An artist's rendition of the media centre in Toronto for the G8 and G20 Summits.HO/The Canadian Press
Despite all the controversy over the so-called fake lake, the Muskoka-inspired display built for the G8/G20 summits should be preserved - not as a sort of museum of government excess, but as a playful and successful exhibit that succeeded as few tourism promotional displays ever have.
The "Experience Canada" exhibit is to be entirely dismantled within the next three days, and with it goes the $208,000 "Northern Ontario Oasis." The fake lake is to be drained, the looping loon calls silenced, the canoes and Muskoka chairs returned to their lenders, the wood from the faux dock handed over for reuse. It is a cruel fate to be wrought upon such an inventive installation, one that lightheartedly uses its very artificiality to celebrate Canada's natural richness.
The fake lake has become iconic. It has been seen by thousands of journalists and served as a backdrop for numerous international media broadcasts. It has become famous in Canada as much for its cost as its fundamental absurdity, located as it is near the centre of Toronto. It has become Canada's fake lake, better known in some respects than the places it was meant to promote.
The critics who once hounded the government over its cost and conception, then, should be concerned now to have the fake lake preserved. It should be saved not as a substitute for a visit to Lake Joseph, but as an ironic homage to Canada's natural beauty and its enduring clichés. Preserved, it would become a featured attraction of the Canadian National Exhibition. Canadians should have an opportunity to put a toe in the fake lake.