The Planetarium: Pull of the Stars

When Peter Jones was around 8 years old, his parents took him to the McLaughlin Planetarium, which opened beside the Royal Ontario Museum in 1968.

Fascinated by the equipment, Peter took as many courses as he could at the Planetarium, and when he was still a teenager, he managed to land a job there. He became a show operator, from the late 1970s into the 1990s. He describes the Zeiss projectors that weighed 2.5 tons, the changes that were made to the building and the shows that were put on. The Planetarium was closed in 1995, a result of funding cuts imposed by the Conservative provincial government under Premier Mike Harris. Complete demolition of the building began in 2026. In another video, Peter Jones describes how shows were put together.

McLaughlin Planetarium
McLaughlin Planetarium
Founder of the Planetarium Colonel R. Samuel McLaughlin (Photo: Toronto Star Archive through the Toronto Public Library.)
Founder of the Planetarium Colonel R. Samuel McLaughlin (Photo: Toronto Star Archive through the Toronto Public Library.)
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