We all have an airport scene running through our heads, even those of us who’ve never stepped foot in a terminal. Maybe it’s from When Harry Met Sally, The Terminal or Catch Me If You Can. Maybe it’s a video by the Backstreet Boys, the Foo Fighters or Wyclef Jean. Maybe it’s U2’s Beautiful Day, which was filmed at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle.
Canada’s busiest airport, Toronto Pearson, has its share, too. The airport played a significant part in Past Lives, a fan-favorite nominee for Best Picture at the Academy Awards last year, where the main character immigrates to Canada. But it’s hardly the airport’s first role: its overflow infield terminal is a regular set for film shoots, from Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk to HBO Max’s pandemic miniseries Station Eleven, and it has also been depicted in at least two noteworthy music videos: Sloan’s The Good in Everyone and Rush’s iconic YYZ, which was named for Pearson’s airport code. It might be cheeky to say the airport is Canada’s second most recognizable Hollywood export, but it’s right there with Ryan Reynolds, who gave himself that self-referential shoutout in this year’s summer blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine.
Directors, actors and media from nearly 100 countries will soon converge in Toronto for the annual Toronto International Film Festival. But as the festival approaches, it’s worth remembering that the real artistic value of an airport isn’t how it gets used as a backdrop. It’s how it connects and drives the artistic economy of a city, a region or even an entire country. Artists, patrons, executives, political leaders—we all need to understand how air travel supports the artistic value chain and understand how to make the most of it.
Just a few generations ago, we would have regarded airplanes and airports as little more than artistic footnotes. Artists wouldn’t have imagined them as career-builders because their travels were grounded in the transportation options of the day. Paul Gaugin traveled to Tahiti by steamship. Ansel Adams explored most of Yosemite with a backpack. Canada’s famous impressionist painters mostly used rail to access their country’s iconic landscapes—and one of them, Tom Thomson, famously died in a canoe.
Today, though, global cities are connected by air, and people in the arts use airport access to further their lives and careers. Simo Liu, Domee Shi and Drake are among the many who have used the Toronto area as a launching pad for global careers. Elton John, Mark Wahlberg and Prince found it professionally convenient to base themselves here. Steven Spielberg, Jim Carrey and Kate Hudson have spent years flying in to spend cottage vacations a short drive from where Thomson met his end.
Of course, Toronto’s not the only film-friendly city to use its airport as a launching pad for creativity—Dubai International Airport collaborated with artist Refik Anadol to create a digital installation highlighting the fragility of nature ahead of COP28. In Miami, artist Michele Oka Doner’s large-scale public installation “A Walk on the Beach” evokes the city’s coastal environment. In both cases, there was not only a local angle, but a globally appealing narrative highlighting serious issues like climate and sustainability through art and creativity—with airports serving as the canvas.
These destinations are more than just vacations for these creatives; they are valuable sources of inspiration that push art and artists forward. They aren’t here full-time, of course. They have research to do, movies to shoot, events to attend and art to make on the kind of schedules that require modern, well-connected transport links. Drake isn’t actually sitting around on the CN Tower—his recent tour included 72 shows in 40 cities. But while artists are here, they tend to create. It’s not uncommon for the region to draw a billion dollars in annual film work from big-name studios drawn by Toronto’s cosmopolitanism and low production costs. Think My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Shazam!, Schitt’s Creek and The Handmaid’s Tale, among many more.
Make no mistake: No artists, actors, scouts, producers, directors, financiers, production crews, music-makers and concert-goers are using rail and steamship to commute from London to Los Angeles or Tokyo to Toronto. It takes a gateway airport with direct flights to more than 150 cities to enable hundreds of thousands of arts jobs and a $25-billion provincial culture industry. You might say the arts are like an airport, grounded in connection. With a viewer, with an audience, with an idea, with a place. Indeed, anyone who makes a living in a cultural industry will tell you that their career is built on seizing these connections and opportunities. To quote Rick Blaine’s famous line, delivered at the airport in Casablanca: “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it.”
