Toronto Sketches 11. Mike Filey
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Cover
Dedication
For my proofreader,
spell-checker,
best friend,
and wife,
Yarmila
Author’s Note
The origin of Toronto Sketches, “The Way We Were,” this being Volume 11 in the series, goes back to the late summer of 1971 when the editor of the real estate section of Toronto’s now-defunct Telegram newspaper asked me to provide a few lines of text and a couple of photographs to fill space that had resulted from an insufficient number of ads being sold. This arrangement went on for a few months until the good old Tely finally folded. Within days, a new kid, the Toronto Sun, appeared in news boxes around town. Perhaps desperate for material to fill the struggling tabloid, the Toronto Sun made my columns a semi-regular feature. Then, with the introduction of the Sunday Sun in 1973, “The Way We Were” became a weekly feature. And the rest, they say, is history — at least eleven volumes’ worth so far!
Many of my earlier columns have been reproduced in volumes 1 through 10 of this series. The columns in this book originally appeared in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Appended to each column is the date it first appeared as well as any relevant material that may have surfaced since that date (indicated by an asterisk).
Dancing Days of Yesteryear
During the first half of the last century, Toronto could boast that it was home to some of the most popular dance halls in the entire country. Places such as the Silver Slipper north of Lakeshore Road on the east bank of the Humber River, the Club Esquire and Club Top Hat (located in the same building, although at different times, at Sunnyside Amusement Park on Humber Bay), the nearby and recently restored Palais Royale, the Masonic Temple at Yonge and Davenport, the Club 12 at 12 Adelaide Street East, and the Embassy at the northeast corner of Bloor and Bellair. This latter club was unique in that it had a specially designed dance floor that would sway with the dancers. It also opened as a very exclusive private club modelled after several others with the same name located in New York and London. Unfortunately, our Embassy Club went bankrupt after only a few years, but it did stick around as a regular dance venue until the 1960s.
While most of Toronto’s dance halls eventually went out of business due to changing trends, the one that was arguably the best known and at the time still doing a brisk business, was destroyed at the hands of an arsonist.
Proposed in the mid-1920s by a group of English businessmen, the building started out as just one component of a mammoth pleasure pier complex that would jut out into Lake Ontario from the Etobicoke side of the Humber River. The dance hall part of the project would accommodate three thousand couples in a ballroom that covered thirty thousand square feet and could be converted to a skating rink in the winter. Other buildings on the pier would include a 1,400-seat theatre and a large bandstand, as well as restaurants and souvenir stores. The complex would be known as the Palace Pier, a name it took from the extremely popular Palace Pier located in Brighton, England.
For a variety of reasons, the vast majority of which were brought on by the Great Depression and the resulting failure to sell a sufficient number of ten-dollar shares to the cash-strapped public to cover the million-dollar cost of the total project, the only thing Torontonians got in the end was the ballroom.
Looking east along the Queen Elizabeth Highway toward downtown Toronto from above the Christie Brown factory on Lake Shore Boulevard West, circa 1954. The biscuit company’s water tank, which is still there, is at the bottom of the photo. Near the top of the photo and jutting out into Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Humber River is the Palace Pier, which went up in flames on January 7, 1963.
Though initially built as a place where couples could dance to the sounds of the big bands (Canada’s Trump Davidson and Ellis McClintock were favourites), the Palace Pier was also used as a roller skating rink, a public auditorium, and as a venue for wrestling and boxing matches.
But it all came to an end early on the morning of January 7, 1963, when flames swept rapidly through the old building. Toronto lost one of its great landmarks that day.
At the top right of the accompanying photo, you can see the Palace Pier jutting out into the lake. In the foreground is the Lion Monument that was erected at the junction of Toronto’s Lake Shore Boulevard and the Queen Elizabeth Highway (QEW) coincident with the dedication of the “Queen E” by the Queen Mother in 1939. When the highway was widened in the mid-1970s, the monument was moved to a safer location on the east bank of the Humber River, south of what was previously known as the QEW, but since 1997 has been part of the Gardiner Expressway.
January 3, 2010
Remember Kids, Safety First
When I was just a young whippersnapper (when was the last time you heard that term?) attending John Fisher Public School in North Toronto, one event that became one of my most vivid memories (in addition to listening to bird call imitations by the school principal, whose name was Austin and who didn’t seem to have a first name — teachers never did) was the arrival of a couple of police officers in the company of one “Elmer, the Safety Elephant.” The arrival of this trio usually meant the school was about to receive the Elmer pennant to fly under the Union Jack on the flag pole, a flag that would signify no student had been in a traffic accident for a period of thirty days. However, on more sombre occasions the police would be there to take it down if one of the students had been injured, or worse.
Elmer was the brainchild of Toronto mayor Robert Saunders, who got the idea while visiting Detroit, where a very successful child safety program had been in place for several years. The mayor got several editors at the Evening Telegram newspaper interested in developing a similar program for Toronto. It was decided that here the safety message would be promoted by a mascot in the form of a cartoon elephant.
Why an elephant, you ask? Well, because an elephant never forgets, and in this case Elmer never forgets the rules of pedestrian safety, and nor should the city’s schoolchildren. To complete the picture, quite literally, an artist from the Disney studios developed the image that quickly became the Elmer that children came to recognize and obey. Elmer, accompanied by a couple of real live police officers (anyone remember Inspectors Vern Page and Charles Pearsall?) would visit the city’s public schools, where the trio would emphasize pedestrian traffic safety. (By the way, there’s a great video available online at www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/lifestyle/living/general-15/an-elephant-brings-safety-to-our-schools.html.)
“Blinky, the Talking Police Car.”
By the mid-1960s, a new generation of school kids needed something a little more expressive than a flag and a three-foot-high model of an elephant. So, up stepped Metro Toronto Police Sergeant Roy Wilson with an idea. He approached the popular radio station CHUM as a possible sponsor of an animated police car that the officer would both design and help build. The station thought it was a great idea, and it wasn’t long before “Blinky” was born. At first the car’s actions were quite simple, but as the potential of such an educational tool became apparent, improvements were made. Soon Blinky didn’t just blink, he could wink and his “voice” was more audible. He visited shopping malls and appeared in a variety of parades. Over the years, Elmer and his pal Blinky have encouraged thousands of children to understand and respect the hazards associated with living in a busy city like Toronto.
January 24, 2010