Robert Muir
  • News
  • About THE DIVE
    • Blog
    • Buy the Book
  • About Robert
  • The Scene
  • Media/Reviews
  • Contact

Old Haunts

7/14/2016

0 Comments

 
This last Monday Mona and I finally got downtown with a camera.  It was an attempt to get photos of those places that I used in the book, which still remain after nearly thirty years.  Almost all of the locations  were real; that’s one reason why the novel is subtitled ‘A Toronto Tale’.  Much of the core continues to change  as many once familiar - if not historic buildings are torn down in  the ongoing building boom, but the ones I found I have placed on ‘The Scene’ page of this website.
 
Just within the last year the bar that I based ‘Porters’ on was demolished and the entire southwest corner of that intersection is now no more than a cordoned off field of rubble.  Some of us who drank there always wondered how the place made money and remained open for so many years.  The property taxes alone must have been colossal due to its location and the amount of business it did never appeared that significant.  We always quietly assumed there was more to the place than met the eye and that something much more lucrative went on elsewhere in the building.  Now that mystery will remain unresolved and the site may soon become home to the tallest tower in the country.
 
After Pat Coady’s Place closed, only the broken yellow and black sign out front identified where it was and the small building has stayed vacant ever since.  Now it is finally  being turned into a fitness centre. Many who staffed and frequented the bar are gone now too, so I can only speculate what its  'spirits'   might think of the changes occurring after all this time.
 
A couple of blocks southeast of there, the flophouse I knew now looks much improved on the outside. I suspect that it has been yuppified inside too and turned into more desirable lodgings.*  Like Coady’s Place the lot isn’t large enough to be developed so it remains there still, although it must have been fully gutted within to exorcise all its  resident   ghosts and their baggage.
 
At first glance Greenwin Square mall seems unchanged. Then one realizes that the usual wastrels bumming money for booze and bullshitting each other outside have vanished along with the Liquor Store - whenever it did - and are no doubt now  outside it -  wherever it is -  occupying themselves in their usual fashion .
 
And the Howard Restaurant closed too, years ago.  The building still remains, but only its shell will escape demolition  according to a recent announcement.   Another condo tower will rise, behind the facade.
 
I wrote The Dive with as many real locations as possible.  Now so many have gone that the book may in some ways become a historical reference for places past as well as some of the seedier spots still present.  I’ll continue trying to capture more of them on ‘film’ sometime soon.  Of course readers will best understand  what all this means if they know something of Toronto  or  give The Dive a try. 

*​07/30/16

 I stand corrected; I guess it hasn't changed that much after all.  See my  News page for details.
 
 

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Blog

    This is the blog of author Robert Muir.

    Archives

    January 2021
    September 2019
    April 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.