Midland
Av. C.I. –
Life and Death of an Ontario High School
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In
June 2000, Midland Av Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ontario
closed.
The school, built in 1962, was a first class education facility that
looked new.
It was also the school where I’d spent four years of my
adolescence, some forty years ago. I was surprised the news shook me as much as it did.
I’d been outside Ontario for 25 years and had never gone back
to a single reunion. So, on final Open House day, June 3rd, I was more than a little
curious. Thus started the adventure recounted in this film.
Over the following year, I talked to people from three different
generations of Midland students: people who were there with me in the
sixties, the children of Reagan and Mulroney of the late eighties, and
those still attending when it closed.
I also talked to former trustees, parents, teachers, academics, trying
to find out why this apparently absurd event had taken place, and what its closing meant.
It was not just, I thought, the result of penny pinching by the Harris
government. There was a sea change of attitudes taking place, movements of
population and priorities which were affecting the urban fabric of the place where I’d
grown up and probably all of Ontario.
This film is a hommage to a school and a school system that served my
generation pretty well, but which, apparently, no longer functions in
quite the same way.
Credits
Written,
filmed and
directed by Michael Hoare.
Edited by Jacqueline Geering
With many thanks to : Tanjeer Rajeeb Alam, Hussein Baker, Bristy
Chakrabarty, Trish Crawford, Bishwajit Dey,
Bruce Elliott, Cal Francis, Bob Gidney, Duncan Greene, Khalid Hameed,
Judy Hanninen, Douglas J. Hart,
Sharon Hirshenhorn, Pat Hipgrave, Jean Kowalewski, Jessical lake,
Sasikaran and Piratheepan Loganathan,
Amalia and Liz Kartsonis, Irma Kemp, Jeff Kendall, Annie Kidder,
Coleen McIntyre, Marcia McVea, Vinit Mehta,
Wyn Miller, Gail Nyberg, Graham Orpwood, Tom Perlmutter, Caroline
Rendulich, Andy Sampagna,
Brian Sambourne, Rick Scofield, Syedi Siddiqi, Bavan Thanganadan,
Sharon Thurston, Preetash Wishwa,
Manoja Wijewardens.
Shooting dates 2000-2003
End of editing Feb. 2005
Length 117 minutes
DVDs available : contact the association.
