“It’s our Statue of Liberty”: The filmmaker behind the CN Tower documentary pays tribute to Toronto’s tower

As a suburban kid in the 1980s, Mark Myers saw the CN Tower as a beacon of the big city—a marvel of modern architecture and a symbol of possibility. His new documentary, The Tower That Built a City, takes it one step further, arguing that Toronto is what it is because of the 553.3-metre phallus erected in the centre of the downtown core. The film arrives just in time for the tower’s 50th-anniversary festivities on June 26. In advance of the Hot Docs premiere, Myers spoke with us about the inevitable penis jokes and his quest to find Drake.

First things first: were you always obsessed with the CN Tower? Being a Scarborough kid, I thought of the CN Tower as where the action was: seeing it meant you were going to the Blue Jays game, the ROM, the AGO. I guess you could say that the CN Tower meant you were going places. I can remember visiting as a kid, feeling the wind on my face up on the observation deck—this was back when they used to have half-windows. Later, I went to U of T, and the tower was always in the backdrop. But the impetus for the documentary was when I watched a MasterClass with legendary documentarian Ken Burns, who talked about his first feature, on the Brooklyn Bridge. I thought, If the bridge is worthy, surely the CN Tower is as well. In some ways it’s surprising that no one has made this doc, but on the other hand, it’s not very Canadian to self-promote.

At the risk of sounding ignorant, I didn’t know that the CN was conceived as a functional telecommunication device and not merely the ultimate backdrop for sunset selfies. You’re definitely not alone. Most people know it as an engineering marvel and a structure, but the reasons it exists are practical in nature. As more and more tall buildings went up in the 1960s and ’70s, radio and TV signals were being blocked. They did the math and realized that we needed a tower at least 365 metres tall to reach the metropolitan area. The CBC owned property north of the city, and that was where they looked at building something entirely different—an ugly Guidewire tower that was purely functional. And then the Metro Centre redevelopment project got underway, and that’s when they got the idea to create something that could also be an anchor for this new part of the city.

Related: Twelve amazing photos of the CN Tower being built

The doc basically argues that the CN Tower gave Toronto its swagger—that everything from the Blue Jays to TIFF to MuchMusic might not have come here without it. Was that a thesis you had going in or one that developed along the way? That wasn’t how I understood things going into my research, but the further I got, the more the idea crystallized. I started showing early cuts of the film, and the question I got was: What is your thesis? What are you trying to say? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, yes, it was a tower that built a city—so that’s where the title came from. It’s a ripple effect: the CN Tower played a huge role in putting Toronto on the map and on the road to being a world-class city. It put us in the big leagues at the same time as the MLB was expanding, so you could argue that, because of the tower, Toronto got the Blue Jays. Because of the Blue Jays, we got Joe Carter, we got a World Series–winning home run. That success was a big part of getting the Raptors. Because of the Raptors, we got Vince Carter. You could argue that, because of Vince Carter, we got Drake, since a kid growing up in Toronto gets that kind of swagger because Carter came before him.

Is there any one person who deserves the most credit for the tower’s construction? It’s complicated given how many people were involved and how many different versions of events I heard. I think if you had to choose one person it would be Franz Knoll, the Austrian-born structural engineer who conceived of and championed the project. But it’s not like the Eiffel Tower, which is named after Gustave Eiffel. I felt a duty to at least name the different figures who were involved, just so that their children or family watching wouldn’t feel ignored by history. That was important to me.

You also introduce viewers to Jack Ashton, the only person who was killed during the construction process. What’s interesting is that I asked people involved in the project, “Did anyone die?" And they said no. Jack Ashton was a concrete inspector. He was on the site on a windy day in 1974 and was struck in the head by a piece of plywood and died. I spoke with his children, who feel like the tower is almost his tombstone. After their dad died, they would go down to the tower, ask if anyone had died in the construction and be told that, no, nobody had. So that was hard. I wanted to correct that narrative and pay proper respect.

Related: The 10 biggest moments in Toronto architecture in the last 50 years

Another key assertion is that Drake’s Views album, where he is sitting on top of the tower in the cover art, brought about a CN Tower resurgence. Even before I shot anything, I had the story broken down, and Drake sitting on the tower was the peak of my third act. At one point I was calling it The Rise and the Fall and the Rise of the CN Tower, to reflect the current resurgence. I tried really hard to get Drake. In my dreams, I was going to make the doc and he would produce it. As an independent filmmaker, the journey is so treacherous that you almost have to be delusional to keep going. I also tried to get Vince Carter and Mike Myers, with no luck, but there are lots of amazing people I did speak to: Doug Gilmour, Joe Carter, Moses Znaimer. I flew to California to interview Domee Shi at Pixar. The CN Tower gets a lot of exposure in her movie Turning Red.

What about the EdgeWalk? That feels like a pretty big part of the modern CN Tower narrative, but it didn’t get a lot of time in the movie. You do see it in a montage that shows the evolution. I actually did the EdgeWalk to do some filming. It was funny because when I had my camera, I was totally fine, but then I put it down and was like, Wow, this is extremely scary.

Are you surprised that we’ve gotten this far into our conversation without my asking about the CN Tower as a phallic symbol? Ha! That was definitely something a lot of people joked about. Everyone except Franz Knoll, who said, “No comment.” Almost like it was beneath him. I guess the argument is that every tower has that symbolism.

But not every tower has the SkyDome. I have always heard it jokingly described as the testicle to the CN Tower’s penis, but architecture critic Christopher Hume says, in your doc, that it’s the vagina. What do you think? I remember my older brother telling me that it was a scrotum. I think the most common joke is that the SkyDome is the balls for the tower, but Hume says that he thought it was the vagina because he was looking down from a plane and the dome was open.

The CN Tower was surpassed as the tallest free-standing structure in the world in 2007. How did that change its standing? In the doc, Ken Greenberg, who is a very respected urban planner, says that when we lost the “tallest tower” title, it meant the CN Tower was free to just be itself. I like that. I think we tend to get so caught up in records and superlatives, but when you lose the gimmick, then you find your true identity. We’re not proud of the CN Tower because it’s the world’s tallest structure; we’re proud because it’s an iconic structure that represents our city. The CN Tower belongs to all of us. It’s a symbol of pride and unity.

Does this story hit different in 2026 given current political tensions? Definitely. I timed the project based on the CN Tower’s 50th birthday, on June 26 of this year, but the timing ended up being significant beyond that. In the doc, I show a clip from Michael Moore’s 1995 film Canadian Bacon where there’s a joke about Canada as the 51st state. Now here we are, thirty years later, and patriotism matters more than ever. Like Ken Greenberg says, it’s our Statue of Liberty.

Favourite CN Tower LED colour scheme? The CN is Toronto’s tower, but it’s also Canada’s tower, so I guess I’m partial to red and white.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.