A.K. Sculthorpe Award for Advocacy
This award recognizes an individual, an informal group or a established non-profit organization that at a critical point achieved exemplary success in a significant heritage crisis.
You can read about Alice King Sculthorpe, for whom the award was named, HERE.
Congratulations to Ontario Place for All, this year’s recipient!
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Ontario Place for All (OP4A) is a grassroots collaboration between organizations, politicians, and volunteers concerned about the Ford government’s plans to overdevelop and privatize Ontario Place. The overall objective of OP4A is to conserve Ontario Place, a cultural landscape designed by architect Eb Zeidler, and landscape architect Michael Hough, as well as the newly created Trillium Park, as a primarily public park. The site is arguably one of the most significant modern cultural landscapes in Canada, with world-wide value and has been recognized by the World Monuments Fund, Docomomo, the Ontario Association of Architects and The National Trust for Canada.
Ontario Place for All has overseen an exemplary campaign over 5 years so far, organizing regular events, publishing a newsletter, keeping a central website, publicizing events, publishing a regular e-newsletter, but most importantly, promoting and linking work done by other organizations such as Friends of Ontario Place, ACO Toronto, Park People, Toronto Society of Architects, and Swim Drink Fish to a wider audience. They have worked with politicians of all stripes at all levels of government, commissioned a study about the value of parkland to cities, produced two videos (one by ACO Toronto), and organized several large public events at Ontario Place.
The most recent initiative has been to present an alternative design, produced in concert with some of Ontario’s leading designers, which evaluates restoring the existing landscape and restoring and repurposing the existing buildings, including repurposing the pods for a satellite Science Centre exhibition. A second prong has been efforts to persuade the Federal government to conduct an Impact Assessment because of the potential negative effects on Lake Ontario and wildlife.
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