The Tower that Built a City mixes archival footage with new conversations engaging the tower’s innovative engineers and many Toronto notables. This 50th-anniversary celebration beams with civic pride and connects this singular structure to many of the 6ix’s defining moments over the past half-century. Screened at Hot Docs on May 1st, 2026, Shwayta Sharma chats with Mark Myers about the inspiration behind the documentary and much more.


1. What first drew you to the story behind ‘The Tower That Built a City’, and why did you feel it needed to be told now?

What drew me to the story was really the Tower itself. I’m not quite as old as the CN Tower, but I grew up in Scarborough, and for as long as I can remember, it’s always been this kind of magnet in the city. You always know where it is. Your eye is always drawn to it. As a kid, spotting it meant you were heading downtown, toward the action. I went to school at the University of Toronto and never really left the city, so in a way, the Tower has been slowly pulling me toward this story my entire life.

The actual idea for the film came from watching a Ken Burns MasterClass. He was talking about his first documentary, Brooklyn Bridge, and as I listened to him describe why and how he made it, something clicked. I thought, if the Brooklyn Bridge is worthy of a film, surely the CN Tower is. That was really the moment the seed was planted.

As for why now, when I first started thinking seriously about the idea, I looked at the calendar and realized the Tower’s 50th anniversary was coming in 2026. That became the ticking clock. The anniversary felt like the perfect moment to look back, not just at the structure, but at the city that built it, and the city that grew up around it. Toronto has changed so much over those 50 years, and the Tower has been there through all of it, as a catalyst, as a witness, a symbol, and in some ways, a mirror.

2. How did you portray the Tower as a character in the film? How did you balance telling the human stories around the Tower versus letting the structure and architecture speak for themselves?

Making the Tower a character was a priority almost from the start. I knew I didn’t just want to make an architectural film. There had already been documentaries made during and after the Tower’s construction that dealt with how it was built. I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to tell a story about the Tower, but also about the city that built it, and the culture that grew up around it.

The challenge was figuring out how to combine an architectural and engineering story with a human and cultural one. I started thinking of the CN Tower as a character because I do think it has helped shape the city it stands in.

In editing, there’s the idea of the Kuleshov effect, where the meaning of an image is shaped by the shots that come before and after it. I thought about the Tower in that way. By cutting to the observation deck, I could treat it almost like a face – so depending on the context, I could help connect the Tower to the emotional beat of the story.

The other important thing is that the Tower isn’t just an engineering marvel. I think a lot of people forget, or maybe never realized, that first and foremost it was built as a telecommunications device. Its job was to transmit. That function is what allowed the human stories to become intertwined with the architectural story, because the Tower didn’t just sit there as a monument. It helped broadcast the city. It helped amplify the culture.

So the architecture does speak for itself in many ways, but for me the film had to be more than architecture. It had to be about context. It had to be about how a structure can change the way a city sees itself, and even how the world sees that city.

3. Do you think architecture can carry emotional or political weight in the same way a human subject can?

I think architecture can absolutely carry emotional and political weight. Maybe not in exactly the same way a human subject can, but in some cases, maybe it can carry even more, depending on the person and depending on the building.

Architecture is art. If it makes you feel something, then it has an effect on you. In the film, Ken Greenberg notes that “[w]e build our buildings, and then our buildings shape us.” I think that’s true. The things we surround ourselves with do shape how we feel, how we move through a city, and how we understand ourselves within it.

With something as big and bold as the CN Tower, you can’t really escape it. Toby Lütke says something in the film about how a structure as significant as the CN Tower can pull an entire megacity upward, and I think that’s a really powerful idea.  Big ideas, well executed, are inspiring.

Architecture can inspire people in the same way a great speech can, or a painting, or a piece of music. It can make people feel proud. It can make a city feel more ambitious. And in the case of the CN Tower, I think for most people, it has become a symbol of pride, and a symbol of home. 

4. What was the most difficult narrative decision you had to make while working on the film?

I’m not sure there was one single narrative decision, but the biggest challenge was making the film feel like one cohesive story, and not two separate films.

On one hand, there’s an architectural and engineering story about the making of the CN Tower. On the other hand, there’s a cultural story about the evolution of Toronto. The challenge was figuring out how to intertwine those two threads so they felt woven together, not glued together or smashed together.

That became the real narrative puzzle of the film: how do you move from concrete, steel, slipform construction, and telecommunications into identity, culture, music, sports, film, and civic pride, without feeling like you’ve suddenly changed documentaries?

The answer, for me, was always to come back to the Tower’s function and meaning. It was built to solve for telecommunication issues, but it became a symbol, but over time, it helped shape how Toronto saw itself. Once I understood that, the architectural story and the cultural story started to feel like the same story.

5. How did you approach pacing the story, which spans both personal human experience and large-scale urban development?

I’m a director and an editor, so I got to live with the film for a long time in the edit. The pacing was something I thought about constantly.

Even though it’s a documentary, I approached it very much like a narrative feature film. I thought about act breaks, momentum, turning points, and emotional payoff. The film is divided into six chapters, but underneath that, I was thinking about it like a three-act structure.

Before I even started filming, I mapped the story out on paper. I thought about the inciting incident, the first act break, the middle of the story, the low point, the climax, and the resolution. Obviously, once you’re editing, things change. You discover new rhythms and new connections. But having that structure gave me something to push against.

So the short answer is, I paced it like a feature film. I wanted it to have the information and responsibility of a documentary, but the movement and emotional build of a narrative film. That structure helped me keep the story moving, even when it was shifting between human experience and large-scale urban development.

6. When working with real historical narratives, how do you decide where interpretation ends and responsibility to fact begins? Did you feel any pressure from historians, architects, or the public about how the story should be told?

I’m a sucker for the truth, so I feel a big responsibility toward facts. But I also know that facts can be complicated when you’re dealing with people, memory, ego, and different perspectives.

I tried to lean into that a little bit in the film. For example, there are questions around who was truly responsible for the design of the Tower. Depending on who you ask, or what perspective you’re coming from, the answer can shift. So rather than pretending there was one perfectly clean version of the story, I wanted to acknowledge that history often has a grey zone. There are facts, but there are also competing memories and interpretations of those facts.

I definitely felt pressure, but mostly from myself. I didn’t take the subject lightly. I wanted to do right by the city, by the Tower, and by the people who contributed to the film. I wanted the architects, engineers, historians, broadcasters, artists, and everyone involved to feel that their contribution was treated seriously and not manipulated.

At the same time, filmmaking always involves interpretation. You’re choosing what to include, what to leave out, what image goes next to what idea. And in this film, that line is probably most visible in the use of cinematic recreations. Sometimes you don’t have the exact archival footage or original document to show something, so you recreate a feeling or a moment visually. But for me, those recreations were never about rewriting history. They were about helping the audience emotionally access something that really happened, while still staying responsible to the truth of the story.

7. What was the hardest visual or technical challenge in bringing this story to life?

The coolest visual challenge was probably also the hardest: the FPV drone footage of the Tower. I wanted to show the CN Tower in a way people maybe hadn’t seen before.  It’s such a familiar structure, especially to people in Toronto, so the challenge was finding a way to make it feel fresh, dynamic, and visually striking again.

That was something I couldn’t really do by myself, so it required the right collaborators and the right approach. The FPV footage gave us a way to move around the Tower with a kind of energy and intimacy you don’t usually get. It made the Tower feel alive in a different way.

From a technical and research standpoint, one of the biggest challenges was tracking down as much original material as possible. Archival footage, documents, blueprints, correspondence, photographs, postcards, anything that could help bring the story to life. Getting access to WZMH Architects’ archival material was a real goldmine. There were original blueprints, boxes of correspondence, and all kinds of material that helped us understand the Tower not just as an icon, but as something people actually imagined, designed, debated, and built. A big shoutout goes to Richard Myers, a partner at WZMH, because that access made a huge difference.

I was also lucky to work with Ed Conroy of Retrontario, who has kept this incredible archive of material connected to Toronto’s history and pop culture over the last 50 years. His library helped give the film a visual memory of the city. It wasn’t just about showing the Tower. It was about showing the world around it: the broadcasts, the personalities, the tone of the city, and the cultural moments that surrounded the Tower as Toronto was changing.

8. If you could add a final 30 seconds to the film that viewers would remember most, what would it be?

I have two answers to that.

The first is Drake. In my mind, Drake was always a major character in the story, even if he isn’t physically in the film in the way I originally imagined. Structurally, he represents the climax of the third act. He’s part of the Tower’s rebirth, and Toronto’s rebirth, in terms of how the city started projecting itself to the world with confidence. So if I had another 30 seconds, one version would be to include Drake in a more significant way.

The other answer is almost the opposite. Some of the feedback I’ve heard is that the film can feel very pro-Toronto, almost too positive at times. And I understand that. So another version of those final 30 seconds might acknowledge that, like any major city, Toronto isn’t perfect. It has real faults, pressures, inequalities, and people who may not always feel represented by the city’s success story.

I wouldn’t want to suddenly turn the ending negative, but I do think there’s value in making space for that complexity. The film is ultimately a love letter to the city, but the best love letters are honest. So maybe those extra 30 seconds would simply acknowledge that the story of Toronto is still unfinished, and that not everyone experiences the city, or the Tower, in the same way.

QUICK TAKES

What projects are you currently pitching or developing?
I’m currently in the middle of directing an eight-episode television series for Crave. I’m not sure how much I can reveal about it just yet, but that’s what I’m focused on right now. I also have a short film I’m hoping to make that’s already been storyboarded.

What stage are these projects in?
The Crave series is in production. We’ve shot three weeks and have three more to go, so I’m right in the middle of it.

What kind of collaborators are you looking for right now?
Honestly, at this exact moment, I probably need a director’s assistant more than anything. I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy in my life. I’m lucky to have a lot of great creative collaborators around me already, but right now I could really use someone to help keep everything moving.

How can people get in touch if they want to collaborate or learn more?
The easiest way is probably through Instagram: @markmeyersfilms.

Are you looking for submissions, funding, or other opportunities?
I’m always open to opportunities, whether that’s funding, submissions, or collaboration. Time is always the factor. You can be an open door, but you can’t always accomplish everything that comes through it. But I’m always open to the right thing at the right time.

Any upcoming events, screenings, or launches readers should know about?
There was just another screening of The Tower That Built a City at Hot Docs Cinema for students, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend. There may also be another special screening closer to the CN Tower’s anniversary on June 26, but we’re still figuring out what that could look like with the Tower and some city partners.

Photo Credits: Outtahouse