Ottawa’s ByTowne cinema shut its doors Dec. 26 after the announcement of a province-wide lockdown, leaving fans of the theatre disappointed.
Depending on what restrictions remain in place following Ontario’s 28-day lockdown, the ByTowne is considering screening their final series, “Best of ByTowne,” in late January or early February, according to the most recent newsletter from Bruce White, owner of the one-screen theatre.
This delayed screening will not reverse the decision to close permanently, White said.
“The cinema has been losing money every day since the pandemic hit. Even when we’ve been allowed to be open, audiences are dramatically smaller,” White wrote in a newsletter.
For ByTowne’s loyal customer base, this news means the loss of a unique part of Ottawa’s cinematic arts scene.
Anne-Marie Lemmolo, a second-year journalism student at Carleton University, said she discovered ByTowne after moving to Ottawa for school. She said she fell in love with it because of how different it is from the movie theatre experience she had growing up—the size of the theatre and the movies screened at ByTowne made a difference.
“It really looks like I’ve gone into a time machine and stepped into a completely different generation because I’m just so used to Cineplex—the big screen, all the seats—and this was really tiny,” Lemmolo said.
Ottawa resident Wayne Diotte has been a ByTowne patron since its opening in 1989.
Before that, he frequented ByTowne’s predecessor, Nelson Cinema, as a child with his grandparents and as a teenager with his high school girlfriend.
Growing up in the 1950s, Diotte said the heros and heroines he saw in the movies shaped his perspective of the world.
“They were our influencers,” Diotte said. “They came at us through the movies. They had ideas and places and we saw mountains that we could never see, and people dressed in strange garb.”
Diotte’s experience of exploring the world through film is just one of many patron’s stories about what the ByTowne means to them.
Karyn Adamson, another city resident, went on her first date with her husband at ByTowne in 2008 and ended up marrying him in 2016.
Adamson said she loves the ByTowne because it offers a unique experience and she enjoys being in the presence of like-minded moviegoers.
“It’s not commercial and cookie cutter. It’s definitely like you’re going somewhere special,” Adamson said. “The people who go there are going to pay attention to the movie.”
Diotte offered a similar sentiment about the company he found at the ByTowne.
“It’s a communal experience of being with very attentive, conscientious, intelligent people that have a sense of humour and a wide, wide perspective,” Diotte said.
Fans of the ByTowne are saddened by the closure, but not shocked.
“Being the way things are right now with COVID, I’m not surprised. Obviously there’s a cost to running that theatre and being a social place where large groups of people go,” Adamson said.
Diotte’s feelings include sadness, but also disappointment in the consumerist tendencies he thinks contributed to this closure.
“People are buying more and more through Amazon and making corporate individuals very rich. And then they’re ignoring that deep value of having a local person own a local business that we can support,” Diotte said.
Even major theatre chains such as Cineplex have experienced losses due to the pandemic—the company’s share value has decreased approximately 30 per cent since the pandemic began in Canada in March last year.
Although the pandemic has not brought good fortune to the cinema, White is determined that it’s not all bad news.
“If the pandemic has done anything positive, it’s shown me the deep affection that you [patrons] have for the cinema we built together,” White wrote.
Featured image by Tim Austen.
