The History of UTSC Project
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The Spaces & Places guided walking tour explores the history of locations on and around the UTSC campus by sharing the personal recollections of members of our campus community — reflecting a variety of perspectives, positions, and points in time.
The Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, often referred to as TPASC or simply Pan Am, is a 365,000-square-foot sports complex located on the northern grounds of the UTSC campus, near the intersection of Morningside Avenue and Highway 401. A joint venture between the federal and provincial governments, the City of Toronto, and the University of Toronto, the Centre represents one of the country’s largest ever investments in amateur sports, and has, since its opening in 2014, hosted a number of high-profile sporting events, including the 2015 Pan American Games, 2017 North American Indigenous Games, and 2017 Invictus Games. More domestically, TPASC serves as an easily-accessible space for various members of the UTSC community to stay active and participate in a wide range of engaging activities year round. In this way, TPASC is much more than just a gym; it is a gathering space, a productive hub of buzzing activity where connections are made between UTSC, the surrounding community, and the larger world.
Credits: Conceived and produced by Maria Bacchus. All images courtesy of Sahra Togone, Historical Aerial Imagery Toronto, and TPASC.
Kim McLean, a UTSC alum who also served as the university’s Chief Administrative Officer from 1999-2012, discusses the planning that went into the development of TPASC and the importance of connecting the university with the surrounding community.
Andrew Arifuzzaman, UTSC’s Chief Administrative and Strategy Officer, reflects on the initial uncertainties around the construction of the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre in Scarborough, and recalls meeting some big names at the Centre once it opened in 2015.
When we started work on building the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, there was sort of a mixed view as to whether that should actually happen in Scarborough or happen somewhere else...And it was because of the perception of what Scarborough was. Like it was this nowhere space that no one would get to...Everybody said this was gonna be a white elephant, it would lose money, it would never break even. It has been way over-subscribed, way over-utilized, even compared to what we had benchmarked. It’s the only facility that’s actually making money, like it’s actually paying for itself...I actually bumped into Joe Biden at the TPASC Centre. And to have Joe Biden and Obama sitting next to each other, in a facility that everybody said would never happen, I think that was really great.
The above images are from the Invictus Games, which were held at various sporting arenas across Toronto in 2017, including TPASC. Former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, former First Lady Jill Biden, and Prince Harry visited UTSC to watch Team USA take on Team France in wheelchair basketball.
Images courtesy of Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation, 2017.
