A Cultural Study of the CN Tower and its place in Toronto David Bourke Submitted in partial fulnliment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Daihousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August, 1997 O Copyright by David Bourke, 1997 i~auutm uura~y UIUIIUU I~UGFI IC&UYI ILW- IwI ofcanada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bbliographic Services seMces bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, nie Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence dowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distn'bute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la foxme de rnicrofiche/fïlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantid extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otheftivise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Table of Contents ................................................... Table of Contents ................................................... iv ................................................................... Abstract ................................................................... v Figure 2.1 : Downtown Toronto .......................................................................... 34 Figure 2.2. nie Area Surroundhg King and Bay Streets ...................................... 35 Chapter 1 : The Modem Myth ................... .. ........................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 1 1.2 LiteratweReview............................................... 6 1.3 Methods............................................................................ 20 1.4 Reader's Guide ................................................................... 23 Chapter 2: The Changing Urban Fabric ................... ... ....................................... 25 2.1 An Urbanization. Paradigm ................................................ 25 2.2 TorontoUrbani;ration.............................. ,... ............. 28 2.3 Surrounding the Tower ....................... ... ..........*...........50 Chapter 3 : Elevated to Ambivalence ..................................................................... 68 3.1 A Towering Conception .................... .............................. 68 3.2 TheDeathofIconography ................................................. 82 Chapter 4: A Tourist Attraction/Entertainment Centre ..................... .. ................ 88 4.1 The Carnivalesque Façade ................................................. 89 4.2 The Future of Entertainment .............................................. 93 4.3 The Service Sector .......................................................... 1 04 4.4 The Consumer .................................................................. 107 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 124 References Cited .................................................................................................. 126 Abstract People have corne to depend on other people's productions for leisure and entertainment. These productions are created for the accumulation of profit. They underlie culture. This study is an exposition of culture and the social networks with culture, in reference to the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario. When the CN Tower was cornpleted in 1976, it represented the fitute of communications. Today, it is promoted as the future of the tourisrn/entertainment industry. It is a spectacle of consumerism. Supported by an analysis of the industries of leisure and entertainment, this research is an examination of the paths that Iead to the CN Tower's present statw as a consumer product. Acknow ledpents 1 would like to acknowledge the CN Tower staff who actively participated in my study; rny appreciation goes out to them for taking time out of their busy days to talk with me. Thank you to Marian Binkley for taking the time to chair my cornmittee while on sabbatical. Her extensive knowledge in academia as well as in the politics of academia was of great help. Also, thank you to the other two members on my cornmittee, Richard Apode and Herb Gamberg for sharing their theoretical knowledge with me. AU three membes respected my choice of research and oEered full support. They aiso sacrificed their fiee time to read over my work. Thank you to Donna and Mary in the fiont office who were more than patient and helpful with my Dalhousie and Halifax concerns. 1 would also like to thank Jennifer Jarman and the students of the graduate seminar for keeping me intact with contemporary issues in Sociology and Anthropology. Mom, thank you for your support and faith. Knowing that you believed in me was a real incentive. To Wayne and the rest of my family 1 appreciate your inquiries into my study, it made me feel like was doing something of value. Thank you to the Premdas family for giving me a place to stay and the best food to eat, 1 really enjoyed my time in Scarborough. And of course Cindy, you showed me that spending my life living in a ditch off the 401, wearing underwear made fiom pieces of rubber fiom blown out car tires and attempting supply nutrients to my body by licking oii stains off the road is not the meaning of life. From you 1 see, my feet planted in ground my head above clouds to peer al1 around, but 1do more than see, you've shown to be. Chapter 1: The Modern Myth 1.1 Introduction The buiit environment is a concretization of culture. e a built structure is made to be more or less convenient as a shelter, waiting are% dhhg room, or passage- way, or even as a work of art, it is also a projection of a dream. Whether it is through the construction of a Gothic style church, a city hail, a house, a railway station, or a shopping centre, the builder idealizes reason to materialize hidher fûture prospects. It includes conscious as well as taken-for-granted ideals of how space should be organized. Parallehg movements in culture, social interaction with the buiit environment is continudy redefined. However, ifanalyzed in context, the built environment is a physical sign of social networking, an actuai display of how reaiity is constnicted by culture. Barthes (1979, 5) describes the myth of modernity as the belief that something must have an empirical use for a valid existence. That is, things are rationalized and valued under the scientîfic (or Cartesian) notion of utility. Something that lies outside the bound category of the arts and serves no 'fûnction' is useless by common sense of the modem rationde. The aesthetic reah of the arts has been defhed to include visual art, novels and music, to name a few, but things that do not fit into these generics are placed under the category of uselessness. It is "not in the spint of a penod commonly dedicated to rationality and to the empiricism of great bourgeois enterprises to endure the notion of a useless object" (Barthes 1979, 5). A useless object is a focus of cynicism and criticism in common discourse. A thing's presence is displaced by its defined utility. When people see something new, expecting its use to be evident by its definition they ask 'What is it?' If its use is still not evïdent the next question is 'What is it for?' Completed in 1976, the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, was promoted as a tourist attraction and a communications device. Communications supplieci only meen percent of its home (Fulford 1995, 31) but promoters exaggerated the importance of its role in transmitting broadcashg waves to the pater Metropolitan Toronto area. In an effort to avoid public condemnation, promoters confonned to the modern myth of utility by expounding the scientific fiuctions of the Tower. However, critics and Torontonians doubted that its extreme height, giving it status as the tailest fiee-standing structure in the world, was necessary for the transmission of radio and television waves. They knew that when it was completed in 1976, its giass-faced elevators, souvenir shops selling its image, its shape, form, location, organization of space, and materials that were used, were not necessary for communications. The CN Tower has commoniy been Iabeled a tourist trap and condemned as a 'vulgar' attempt to make money. However, it is the empirical notion of utility that is the modem rnyth. Function is defieci by culture; nothing has a purpose until it is given one, or more precisely, until it is limited to one. In the midst of a fully constructed reality, the guiding notion is cause and effect and scientifk empiricism legitimizing machinery, measuring devices and electronic goods. CN Tower promoters failed to estabiish the Tower as a necessary mechanical device. Explicating no universal reason, it remains in the human realm, for the imaginations of children who draw pictures of it, of companies who use it in their advertisements, of text book psychologists who cdit a phallic syrnbol and of tourists who choose to visit it. It is not a modem structure senhg a scientific purpose but an ambivalent entity disposed to dreamuig.