A Harbour for All Seasons

In 1972 Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau promised that Ottawa would take over 86 acres of industrial port land on Toronto's waterfront and give it back to the people as a park. In 1975 I became Harbourfront's Director of Activities Planning. My job was to imagine what could happen in the old buildings between York Street and Bathurst.

I didn't want to invent the answer in an office. Harbourfront invited the public in: by May 1975 there had been 48 public planning sessions, and the ideas poured in, from a soccer stadium to a cathedral in the grain elevators. Collecting proposals was not enough; someone had to find what they had in common. So I ran theming workshops, grouping the proposals into clusters and looking for one theme that could unify them all.

The answer came from one of the participants, Dr. Harold Grossman: "I think that it's a Harbour for All Seasons." It meant the seasons of the year, the seasons of life from children to elders, and a place for every culture in the city. The people who took part agreed almost unanimously on one more thing: there should be no hotels or apartment towers standing between the people and the water.

Towers did rise along the north side of Queens Quay, but on the lake side the public's wish largely held. People skate, sail, listen to music and hear authors read there today, in every season and from every culture this city holds. The idea the public gave us has outlived every plan built around it.

Timeline

• October 1972 – Trudeau announces the federal government will create a waterfront park.
• February 1, 1975 – Harbourfront holds its first public planning "probe" on the site.
• 1975 – "A Harbour for All Seasons" emerges from the public theming workshops.
• 1988 – David Crombie leads a Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront.
• 1991 – Harbourfront Centre is reborn as a non-profit charity running the York Quay campus.

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