Many notables were at the earth-turning for the Northern Dancer Pavilion at the Canadian Film Centre at 2489 Bayview Avenue south of York Mills Rd today (Wednesday, May 15, 2013). The CFC is housed in the former Windfields Estates, once the home of industrialist and horse racing legend E.P. Taylor. The home later became the genesis of the CFC when the organization was founded by filmmaker Norman Jewison. Now governments at all levels have contributed to the planned construction of the Northern Dancer Pavilion. It will provide a spacious addition to the CFC campus and permit the centre to expand its film, television, digital media, screen acting and music program activities. There will also be additional event space for the centre and surrounding community. The provincial and federal governments each contributed up to $3.25 million. The City of Toronto invested $1 million and CFC provided the remaining $1.5 million toward the total eligible project cost, bringing the total investment to $9 million. The building is named after E.P. Taylor’s famed Canadian thoroughbred Northern Dancer (1961-1990). His fabulous racing career started with low expectations because he was so small. But then Northern Dancer began to win, and win and win. With jockey Bill Hartak aboard, Northern Dancer won the Blue Grass and Kentucky Derby, Queen’s Plate, Preakness Stakes and finished third in the Belmont Stakes. In his two years of racing, Northern Dancer won 14 of the 16 races he ran and never finished worse than third. At the earth-turning we see in the picture above (l-r) Slawko Klymkiw, CEO, Canadian Film Centre, Hon. Lisa Raitt, Minister of Labour, Lucille Roch, Vice-Chair of the Board for the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Nancy Lockhart, (Chair of the CFC Building Fund), Lynne St. David Jewison, Norman Jewison, Founder and Chair Emeritus, CFC, Councillor David Shiner, Donald Ross, Gretchen Ross, and Christina Jennings, Co-Chair of the CFC Board of Directors and Chairman and CEO of Shaftesbury. Photo by Tom Sandler.
