One of the worst snowstorms in Toronto’s history has reignited debate over Premier Doug Ford‘s decision to close the Ontario Science Centre.
It’s been a year and a half since the building that once housed the Science Centre was shuttered, following an engineer’s report that said the roof risked collapse under heavy rain or snowfall.
Now, after a snowstorm buried the city in nearly 50 centimetres of snow, politicians and community members are once again weighing in on the state of the roof and the Ford government’s decision to close the building in June 2024.
At a press conference on Monday, Ford reaffirmed the findings in two engineers’ reports that investigated the state of the former Science Centre’s roof.
“When there’s children in there and there’s a possibility of the roof collapsing, I’m not going to chance it,” Ford said in response to a question on Monday that mentioned the roof’s apparent viability under recent extreme weather conditions.
A spokesperson for Infrastructure Ontario told the Star that “the building is simply unsafe for Infrastructure Ontario staff to assess the roof and interior of the building.”
Toronto has faced myriad weather events since the Ford government announced the site’s closure, from freezing rain to heavy snow, but the current state of the building remains a mystery.
“A big concern of ours is that we don’t know if they’ve been keeping the heat on, which is critical for the maintenance of the building,” said city Councillor Josh Matlow. “The Science Centre’s roof has more integrity than the Ford government.”
Matlow recently introduced a motion at city council to compel the province to provide an update on the state of the buildings and to remind the province of its obligations to maintain them. The province is technically a tenant of the city which, together with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, owns the land on which the building sits.
According to Matlow, the city has not had access to the buildings.
Much of the unprecedented 46.2 cm of snow from Sunday’s storm has blown off from the Science Centre’s roof, but advocacy group Save Ontario’s Science Centre (Save OSC) managed to get a photo of the old building at Don Mills Rd. at around 9 p.m. on Sunday.
In a post on X.com with a caption that reads, “Built for Winter. Built for Canada,” the organization showed a photo of the building, entombed in snow and out of use.
“I think those photographs really galvanize people to recognize, ‘Wait a second, we’re being taken advantage of,’” said co-chair of Save OSC Floyd Ruskin.
A 2023 report on the Science Centre from Ontario’s auditor general said that funding for maintenance projects had been repeatedly denied. A subsequent engineer’s report that detailed the critical condition of the building’s roof was, according to Ruskin, the province manufacturing an “artificial crisis” in order to do what they wanted to do: permanently close the building and relocate the Science Centre to Ontario Place on Toronto’s lakeshore.
In a statement released Tuesday, Ontario Liberal MPP Dr. Adil Shamji said that the Ford government’s claim that the roof was at imminent risk of collapsing has been “rejected by Mother Nature.”
“On Sunday, Toronto was hammered by a record-breaking snowstorm that deposited an unprecedented 46 centimetres of snow,” reads Shamji’s statement. “This also made it the most extreme test of the Science Centre’s integrity — a test that it passed flawlessly.”
Brian Rudy, a partner at Moriyama Teshima Architects, says the type of snow that fell may not be a definitive test of the roof’s strength as it was “light and fluffy,” but rainfall could cause a problem.
“If we were to start having more cumulative events on top of what we have now, then there would be concern,” said Rudy, “but there would be concern for any house or building.”
In the days following the announcement of its closure, Rudy said that the Science Centre could have remained safely open while repairs were made. He maintains that the risk of the roof collapsing was “highly overstated” by the province’s report.
The original engineer’s report by Rimkus Consulting Group cited issues with specific panels of the roof.
“A significant snow or rain loading occurrence could exceed the reduced load carrying capacity of the distressed panels, placing them at an increased risk of sudden collapse,” reads the report that was prepared for Infrastructure Ontario, the provincial agency that manages real estate and infrastructure projects.
The report goes on to recommend reinforcing or replacing “high risk panels” before Oct. 31, 2024.
Toronto-based forensic engineer Yasser Korany says that a crucial part of the report is what it doesn’t say: that the building needed to close.
“Structural engineers don’t monkey around when it comes to safety because it’s a legal liability,” said Korany, whose firm KSI Engineering investigates structural failures. “Had the engineer felt that there is an imminent threat to safety, he would have expressed this in the most clear language.”
Korany added that the report relied on a visual inspection, not a robust structural analysis or field test.
“What’s frustrating is nobody cared to run the numbers,” he said, adding the damage to the roof was repairable based on the reports at the time.
Coun. Matlow has been working with Save OSC and community members of Flemingdon Park, the neighbourhood that houses the old science attraction, to try to salvage the historic building.
“There are a lot of people who care about the future of the Ontario Science Center at the Don Mills site,” says Matlow. “It is an architectural gem. It’s meaningful to the northern part of our city along with the region around us and we want it to not only be protected but brought back to life.”
