Racing eggs, faking a quasar, scraping up radioactivity and more.
June 14, 2026
Photographs fitted together, circa 1986, show different energy conversion devices — a Wheelock steam engine, an original Otto internal combustion engine, and a modern interpretation of a Newcomen atmospheric engine arranged together in the science centre’s hall of technology.
Gordon Willson and Tom Kasanda/Reprinted with permission from Dundurn Press Limited
By Joan Francuz
For many Torontonians the loss, even if temporary, of the Ontario Science Centre — scene of countless fun, illuminating childhood memories — still stings, two years after the closure of its site on Don Mills Road. In her new book “Please Touch Everything: A History of the Ontario Science Centre,” author and Science Centre staffer Joan Francuz reveals some of the fun also had behind the scenes.
The official opening, known as the Premier’s Opening, on Saturday, Sept. 27, 1969, began at 10:30 a.m. Six hundred invitations had been sent out and a thousand people showed up.
The technical aspects of the actual opening had been published in advance:
The signal will come from a mysterious celestial body called a quasar that is estimated to be 1.5 billion light years from the earth (or roughly nine sextillion miles) …
The quasar signal will be received by a radio telescope in Algonquin Park and relayed to Toronto by a special landline and microwave hookup. When it reaches the centre it will trigger a relay which will switch on a laser which will send a beam of light across the Great Hall to an infrared sensor. The sensor will activate another relay which in turn will switch on a current which will activate a pyrotechnic device.
The pyrotechnic device will send up a puff of smoke and electromagnets will part a set of curtains, revealing the centre’s crest …
The signal the science centre hopes to receive will come from the quasar known as 3C273.
To have travelled such a vast distance to get here, the signal must have originated 1.5 billion years ago. That is believed to be about the time life first arose on earth.
The signal — to be picked up by the National Research Council’s 150-foot-diameter radio telescope at Lake Traverse — is to open the centre at 16 minutes and 16 seconds past 11 a.m.
The politicians gathered at 10:30 a.m., and each one said a few words to the people assembled. Premier John Robarts reached the podium at 10:50 a.m. “to a storm of applause.”
Waiting for the quasar, he filled time like an after-dinner speaker at a fundraiser. “I don’t know why it’s coming from Algonquin Park,” he said. “Someone will probably say we’re trying to destroy all natural life up there.” There was some applause. “Well. I don’t know any funny jokes. But I’m doing my feeble best to entertain you.” That brought laughter from the crowd. Finally he said, “Oh, here’s the signal.” Robarts disappeared in a cloud of smoke. He reappeared laughing and waving at the fog and officially opened the centre on behalf of the people of Ontario.
In truth, there was no radio signal from over 1.5 billion light-years away. This was a Science Centre exhibit that had to be perfect. Nothing could go wrong. Two staff members, hidden in the balcony of the Great Hall, pressed a button, and a laser beam hit an infrared sensor, which activated the pyrotechnic device. Electromagnets then parted a set of curtains, revealing the new Ontario Science Centre logo.
The early plans for Ontario Hydro’s stage show included not only the Van de Graaff static electricity generator but also an extremely large Wimshurst machine. It also is a static electricity generator but with more than enough power to be fatal. It was never installed on the floor and remained wrapped up in the back hall for many years.
The large exhibition space given to Ontario Hydro inspired Consumers’ Gas Company (now Enbridge), the main provider of natural gas to Toronto, to become involved with the centre. An exhibit in the Consumers’ area was a custom-built hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell, which was leading-edge research technology in the 1960s. It was the personal interest of Dr. James Clark, then the chief scientist at Consumers’ Gas.
Consumers’ Gas generated its own electricity for its office building, using its own gas and a turbine. It was called a total energy system. At the science centre, the exhibit developers created a similar but much smaller power plant that did the same thing. This was no simulation. There was a real four-cylinder natural gas engine driving an electricity generator. The exhaust heat drove an absorption refrigerator to produce cold, and the heat from the radiator provided heat to the space.
Ten of the gas exhibits used real fire. They were placed along the edge of the mezzanine to block the sightlines to the Ontario Hydro exhibits, as requested.
Staff engineer Grant Slinn says, “The most infamous one had a metal arm with a wick and a trough of fuel. The arm went around in a circle. The wick went through a flame (the pilot light from a gas furnace), caught fire, then went around, then went back into the tank of fuel and the flame went out because there was no air.” Ironically, years later, there was a fire and the whole mezzanine burned down.
Sometimes the staff just bought things. Slinn recalls working on an exhibit about radioactivity. “If you wanted to get anything radioactive, you had to get it from AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.) and there was a lot of paperwork involved, and tracking, and monitoring.” He recalls how one of the scientists, Peter Anderson, said, “Just go and buy a lot of Coleman lamp mantles because they contain thorium oxide.” So they bought about a hundred of them, burned them, and collected the ash. Then Ron Miller made a pill press to compress the ash, and he produced a single grey pellet about a quarter inch in diameter and half an inch long. It was radioactive enough to trigger a Geiger counter.
“After we opened the exhibit,” Slinn says, “we had staff from AECL visiting and they asked where we got that. We took great delight in saying that we got it at Canadian Tire.”
In 1973, OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) raised the price of crude oil, triggering fuel shortages in the United States with lineups at the pump. That prompted discussion among science centre staff about how mobile devices — like cars — have to carry their own energy on board. That, in turn, led to the egg race.
The first race, for staff only, was held in 1973 on the uncarpeted floor of the upper level of the reception building. The egg had to be a Grade A Large, and it had to travel on the energy stored in a wound up Viceroy No. 10 rubber band — a standard government-issued office supply item. Ron Miller from the prototype group built a carriage for an egg that travelled the length of the building and halfway back. He won the race.
Education staff liked the idea, and in 1977 turned it into a program in the Great Hall during March break. Bob McDonald even mentioned it to Carl Sagan that year. In 1978, the Great International Egg Race was held at the centre, with participants from Canada, the U.S., and Britain. The race was won by an English engineer whose egg travelled 368.29 metres, or 1,208.35 feet.
Then, in 1979, the BBC began a new series called “The Great Egg Race,” where teams were challenged to build machines with limited resources and time. That’s just one example of how events in the outside world affected the centre, and how the centre affected the outside world.
Excerpted from “Please Touch Everything: A History of the Ontario Science Centre” written by Joan Francuz (Dundurn Press Ltd., 2026) and reprinted with permission from Dundurn Press Limited.
Original article:
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/fea-excerpt-pleasetouch/article_7dfc531f-8102-40cc-a19b-1888be837cb4.html
