Eric McMillan

He was born in 1942 in the midst of an air-raid to a working-class mother in Sheffield: still-born but revived by the midwife who dipped him alternately in buckets of cold and warm water.

[2] He enrolled for an apprenticeship as a house painter, and at the college of art encountered students doing more creative courses.

In 1968, he moved from the Canadian Government Exhibition Commission in Ottawa to Toronto to join the design team planning Ontario Place.

His work introduced ideas like the ball crawl (also known as ball pit), net climb, punch bag forest, birdie glide, roller slide, cave crawl, together toys, foam swamp, water bicycle cannons, balancing buoys, rubber band bounce, and a whole range of interactive play elements.

His list of projects include: "Sesame Place" in Langhorne, Pennsylvania; "Parc de la Villette" in Paris, France; "Space Science Park" at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama; "Boston Children’s Museum Ocean Filter Attraction" in Boston, Massachusetts; "Founders Heritage Park in Nelson, New Zealand; "Eureka!