Power of a vision: Tom Patterson, who launched the Stratford Festival, and Jim Tovey, who launched Inspiration Lakeview, each visualized what could be

A previous post is entitled:

Shakespeare gets a new home town – May 1, 1953 article about Stratford from Macleans archive

At that post I refer to a May 1, 1953 Macleans article entitled: “Shakespeare gets a new home town.”

An excerpt from the 1953 Macleans article reads:

The festival is the brain child of its present manager, Tom Patterson, a slight quiet-spoken man of thirty-two. In his school days, lying on the grass in the park listening to the CNR band one balmy evening, he felt that “something big” could be done with Stratford’s Old World charm. What could be bigger than Shakespeare, or more fitting? He nursed the idea through university, through five years overseas with the Army Dental Corps and, after the war, broached it back home. No one took him seriously. He went to work in Toronto for a trade magazine, Maclean-Hunter’s Civic Administration.

Then, one autumn day in Winnipeg in 1951, while covering a convention of the American Waterworks Association, Patterson found himself talking old times with Stratford’s Mayor David Simpson. He brought out his Shakespeare idea and dusted it off. “Sounds fine,” said Simpson. “See what you can dig up and let me know.”

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The rest of the story went well, as you likely know.

Jim Tovey pictured what could be, and worked together with many other people to make his vision a reality

A previous post is entitled:

Jim Tovey (1949-2018), CVC Board Member and Councillor of Mississauga Ward 1, discusses progress on Lakeview Waterfront Connection project

A July 16, 2011 Globe and Mail article (updated April 29, 2018) is entitled: “How Mississauga’s waterfront got ahead: by learning from Toronto’s mistakes.”

An excerpt reads:

Mr. Tovey says he can remember the exact moment he first thought this forlorn piece of land would be a prime candidate to be developed into a high-density neighbourhood: Aug. 28, 1994, shortly before 11 p.m.

From his work in construction, he knew sprawling suburbs were candidates for infill and his neighbourhood was no exception. This thought was on his mind as he walked his dog along a hydro corridor near his house.

“I was standing on a hill looking over the power plant and the full moon broke over the stacks. It was beautiful,” he says.

And like so many had done across the GTA, he looked at the decrepit industrial landscape and the vast, dark lake beyond and dreamt of the possibilities.

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