This Toronto park's otherworldly vibes make it a magnet for music video producers

With its Grecian columns and classically inspired statuary, wooded areas, and lake views, the Guild Park and Gardens doesn't feel like suburban Toronto. It's more like a mash-up of ancient Athens, Victorian England and Narnia. 

The columns, reliefs and statues aren't actually ancient. They're remnants of 19th- and early-20th-century modern and neoclassical buildings from around Southern Ontario that were demolished as part of the area's post-Second World War building boom. They were saved by the property's former owners and brought to the site on the Scarborough Bluffs. The Greek Theatre — the park's centrepiece — is actually part of a former bank headquarters. 

But as pedestrian as its origins may be, Guild Park feels otherworldly. It's the kind of place that feeds the imagination, which explains why it's been used as a set over and over again for film and television, but particularly for music videos.

The park is probably best known for its appearance in Drake's 2011 video for "Headlines," but it wasn't the first time the location was used for a music video. That honour goes to Martha and the Muffins' "Danseparc" in 1983. Robin Cass, an art-school friend of the legendary Toronto new wave band, directed the clip and says a relative tipped him off about the site.

"It was so romantic and it was out of time," he says. "Even though it was technically Toronto, it was just, like, this bubble of beauty. It's, like, an art gallery in the middle of green space. It was just unlike anything I'd ever seen."

When he showed it to the band, they were equally taken with it. 

"We were obviously blown away by it," says Martha and the Muffins guitarist and co-founder Mark Gane. "It seemed so exotic for a fairly architecturally mundane city like Toronto. To suddenly go way out into the east end and find this strange landscape full of discarded bits of buildings, immediately we went, 'Oh, we've got to shoot the video here.'"

Gane adds that the vast number of sculptures and artifacts in the park means it's easy to create a lot of different looks there. 

"It has a wide variety of sets that you can use, and you can put your own interpretation into them," he says. "You can do whatever you want with them."

That versatility is part of what led Toronto hardcore band Mil-Spec to shoot their video for "The Days Don't End" in the park, almost 40 years after "Danseparc."

"We got really interested in the idea of ripping off, or at least paying respects to, [the Beatles] 'Paperback Writer' music video," says Mil-Spec guitarist Dan Darrah. "We sort of started discussing it conceptually, and the big question was, 'Where do we shoot something like that?' Because what gives that video so much personality is the sort of Westphalian, old-timey background in which the Beatles are shooting that video. So I immediately remembered the video for 'Headlines' by Drake and I was like, 'Oh, f–k. [Guild Park] would be a good place for that.' It's actually kind of comical how perfect that is."

Ethan Hibionada, who directed the video, says he's surprised people don't use the location more often. On top of everything else, the locals are obliging.

"The people who live in that area are super nice," he says. "They didn't have any objection to six random guys pulling up with a camera and just blasting hardcore music that early in the morning as they're going on the morning stroll."

Darrah says one of the things that makes Guild Park stand out — not just as a shooting location, but also as a public space — is the unique role it fills in the city. Toronto, he points out, is a city that is "trending aggressively towards modernity" and rips down its old buildings pretty readily. A place where parts of those old buildings are preserved is rare.

"This is a city that acts aggressively in opposition to its own history sometimes, especially the maintenance of historical buildings and things like that," he says. "It is very cool to occupy a place that has a historical feel to it."