Toronto Cityscapes, early 1980s

Toronto Handout, late 1990s

Paper handed to a young man at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas in the late 1990s.

Fun Guyz and Divorce Collaborative

 

Fun Guyz magic mushroom dispensary and Divorce Collaborative family law practice, 1938 Avenue Road Toronto, December 2023.

Yonge & Queen in 1929 and 2020

The intersection of Yonge and Queen streets in Toronto (facing north), postcard circa 1929 and Google Street View, image captured in October of 2020. 

Three Men and a Baby: The Party Scene Extra

The movie Three Men and a Baby was so successful it played for months and months in theatres. At Christmas, Santa hats were added to the newspaper ads which featured Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Selleck, who was holding a baby and tugging on his shirt to display a patch of urine, an image as ubiquitous in 1987 as the picture of Oliver North holding up his hand to testify.

Exteriors were shot on location, but the penthouse where the freewheeling bachelors cavorted was a soundstage in Toronto. It was quite a pad. “Perhaps as a statement of defiance against a world that wants to stamp out their bachelorhood,” Joe Reid wrote on Decider, “Three single men in their 30s have thrown in on a fuck palace on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, famous neighborhood of Rosemary from Rosemary’s Baby, the Seinfeld gang (sans George), and Janosz from Ghostbusters II.” 

The set was built on the old Gooderham and Worts Distillery Building. In 1986, Freda (pictured) was approached by casting agents in Yorkdale Mall, who asked if she wanted to appear as an extra in a party scene in a movie with Tom Selleck and Ted Danson. ‘No,’ she told them.  Thirty-five years later, I asked Freda about the big break that never was. 

The Intermediate Period: Can you tell me about when casting agents approached you at Yorkdale to be an extra in the party scene in Three Men and a Baby?

Freda: I don’t know anything about it. I do know that at Bayview Village I got stopped for a commercial for Ivory Soap, and I also got stopped for Tide. I went to the audition but I didn’t do so well on screen.  I had a few chances and I blew it.

TIP: You don’t remember?

F: Now you’ve said that I do remember something about a party scene.

TIP: It was the party scene at the beginning of Three Men and a Baby. With Tom Selleck and Ted Danson. I can’t believe you don’t remember.

F: I totally believe you, but I’m not going to put it on my resume.

TIP: Do you wish now that you’d said yes?

F: No (laughs). Not unless I got paid. I know that the baby in Look Who’s Talking was the kid who lived across the street from Jill and Dave.

TIP: Lorne Sussman. He played Mikey in Look Who’s Talking Too.

Roots T-Shirt label, circa 2013-2014

Roots label in women’s T-Shirt purchased in Toronto at Yonge and St. Clair, circa 2013-2014. The label reads: “ROOTS CANADA The Canadian Standard –Quality & Integrity– MADE IN CHINA FABRIQUÉ EN CHINE.”

Toronto International Airport

Leaside’s Fake RCMP Officer, Dan

People seek to confirm memories from a time before the Internet by checking online. Did this really happen? Do other people have memories of this weird thing too?
In the case of Officer Dan, fake RCMP policeman and the adversary of Leaside’s pot smoking youth, the answer is yes. Yes, a man really did intercept pot smokers while identifying himself as an undercover member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Officer Dan at first threatened to arrest everyone and telephone their parents to let them know exactly what they’d been up to. Then–like the Samaritan ministering to the man travelling from Jericho who had been set upon by thieves–Officer Dan always announced he was going to let everyone off, after confiscating the weed.

These happenings became a semi-regular occurrence, a bit of a drag. “We got busted again by Officer Dan.” It’s difficult to pinpoint how or when the news spread among the members of Leaside’s unofficial but most enthusiastically attended club that Officer Dan wasn’t really a cop. Maybe someone realized the RCMP doesn’t provide municipal or provincial policing in Ontario, or maybe it just slowly dawned on even the most addled of minds that things just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

My thoughts have often returned to the case. Was Leaside the only neighbourhood he hit, or was he ‘arresting’ teenagers all over Toronto? Was it his own dreadful secret, or something he laughed about with his friends? Was it a spur of the moment decision, a pie left cooling on a windowsill, or a plan contrived because he was finding it tougher to score?

He was tall and white, with short brown hair. Clean-shaven. “I think he wore a striped shirt once,” offered Leaside High School alumnus “Hazel Bite” (not her real name). But memories of his face have been lost to the mists of time.

He’s a mystery for the ages. Thanks for the memories, Officer Dan. Weed is still only legal in Canada for people over the age of 18. It would be nice to think he’s still plying his (fake) trade to this day, teaching kids they need to be a bit more discreet, and after that, teaching them to be a bit more savvy, his own special Officer Dan way of reminding teenagers that Santa Claus isn’t real.

Published by S. H. Knox & Co.

KING STREET WEST, TORONTO, CANADA

This postcard was published by by S.H. Knox & Co. (1884-1911).  The American publisher Seymore Horrace Knox owned a chain of 5-and-10-cent stores that were eventually incorporated into his cousin Frank Woolworth’s chain. S.H. Knox & Co. postcards had a distinctive typeface (seen above in the lower right corner), which was similar to the modernist font the architect Mies van der Rohe later designed for the Toronto-Dominion Center.

Old Toronto Postcards, 2

AERIAL VIEW OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO, CANADA,  “BOND STREET SERIES POSTCARD”

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, A night view of Yonge St. looking south. Plastichrome by COLOURPICTURE PUBLISHERS, INC.