ontario Place as a child.

James Stansbury is a renowned landscape architect. He began his career as an intern on Michael Hough’s landscape design team during Ontario Place’s initial phases. He later became a Partner at Hough, Stansbury and Associates. His career has included works such as the seminal masterplan for the restoration of the Don Valley Brickworks, the Rouge Valley Park Planning Project, and many others. Mr. Stansbury is a Fellow of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects and is an active member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Ken Greenberg is an urban designer, teacher, writer, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto and Principal of Greenberg Consultants. For over four decades he has played a pivotal role on public and private assignments in urban settings throughout North America and Europe, focusing on the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighborhoods and on campus master planning, regional growth management, and new community planning. He is the recipient of the 2010 American Institute of Architects Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Design Excellence and the 2014 Sustainable Buildings Canada Lifetime Achievement Award. Involved in many grass roots and community initiatives he has served as a Board Member of Park People, a nonprofit dedicated to the improvement of Toronto's parks, is currently a Director of the Bentway Conservancy Board and President of the Wellington Place Neighbourhood Association. He is a cofounder and Vice Chair of the City Building Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto. He played a leading role as urban design lead and client representative and now member of its Board for The Bentway, the transformation of a major public space under the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. He is currently serving as an advisor to Sidewalk Labs for Quayside on the Toronto waterfront and the city of Brampton. He was selected as a Member of the Order of Canada in 2020.

Layne Hinton and Rui Pimenta are the curatorial duo behind Art Spin. Since 2009 they have been activating decommissioned venues and unique public spaces to produce large-scale group exhibitions along with curated bicycle-led art tours to showcase a multi-disciplinary range of new programming in alternative sites, most notably the reanimation of Ontario Place’s West Island for in/future in 2016. Rui and Layne are strong proponents of creating spaces on the Ontario Place for artists and community members to reimagine the site’s future possibilities.

A registered architect and founding Principal of ERA Architects, Michael McClelland OAA, AAA, FRAIC, CAHP has specialized in heritage conservation, heritage planning, and urban design for over 25 years. Having begun his career in municipal government, most notably for the Toronto Historical Board, Michael continues to work with a wide range of public and private stakeholders to build culture through thoughtful, values-based heritage planning and design. He is the recipient of a certificate of recognition from the Ontario Association of Architects for his outstanding contributions to architecture, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Richard Florida is a researcher and professor, serving as University Professor at University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack School of Real Estate. Mr. Florida is a writer and journalist, having penned several global best sellers, including the award winning The Rise of the Creative Class and his most recent book, The New Urban Crisis. He is co-founder of CityLab, the leading publication devoted to cities and urbanism. He is an entrepreneur, as founder of the Creative Class Group which works closely with companies and governments worldwide.

Victor Perez-Amado is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University School of Urban and Regional Planning who is trained as an architect and urban designer. His academic endeavors and research on aging in place, transformation of long-term care facilities, and multigenerational housing, including in LGBTQ2S communities, builds upon seven years of practice and built-work design experience. Perez-Amado has designed and built a series of interactive public installations. These projects explore material prototyping, visualization, public realm activation, and community engagement. Some of these include the “Woggle Jungle and Woggle Jungle 2.0, Everyone is King: Design-Build Competition, King Street Pilot Project” the 2019 Winter-Stations project “Cavalcade” on Woodbine Beach in Toronto, the 2020 Ontario Place Winter Light Festival “Lumina” among others.

Cycling advocates Arthur Klimowicz and Donna Patterson.

Frequent visitors to Ontario Place Jerry and Mabel.

Nearby resident and daily jogger Carl.

Houseboat resident and artist Jason Wren.

Students Naz and Purvangi.

Founder of NÜLOVE Yoga Luciana Santaguida runs outdoor yoga classes at Ontario Place.

Adam, Miryana, and Henry of Toronto Slackline.

Nearby residents Tyler and Misael.