Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 10 Things Filmed in Toronto: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1541
Episode Date: August 26, 2024In this 1541st episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike is joined by Toronto historian Jeremy Hopkin to discuss 10 things filmed in Toronto. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, P...alma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Team and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at mike@torontomike.com
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Welcome to Episode 1541 of Toronto Miked.
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Go to palmapasta.com. The Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. The best baseball in the city outside the dome. Jeremy and
I are gonna be talking about the playoff game we watched together on Saturday
night at Christie Pitts. Recyclemyelectronics.ca committing to our
planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past.
And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.
Today, returning to Toronto Mic'd to discuss 10 things filmed in Toronto
is the official historian of Toronto Mic'd, Jeremy Hopkins.
Good morning, Mike.
Welcome back, Jeremy.
Thanks.
I'm glad, let's describe your shirt for those who are listening to the podcast.
We'll take our photo by the tree.
I'm even recording the video if people want to find my not so secret youtube channel where a lot of this video ends up. But tell the people what t-shirt you're wearing. I am wearing a Saturday night of the movies tee.
Tribute to Elio that came out a few years ago and
it's from Retro Kid slash Retro Ontario. Ed Conroy and his people.
This is one of their deep dive shirts where they really go into Toronto and the Canadian culture.
Before we get into the 10, you know, these are films or television series or videos, 10 things that were filmed in Toronto.
We'll talk about where in Toronto they were filmed. This is going to be great fun.
But right off the top, we need to remember somebody who passed away.
And I'm glad you're wearing that shirt. Let me play this.
This is channel 19 in Toronto, channel 24 in Ottawa. Colored lights are flying like an agent through the air
Shadows moving faster than they are
Passing faces, places never ever seen before
They'll take you to the sky
Right upon a silver screen where pictures seem to flow like magic, magic shadows.
Beautiful. So of course Elwi Oost had Saturday night at the movies, you're wearing the retro t-shirt
there, but he also had Magic Shadows.
And that was the trippy theme song to Magic Shadows I would catch on TVO.
I watched a lot of TV Ontario as a kid.
And it's been discussed, you know, early and often on this program, particularly with the
aforementioned Ed Conroy from Retro Ontario,
the very first FOTM Hall of Famer. And he broke the news this weekend that the composer
of that song, Harry Forbes, has passed away. We've lost Harry. Great song, right? What
do you, what do you feel when you hear those, that, that song in the headphones there?
Well, a little bit before my time, I think.
Oh yeah, I just forget I'm talking to a kid here.
You're like, what are you talking about?
I actually catch that in reruns a lot.
They would play that over and over again.
And I knew that I was well aware while Saturday Night
at the movies was on that that was on too.
And I knew it was it was a little bit of a flashback, though,
at the time when I was watching it, because, you know,
you'd see some movies that were a little bit older.
And and he'd interview a lot of old Hollywood stars. And I just loved it because you know you'd see some movies that were a little bit older and and he'd interview a lot of old
Hollywood stars and I just loved it because I was right into the history and
Elwi was just always such a personable guy and very friendly every story I've
ever heard of the guy is that he was just so nice and would take the time to
actually talk to people on the street and yeah. I think the last movie featured on
Saturday night at the movies was Speed and he spoke to his son who wrote the movie
Yeah, Graham Yost. Graham actually wore one of these shirts during the documentary and
Yeah, Elwi was just really proud of his son
He would always talk about him and was you could tell he was just beaming when when Speed came out
So Elwi one of the greats but of course Harry Forbes
came out. So Ellie, one of the greats, but of course Harry Forbes, unsung hero if you're a of a certain age and you watch TV Ontario, you knew compositions by Harry
Forbes whether you knew it or not. So I'm here to announce that tomorrow morning
I'm gonna drop a new episode of Toronto Mic'd in the Toronto Mic'd podcast feed
that'll be me and Ed Conroy remembering Harry Forbes. So that's gonna be tomorrow.
Today it's all about you Jeremy Hopkins,
official historian of the Toronto Mike podcast.
Before we get to these things that were filmed in Toronto,
we got 11 of them, okay?
So we're gonna do a top 10
and then I kind of chatted with you at Christie Pitts
and said we need to add an 11th.
We're gonna turn that amp right up to the 11th.
All right, spinal tapping this mofo here for sure. but we were hanging out, you and I, on Saturday
night. That was a lot of fun. We had a great time. You got to meet my family and that was great.
You got a great family. Thank you. And you too. And I got to see your kids.
Yeah, two of my kids were there. That's right. So my favorite moment is you have a son named Cooper.
And I was telling Cooper that Keith
Stein who owns the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, he has a son named Cooper and Keith's
Cooper, I'm trying to say that five times fast, Keith's Cooper was hanging out with
my boy Jarvis and my daughter Morgan in the members lounge if you will and I asked your
Cooper, I said have you ever met another Cooper and your Cooper looks me in the eyes lounge, if you will. And I asked your Cooper, I said, have you ever met another Cooper?
And your Cooper looks me in the eyes and says,
no, I've never met another Cooper.
And then I had this amazing moment where I said,
well, this is gonna happen right now, right here,
right now, right here, right now.
Very cool.
And I said, Cooper, get over here.
There's a lot of Coopers in this story.
And I said, Cooper, meet Cooper.
Cooper, this is Cooper.
And that was the moment.
So now your Cooper has met another Cooper.
Yeah, yeah. He thought he was the only one in the world and he had a strange name, but
now he's met another Cooper and that Cooper said, that Cooper said, well, I've met Coopers
before and he said he'd met one Cooper before. Your Cooper was his second Cooper and your
and then Keith's Cooper was your Cooper's first Cooper. Yes, very first. Well, that's amazing, right? Cause I mean, I have met about a thousand,
maybe 2000 mics, okay?
You've met probably a bunch, I know a bunch of Jeremy's.
Yes, yes.
They were rare birds though, even when I was a kid,
it was very unique to find another Jeremy
in the neighborhood.
Right, well we needed Jeremy the Bear
to take off on TV Ontario,
and then all these Jeremy's were showing up, absolutely. But I will say my son Jarvis. So there's a
lot of Morgans out there. There's a lot of Michelle's, a lot of James, but there's not
a lot of Jarvis's Jarvis has only met one other Jarvis. So that's kind of like Cooper
kind of like there's just not a lot of Jarvis's running around. So when you meet another Jarvis,
it's kind of exciting. There is the very famous Iron Man Jarvis though. That's right. The
artificial intelligence. No, you're right. there's the famous that and there's a lot of much like Cooper. Cooper
is a popular surname. Yeah actually there's a Cooper. My great grandmother was a Cooper and
her whole family kind of uh their last name just was dropped off over the years. So you brought it
back. So I brought it back with Cooper. I put it as his first name so that's that's why Cooper has
that name. Okay so shout out to Cooper. Shout out to the, the Hopkins family. I got to meet Saturday
night. What a great, like, what a great vibe at Christie pits night game, playoff game.
So it mattered and it was a great turnout. And I don't know about you, but that's like
crazy fun. And I couldn't believe no ticket was required to hang out at Christie pits
and taking that game Saturday night. That was amazing.
It definitely was. Being there makes a difference. I used to play
baseball. I'm not really a fan of baseball now and being there though and
hearing that crowd cheer and it acts like an amplifier. You just hear it and
it's a lot of fun. I think there might have been more people there
last night. Was that last night? No, that was Saturday night. It was probably more people there Saturday night than there was at
the home opener and great vibe. And sad news though, is that we actually got swept in this
best of five series. So we lost that game. We were at four to three tight game. Then we lost in Barry
yesterday. Season is actually over. So I'm wearing my Toronto Maple Leafs t-shirt.
So before we get into these 10 things filmed in Toronto, I just want to tell
Keith Stein and the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club, like how amazing it was
to be a part of that. You know, I got to, I counted, I recorded at three games, I
got to two other games, I got to five games. They were all a blast. What a great ambiance.
And I'm kind of psyched about 2025. Let's we're going
to kick this up a notch. People need to discover this hidden gem. Was that your first Toronto
Maple Leafs baseball game? That was my first Toronto Maple Leafs game. And you're the official
Toronto historian. So you and then you'll be back, right? The whole family comes by that the hot
dogs were half price for happy hour. And then the leafs logger was delicious and was I think half
price as well before that game. So you'll be back, right?
Yeah, I'll definitely be back. It was a lot of fun. And I'm glad you put the invite out
there because it was just like, wow, we're not doing anything tonight. Let's try it out.
It was great.
And it doesn't break the bank.
Definitely. No admission. It's a little hard to find parking. So if you're going to park,
go a little bit earlier.
Well, I'll say so. I was. it's very easy to get there from transit.
The VP is, yeah. So the VP of sales biked, I would have biked except I was bringing the
two little ones and I didn't think Morgan would, I was worried that she just wouldn't
be able to get back. It was like 1130 when he got home. So we did take the TTC.
You said they were knocked out though, right?
Oh, they, when they got home, man, they were like like a light like they got home at like 11 30 they
were they were just wiped but I can say that's so I bike everywhere so I kind of lose touch with the
TTC in this city and I know people crap on it all the time but I take this bus this this 110c Islington
bus and then I'm on the subway and I take it you know eastbound to Christie and I did this all the
time before I decided I was going to bike everywhere and I've been doing it a little more lately with
the family I don't drive any downtown at all
I don't drive to Christian Bluer anymore
But I'm telling you I'm always so thoroughly impressed of how slick it all is like I must be the last guy who thinks
This is an amazing system. We have and if I can't bike somewhere
I'm taking the TTC and Christie Pitts is super accessible on the TTC because it's a short walk from Christie station
So I'm looking forward to the 2025 Maple Leaf baseball season. I had a
blast in 2024 and again big thanks to Keith Stein. I'm glad his Cooper could
meet another Cooper. I'm glad your Cooper could meet a Cooper. Oh and Abigail got
to wear the mascot hat. I saw that photo okay. I couldn't believe that. And that mascot is an
FOTM. She was so nice and just playing with her and hanging out and yeah
Really cool. I wish I was recording on Saturday night
I would have caught up with her again. Like I think she's the best and that's the third time I saw her mascotting
I think she's only done for this season. So I've been kind of lucky in that regard
But yeah, she's amazing and she's great with your kids my kids all the kids and my wife Holly
appreciated just the park in general because there's so much there to do that night.
There was a movie playing in the park.
There was, you know, you could go on all the rides there
and everything.
So there's something for everybody, I guess.
Wonderful park.
And you know, you can bring your skateboard.
There's a skate park in there.
There's a lot going on at Christie Pitts on a Saturday night.
Nice warm Saturday night too.
So much love to the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team.
I am eager to hear you describe this topic and then we're gonna start going and
I'll give you some gifts along the way. Okay sounds great thank you. Alright so
set up set the table. Alright so now we're doing 11 so we'll start at I guess
11. Okay so I what I did is you gave me the names of these things that have been
filmed here. So I'll play something just to kind of introduce it.
Okay.
And then we'll hear from you.
And I'll contribute a little because a couple of these I have personal anecdotes about,
believe it or not.
Okay.
But here's one.
I've had somebody from this movie on Toronto Mikes.
So there you go.
Let me play a little teaser for the first one here. In the Isle of Cape Breton, my father did stay
And his father's father before
Fishing banks and digging coal
From mines that don't give no more or And I'm going down the road, boys No, it must get better
Far enough I go
The opening song of a great Canadian movie, Going Down the Road. Do you know who's singing this song? That would be Bruce Colburn.
Bruce Colburn!
And he's singing about lovers in a dangerous time, sort of, I guess.
I think so. I think so. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that sets the table, sets the vibe,
and Donald Shabit passed away very recently.
Yes, last year he passed away, unfortunately. But before then, at least he got some really
good notes on going down the road of where everything was filmed.
Okay, let's hear from you then, the official historian of the Toronto Mike Podcast, Jeremy Hopkin. We're starting with going down the road of where everything was filmed. Okay, let's hear from you then, official historian of the Toronto Mike podcast,
Jeremy Hopkins, we're starting with going down the road.
Okay.
Let's see.
I gotta remember here a few things through my notes.
Apparently it was a-
You haven't memorized your notes.
I've memorized most of them.
Okay, okay, I'll let that slide then.
But Donald should have sort of based it
on the Grapes of Wrath, I guess,
his sort of general feel on the way the whole movie was.
People from the East Coast trying to find a better life
here in Toronto and just their travels along the way.
Well, there's a rainbow in Toronto.
And there's a rainbow in Toronto.
And one thing he mentioned so much in these notes
is that the SCTV skit, he adored it.
And he actually said,
I kind of feel they did a better job at it than I did.
It's great, it is absolutely great.
They did, they did an amazing job and even-
They got lawyer in jobs, a doctor in jobs.
It's Joe Flaherty and John Candy, I wanna say.
Yes, yes.
It's actually just unbelievable, that parody on SCTV.
And yeah, they head across and you see it's
a nice sort of swath of how Metro Toronto is at the time and I guess the
further east they went was Scarborough because Shabib grew up a lot in Scarborough,
loved the Scarborough Bluffs and it was just sort of in everything he did so
that's one of the filming locations he had to do he had to bring it up to
Scarborough and so you see the the characters on top of the the Cathedraluffs, very close to where St. Augustine's Seminary is.
Wow.
And just a few places through Scarborough, like U of T Scarborough and yeah, just a lot
of places where you see them picking up each other in the car and heading off in old houses
in Scarborough and north of Toronto.
Amazing. Obviously, I think when people think back to going down the road
They think about going to Yonge Street, right?
Like this is the Yonge Street strip if you're coming from Nova Scotia, you've heard about Yonge Street
This is where it's all happening. Yeah, and they they really make that prominent and the SCTVs get to Yonge Street
Sometimes I think in my mind because I've seen the SCTV parody
Probably more often than I've seen going down the road. They bleed together
in my mind. Like it was such a great parody and
like, um, which one I know Andrea Martin is in the
SCTV. Uh, and she's, uh, basically she's playing
the role of Jane Eastwood and I'm letting the
listenership know that Jane Eastwood is an FOTM.
Oh, very cool.
We talked a great deal about going down the road and you can hear Jane Eastwood on Toronto
Mike dig it up in the archive.
But I'll also point out that Peter Gross was in the next movie Donald Shabib produced
and we did an episode all about that movie, rip off it was called with an exclamation
mark.
Not as successful as
going down the road, not as good as going down the road. But I'll tell you, nothing
was better, and I'm a bit older than you, but nothing was better than stumbling upon
going down the road on late great movies on city TV and just watching this wonderful little
wistful tale. I loved that movie.
Oh, definitely. It's just, and when they eventually have to leave Toronto it's
it's kind of heartbreaking and a little strange and then and then the sc tv skit they actually
throw Alberta bound in there because they head further west after that but um but yeah you see
a and a wet records when they're going down the street and they actually go into a and a records
and go shopping there and it seems like they might even shoplift. It wasn't really clear if they did or not.
And they're driving through Rosedale,
sort of seeing all the things that they can't afford,
but they aspire to and they have all these grand dreams
about becoming big.
And yeah, there's just a lot of interesting places
and apparently he filmed it in sort of a very
guerrilla fashion, like back then there was no Toronto Film Office and
You basically just went up to a place and said oh can I film here and also no permit or no permits no nothing
And that's how I'm gonna film my movie. He thought he was gonna get sued for sure but never did so and then it became this
icon of Canadian cult culture I guess
Over the years. What's a great snapshot. So this movie comes out,
I guess it was filmed in probably 69 or something,
but it comes out in 1970.
And it is a great snapshot of that era Toronto.
It's tremendous little archival footage
of the city and Yonge Street at the time.
The Yonge Street, I remember, is mid to late 80s
when basically you jump on the TTC
and you take it downtown and you'd walk that,
you know, you'd go start at like the Eden Center
and then you'd kind of head north to Bloor or whatever
and you'd check out all the spots.
And I have great memories.
That was a weekend.
That was a weekend for a teenager in this city.
Same here during high school,
go down there a lot with friends
and check out A&As and check out Sam's, you know,
try to find the best price on whatever album that you wanted.
Oh yeah, and then you had that 333 Young, they put in the HMV, that was probably like 1990 or
something like that when that shows up. So yeah, you had the ANA and then you had the Sam's and
then you had the HMV and it was where you bought your CDs. Yeah, and there's, well, a few places
that you can't even see though that are in that film, still today, there's different angles and
camera angles that they shot.
They actually went, from what I could tell,
they went to the top of Commerce Court North,
which used to be the tallest building in Toronto.
And at the time they were building
a lot of skyscrapers around it,
but you could still see the TD Center from it.
Now there's another building in front of that now.
But you see the car driving on the street
and there's no other cars on the road,
and it's just surreal, because you never see that now, but you see the car driving on the street and there's no other cars on the road and it's just surreal because like you never see that now.
Do you got a, I can't, it's been a while.
Well, I haven't been that long.
It's probably been about five years since I saw going down the road, but do you get
a feel for how many surface parking lots we had in this city?
Cause that's what I remember from the mid eighties was so many surface parking lots
in this city. Like it was just many surface parking lots in this city.
Like it was just so many parking lots.
You do see a little bit of that.
Yeah, but not as much as you'd think,
but because a lot of the shots are sort of just one on
or very close up and you see one building,
but that pan away shot that they showed from that building,
though it was, it did show a bit of a lot there
where they were, we're going to build that other building.
Now. Okay. So, and then again,
you tell me if you have more notes, obviously.
Oh yeah, there's a bunch.
Oh, so let me shut up and listen.
Oh, okay.
Well, because I was going to ask about the supermarket or what was the supermarket where
the big, I won't spoil it, but something dramatic happens.
That was the Loblaws at St. Clair and Bathurst.
Okay.
And it's been renovated since then.
It doesn't look the same.
It doesn't have the parking lot the way it was.
And, but yeah, that's where they did it,
right there. So that's like the most infamous supermarket scene in Toronto history, right after,
I would say, right after the food city at Jane and Finch and its cameo in Check the OR by Organized
Rhyme. Okay, now you take it from here. Amazing. Well, there's also a little scene with Toronto
City Hall, Leslie Street Spit, Gardner Expressway,
and they also get off the Richmond exit
that they also did in the SCTV skit.
So that's what's confusing
because you kind of think they're the same movie,
but one's the color, one's in black and white.
And let's see, Union Hall at Girard and Jarvis,
the Maritimer Club, boy, there's so many here.
It's so great.
I'm glad you're starting with this
because this is sort of maybe the first time
a big movie has so much Toronto in it,
but Toronto playing Toronto.
Yeah, and some of this I did have to dig into research.
It wasn't all in his notes.
I just kind of looked up through the city directories over,
I looked in 1969 to see where like
the Wilson's Bottling factory was, where they
are, where they see that girl that they all like, and I think that's who Andrea Martin
plays sort of, because they call her Frenchie and...
Well isn't that the Jane Eastwood character?
Oh no, there's two.
Complaining them, right?
There's her and Jane Eastwood, yeah.
Jane, Jane's always like, oh...
I talked to Jane about her nude scene, because you see Jane's boobs in this movie.
There is one part, yeah. I talked to Jane about her nude scene because you see Jane's boobs in this movie.
There is one part, yeah. I never thought I would see that.
Because Jane's a little bit of a Kevin Bacon of Canada.
She's sort of in a little bit of everything in every movie.
She's like SCTV adjacent or whatever, without a doubt.
I didn't think I would see that though, but there you go.
There you go, there you go.
Alright, so Jeremy, does that drain the swamp there? I don't want to leave anything on.
Yeah, I think it's pretty much.
OK, the Charles Wilson Wilson place was in on Duncan Mills Road,
and it's still a factory building, but no longer Wilson's Wilson's
ginger ale doesn't exist anymore.
But that's a very prominent scene in that in that thing, though.
So that's an example, though.
That's a movie playing where Toronto plays Toronto in Toronto is almost
like a character in that movie.
So that's Toronto playing Toronto.
But I like this next one.
Oh, you had something to say there?
I'm sorry.
Yeah, go ahead.
I'll let you introduce the next one because I just realized I almost messed it up because
it's just a connection with this movie.
Okay.
So let me play something to introduce this next one.
Okay.
But this now no longer does Toronto get to play Toronto.
So here we go. Stop! Traditionally. American Christmas.
Thanks a lot!
MGM presents a Christmas story.
Whoa! Dancing through the snow
Uncle.
Uncle!
We're riding on a horse open sleigh
O'er the field we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on the tailwind
The baby's tearing slimes
What fun it is to ride and sing
Ho ho ho
The slaves are denied to ride and sing. Ho, ho, ho, ho. No!
The stage's up and high. Ho, ho, ho, ho.
Fragile. That must be Italian.
Oh, I love that dad. Jeremy Gellin's amazing.
That's just fragile.
Wow. Oh!
Look at that!
A Christmas story.
Come on!
The movie that pulls off Santa's beard.
And unwraps the secrets
Didn't I get a tie this year?
of the original, traditional
He looks like a deranged Easter bunny.
100% two-fisted
Red-blooded
It's smiling at me
All American Christmas
American?
But it's Toronto!
A Christmas story
Jeremy will explain
A Christmas story Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra Wild casual racism there maybe, okay.
Yeah, that wouldn't really fly today.
Still better than 16 candles, okay.
But okay, tell me Jeremy Hopkins, a Christmas story was filmed in Toronto.
I love that movie.
Yeah, some of the establishing shot, this show places in the United States, but the
whole interior of the house here in Scarborough on a soundstage right near
pharmacy and Eglinton off Comstock called Magdur Studios. They also built
the slide there that Santa throws the kids down, but then they
transported that to Cleveland where a lot of the exterior shots were shot.
But even it was masquerading as this place called, fictional place called home in Indiana.
So yeah, but pretty much everything else was filmed here or in other places in Ontario.
I know there's a scene where you can, I think they're buying Christmas trees or whatever, you can definitely see a TTC streetcar.
Yeah, that's straight across from Much Music.
There used to be a, yeah, like a butcher shop across there and it's now sort of a community center but right beside there
is where they set up the little the little tree lot a couple of anecdotes
here so so one is uh who was I talking midge year was talking he referenced
casually just randomly mentioned well not randomly but he mentioned Porky's
because he had music from a film that was kind of trying to be like Porky's
now Porky's is a Bob Clark movie, right?
And this is a Bob Clark movie.
So do you know, was Bob Clark Canadian or was he just Canadian friendly?
Because these are two Canadian movies, really.
He was Canadian friendly, not Canadian.
But he, you know, with any production that comes to America, a lot of it is to save on budget,
also have friendly, knowledgeable film crews that are in the area.
So it just, it just worked.
And this was kind of his labor of love after he made the money on Porky's.
This is what he wanted to do.
And he was a big fan of Gene Shepard and Gene Shepard had radio shows and books and he would
He's the voice of Peter, of the character, right?
Ralphie.
Well, is it like that's, are the narrator?
I mean, I've seen it a hundred times.
I don't know why I'm struggling here.
Oh yeah, he's the narrator.
And he also makes a little cameo appearance
when they're in the lineup.
They're like, he's like the lineup's back there, kid.
That's him actually in the film.
So during the Olympics, I saw a hundred ads
for Son of a Critch. Oh yeah. Which I should watch I suppose because it looks like it's funny and
people seem to enjoy it. So why am I not watching it? But that's that's another
story for another day. I'll queue up gem and check this out at some point. But
they promote there's a there's a quote in this ad and it was something like if
Gene Shepard wrote the Wonder Years or something like that, this is the,
and I always see it, I know right away,
because you know, I'm Toronto Mike, okay.
I know Gene Shepard, wrote one of the writers of this film
and he's the voice, like you know, this Gene Shepard,
but I always wonder how many of the great unwashed
watching this can know right away,
who the hell is Gene Shepard?
I feel like that's not a household thing.
Well, if they had any Playboy issues, they would know him a little bit because he did some writing in there this can know right away who the hell is Gene Shepard. I feel like that's not a household thing.
Well if they had any Playboy issues they would know him a little bit because he did some
writing in there and I'm sure they would read his stories in there.
Well you know I only bought Playboy for the article. I just want to put that on the public
record.
So yeah that was another way he made money was doing Playboy and he became very popular
and he's very well known in the states
People people love a christmas story too like down there
It's it's almost as big as santa. It's just you know, people have leg lamps in their windows all over the place down there We should shout out f otm ty the christmas guy. I'm also leading into some talk with time
I'm stomping all over you and jeremy i'm so excited about this topic. I'm not letting you do your thing
There he is right there with his future wife.
David out with this and I went, oh, I guess I don't have to do it now. But he actually went to all the sites and found out where they were and also researched where the costume houses
were that supplied it. And he found all the old costumes and then brought them down to
the United States where they started a Christmas story museum. And it's inside the house that
they use for the exterior shots for Ralphie's house.
Yeah, that's amazing. He's from retro festive dot.ca by the way. He and his and his wife did some amazing work
finding this stuff and yeah and he's not too proud of this video now I don't know
why because it's great I love it. Well ask him next time he's on. So Tyler
Schwartz is his full name, Ty the Christmas guy and I'm here to tell you
that I did talk to him extensively about a Christmas story on Toronto Mike, and that was episode
11 66. So dig up episode 11 66 and yeah, Tyler Shorts aka tie the Christmas guy
owner of retro festive dot C A. We talked about a Christmas story, truh,
uh, the history, like sort of what you're doing right now, except we went
into a little bit deeper and we talked about Christmas songs that are lesser appreciated
and that was like an hour, we did like almost two hours. So if you're, what is it? It's
almost Labor Day. So if you're ready to get into the festive spirit, it's time to take
in some tie the Christmas guy.
And I was very surprised that to meet him Just happenstance at TMLX14.
And then he brought a screen used BB gun to it.
Right.
And what a hit that was.
It was great and we kind of went, wait a minute,
we're pulling a guy out in the middle of a parking lot.
Listen, Anthony Pichucci's, that was a parking lot,
I was gonna say, I think he purposely didn't bring it
into Palma Pasta so nobody would freak out purposely didn't bring it into Palma Pasta,
so nobody would freak out that he had this gun
in Palma Pasta, which we appreciate.
By the way, do you want a lasagna from Palma Pasta?
I would love a lasagna from Palma Pasta.
So since I brought him up, that was TMLX14
when Ty, the Christmas guy, came by and blew our minds.
But that's the first time I met you.
Yes, yeah.
So if you didn't come to TMLX14,
you wouldn't be sitting here
as the official Toronto Mike historian. Completely. So I'm didn't come to TML X 14, you wouldn't be sitting here as the official Toronto Mike historian completely
So I'm glad you showed up at that. I was glad you showed up at maple
The maple leafs game on Saturday night and your family is going to enjoy yet another
Lasagna that's in my freezer right now. So that's from Palma pasta
Palma pasta
Simply delicious Italian traditions. So we love palma
pasta. Yeah, continue. That's good stuff. Okay, so would you have any more? Yeah, I
went off on a tyrant. Sorry, no, we do that on this show, but it was very cool
to meet him. Just I sat beside him and I went in a minute. You're that guy. Yeah,
I don't know why I think he was glad in the picture. I just looked at the
picture. He's not wearing glasses.
Does he wear, okay, Ty, do you wear glasses typically,
or do you just maybe you take them off for photos
or something like that?
Yeah, as far as I know, he does.
Okay, because in the photo by the Toronto tree,
shout out to Dave Thomas, who's in the next movie
we're about to talk about.
See how the segues work around here.
He's not wearing glasses in that photo by the Toronto tree.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
So drain your Christmas story swamp.
I don't want you to leave anything behind.
Okay.
The, let's see, the bully fight scene is very close to the Russell car barns down in the
Eastern beaches, I guess.
If you go down the street, you can actually see the street cars in the background when
he's having the bully fight.
What's it called? They're there. Because you're now at a part of my own city that I'm like, oh, familiar with.
Minto Street. It's very close to Greenwood and...
Okay. Where the old racetrack was?
Eastern Avenue and Queen Street East. Down by the racetrack.
And there's lots of studios there. I know there's...
Yes. There's a lowest of the lower invited me to like a
listener party down there might have been Logan and Lakeshore but I know the
neck of the witch time but when I get on the long bike rides I get out there
right very close to that there's also a street called seer Street where the
bullies chase the kids back and forth all the time they have these sped up
sequences one that I I really love and I also love that they're actually going to restore
this bridge is the old Cherry Street. I got to read this because it's just, it's called
a Strauss-Trunyon-Basquill Bridge and it was built in 1931 and it's that bridge that you
see on Cherry Street that it rises up to let the ships go through.
The one that gets stuck up a couple years back?
Yeah, every once in a while it gets stuck and people have to go around it.
But it's a very cool looking bridge.
They used to be all over the place in the States
and little by little they've been whittled away.
And that one almost lost, was lost as well.
I thought it was gonna be gone,
but then they voted to keep it.
They wanna keep that look and they're gonna redo
all the guts on the inside of the bridge
and have it working again.
Could they use that style bridge
to get us a bridge
to the Toronto Island?
They could and they probably should because, yeah.
What do I have to do to make that happen?
Seriously, Jeremy.
But it's all about the money.
Eastern.
I own at least a quarter of city council at this point.
Well, if you got some pull, yeah, do it, man.
And with bike TO, get bike TO on your side.
They're pretty strong sometimes.
That's a slam dunk.
Are you kidding me?
I was close to the bicycle mirror.
But that would be a great idea
because sometimes the big ships come through.
They do need that gap to get to pass through the.
Well, that's the answer then.
Yeah, that'd be great.
Oh geez.
So yeah, for sure.
What else do we got here?
There's also, well, the semi racist part
that you were talking about earlier.
Casually racist. Casually racist.
Casually racist.
That was okay in the 80s. I just want to point out.
That's 83 when that movie comes out.
And in the early to mid 80s, casual racism, we didn't even like blink at it.
No, it was a different world.
I'll say, particularly Asian racism, like absolutely casual Asian racism in the 80s,
we didn't even blink an eye.
No, and a lot of the caricatures that they would have,
they would actually be on the fronts of menus
and that sort of thing, and it was just seen as,
oh, that's funny, I'm being racist.
Right, right.
Now, mm.
Times have changed.
It won't fly.
Jeremy, times have changed.
But that place was at, let's see, 744 Gerard Street East.
It was the Chopsui Palace in the movie.
And it's been, it still stands.
It's been Batifoul, it's a fine dining French restaurant.
And it's been that way for a number of years now.
And you can go and dine there.
They actually have a little tribute
to a Christmas story there in their lobby.
They have the leg lamp and tree and some Christmas decorations
no matter what time of year you're there. So that's kind of neat. They probably bought that leg lamp from Ty the Christmas guy.
Probably. Actually I bought my very first leg lamp from him. Where else would you go? Like if I want a leg
lamp this Christmas to put in my window, which I'm now thinking of doing, I'm going to Retro Festa.
He's your man. But back then he was doing it out of his house. We should shout out one more guy
before we leave this Christmas movie. We should shout out one more guy before we leave this Christmas movie.
We should shout out Brian Dunn, because Brian Dunn is the only guy I can think of, maybe
besides Ty the Christmas guy, who would thoroughly enjoy a Christmas movie in August.
Yeah, I watch it all year round too.
Oh, you do?
I'm a weirdo like that too, yeah.
See, I don't have an appetite.
I love this movie, but I gotta wait till December to enjoy this movie.
I went a little even more than that. I actually bought furniture from the 40s that looked like their furniture. I
Searched forever. I knew it was filmed in Canada
So I went that radio has got to be a Canadian radio because none of the American sites knew that it was
Filmed in Canada, right? So I searched old newspapers and finally I found out that it was a
1940 Westinghouse 780x and they only made them here in Canada. So I went on newspapers and finally I found out that it was a 1940 Westinghouse
780 X and they only made them here in Canada. So I went on a search for one
That's why you're the official historian of the tournament plug-out. That's great detail
Oh, I grabbed on like a bulldog and just shook that one and found found everything I could I found the magazine
Did you find one?
I found it. I found the radio and it wasn't in great shape and you know, I fixed it up made it look sort of nice
And then I found another one. So I went oh god. god okay this one's in good shape I'm going to keep
this one I had it restored and I made it so I could hook my iPod up to it and play all the
the music that's featured in the movie and and uh and even Radio Orphan Annie I've got that playing
on there I've got the decoder ring the the whole, I just searched it so much.
And then the other one, I actually donated to the Christmas Story House Museum in Cleveland.
So one day I threw it in my car, drove it down there,
and they said, that's great.
And Brad Jones.
From Ridley Funeral Home?
Oh, sorry, am I getting it wrong?
No, no, yeah, well, it's another Brad Jones.
It's not, so just to clarify,
this is not Brad Jones from Ridley Field Home.
I think it's Brian Jones.
I'm going to mix up.
Okay, Brian Jones.
He actually-
From the Rolling Stone?
No.
He gave me a full-size leg lamp in return.
He gave me the massive one that is just huge.
So I went, oh, it's amazing.
Thanks, guys.
Keeping up with the Joneses here.
Awesome.
So I then had two leg lamps.
So I gave one to my aunt and uncle and I still have one.
And it's like Christmas all year round in my house.
Everything's from pretty much before 1940.
Okay, what if they had filmed that entire movie in Cleveland or the Cleveland area?
Would you have the same affection for it?
Or is a big part of it the fact that so much of it is Toronto?
That's exactly it.
A big part of it was we were starved for anything Toronto back then and I always felt like we're important too. Like why are we
only used as you know just places like somewhere else and yeah but because it's
in Toronto and I recognize those spots and it really connected with me and just
hearing that something was filmed here on our streets and and something's
recognizable was really cool. Well since we accidentally shouted out Brad Jones from Ridley Funeral Home, I'm sure you
have one.
I'm giving you another one.
Another measuring tape from Ridley Funeral Home.
And as Stu Stone mentioned last week when he surprised us all by returning with the
OG Toast Crew, people really should check out.
And that's your first OG Toast Crew episode you ever heard, right Jeremy?
That one?
Like I'm talking about Cam and Stu,
cause it's been Bob and Rob for years now.
Yeah.
Literally for a couple years.
I think I did hear one of their episodes first though,
because I did try to get some back episodes in.
Okay, okay.
And so I did hear theirs first before I heard that one.
Okay, okay, but we had Cam and Stu
returning for a toast episode,
and Cam was looking for driving directions,
and he was shocked to realize, I don't know if it wasn't paying attention that you know Ridley funeral
home is a stone's throw pun intended from here like they are pillars of this community
I'm talking about them because that's my neck of the woods and if you're a south Etobicoke
person you need to know about Ridley funeral home absolutely so you got another measuring
tape right there thank you very much okay you just touch your nose when you're out of fun facts
because I don't want to like I said you're really educated in the world of
Christmas story. I've probably got too too many on the Christmas story but I've
got the magazine. I've got the magazines from it. I've got an original 1940
decoder for Morphrenany that they have in the movie and when you actually
decode what he says on the movie it doesn't line up with the decoder for Morpher Nanny that they have in the movie. And when you actually decode what he says on the movie, it doesn't line up with the decoder. Wow. So it's like, you know, be sure to drink your
Ovaltine. But no, it doesn't do that. So I even found a bar of Lifebuoy soap from the era that's
still in the box. So I threw all the stuff on top of the radio and it's all around it. And I don't
know what the heck's going to happen to it. My kids look at it and go But what's that for but it's it's neat. It's something that I sort of a little hobby
You're making life interesting. I think that's interesting
You know, you're you're doing something different paying tribute to this important piece of media that was filmed in Toronto
Yeah, yeah, and that's that's really one of their main reasons for filming here is we still had streetcars in Cleveland
they didn't so he really wanted to have the streetcars going
down the street and having that feel of how it used to be in Indiana and
places like that so and when they're of a certain age your children you can
introduce them to porkies yeah your wife's not listening well yeah maybe
we'll see speaking of great late great movies that I would stumble upon on late Friday night or something
on City TV, yeah, Going Down the Road, that one, Porky's, and this one.
Okay, so I mentioned the Toronto Tree, but if you're not ready for this.
Oh, I'm not quite ready yet.
Okay, go ahead.
One more thing I should mention is that a connection to the very first one that we mentioned
was Going Down the Road. thing I should mention is that a connection to the very first one that we mentioned was
going down the road. Donald Shabib was married to the lady that plays Miss Shields in A Christmas
Story.
That's a fun fact.
The teacher. And at the time she was pregnant with Noah Shabib.
Forty.
Who is now a producer.
Looks like Drake.
Yeah. So there you go.
Lives near here, I understand, in a much bigger home.
Oh, wow. Cool. Drake. Yeah, so there you go. There's another.
Lives near here, I understand, in a much bigger home.
Oh wow, cool.
Much closer to the lake.
So there's a lot of weird little connections
and you'll find even with filming locations,
a lot of these movies share
a lot of those filming locations too.
No, absolutely love it.
Now are you ready for the next?
Yeah, I'm good to go.
Thank you. Okay, so, no, no.
I don't wanna, like I said,
I don't wanna leave anything on the cutting room floor.
We're draining the swamp here today.
All right. So I mentioned the Toronto tree.
Well, it's we call it the Toronto tree because FOTM Dave Thomas called it the Toronto tree.
And let's kick out the next thing that was filmed in Toronto.
Any moment now.
Somewhere behind granite battlements, Any moment now. Somewhere.
Behind granite battlements.
Beyond impenetrable gates.
Indoors.
Something evil is brewing.
And it isn't.
Who's voice is this?
Here, an unsuspecting heiress has become the innocent pawn of a diabolical genius.
I know his name, but I can't think of it right now.
I know his command.
I know his name, but I can't think of it right now.
Superheirs that can incinerate an entire metropolis.
An army of deadly hockey warriors.
At his fingertips,
lots of beer.
Just one more test, and then we are ready for the world.
What fool dares stand in his way?
Good day, I'm Bob McKenzie. This is my brother, Doug.
How's it going, eh?
Welcome to our movie.
At last, television's Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis have just hit
the great white screen.
These are the adventures of
Bob and Doug McKenzie.
Strange Brew.
That's private.
Don Pardo. Perhaps one of these sounds like musical Is it Don Pardo? That strange fruit sounds like musical gas.
These line are right.
I don't need no machine to tell me that.
If you do it, I swear.
It must be them.
Justice.
I think it's Simon and his lady and I had a chat.
And the pursuit of bad guys.
We will move towards Oktoberfest as planned.
I can't believe it, he drank it all!
Oh, no!
And I will not underestimate our little friends again.
With Max Fonsido.
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
Paul Dooley.
You murdered him first, and he was already dead when I killed him.
Lynn Griffin.
If I didn't have puke breath, I'd kiss you.
As an all-star cast. Take Archie, Paul. You take Archie, no? Lynn Griffin. I didn't have puke breath. I'd kiss you. I love that line.
As an all-star cast.
Peek-a-boo.
You take off, you nut.
Okay.
Don't miss.
The biggest.
The grandest.
The first Mackenzie Brothers movie of all time.
Take off!
Go!
The adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie.
I'd like to thank the Academy.
That's it! We're leaving, kids!
Come on!
Strange crew!
You hoes, they wanted to see our movie now that they're mad at us.
Takeoff, it's only a preview, eh?
I didn't want to show them the best part.
Get them!
Okay, so that's our topic for today.
So, good day! Hey, you that's our topic for today.
So, good day!
Hey you guys, it's Jacob!
Okay, for sure that's Don Pardo from Saturday Night Live.
That voice, what a great voice.
Okay, pick it up here.
I'm so excited to talk about Strange Brew.
Okay, Strange Brew.
I love this movie since I first saw it as a kid, I think.
And they played it a lot on TV.
It just re-ran a lot and it was every time it came on we just start watching
it and watching all the way through. Highly watchable movie. But it was another one where we'd
yeah look at the scenes and go hey that's Toronto that's Toronto that's Toronto and yeah well
that's where they were. They're here doing SCTV at the old fire hall and also while
filming in Scarborough too at Magdar Studios, as well
as Christmas Story filmed there at Magdar Studios.
So let's see, there's a little bit of everything in there.
At the beginning they're in the theater and you'll notice it right away, the University
Theater on Bloor Street.
It's now, well, it's been a clothing store for years and it was sort of taken down and then reassembled
again and it's not a theater anymore on the inside. But the interiors I think they
did at the Westwood Theatre. So at the beginning they get chased out of town by...
Wait, the Westwood in Etobicoke?
Yeah.
Near the Six Points.
They apparently...
I used to go there all the time.
They apparently filmed some interiors in there and didn't do the interiors in the other one.
I saw the Robin Hood cartoon, the Disney Robin Hood cartoon at that Westwood Theater.
Cool.
I remember seeing that one in the theater too.
Yeah.
Oh, I loved it.
I thought it was the greatest fucking thing ever.
It was a good animation for the time period too.
Robin Hood, little John, walk through the forest, doodle-oddle-oddle-oddle-oddle-odday.
Fantastic.
And the Westwood Theater, because I was, didn't live
in Etobicoke, but I was like in the West end of Toronto. And like eventually would end
up going to school at Michael Power, which was pretty darn close to where that Westwood
Theatre was. But it's gone now, the Westwood Theatre, but it was kind of weird to get to
it because they kind of fixed up this area. It was spaghetti weird way to, you have to get off.
If you're Kipling, you gotta get off at a certain exit
to get to the Westwood, otherwise you end up on Dundas.
And it was just, it was just really like,
it didn't make a lot of sense.
And if you missed it, you missed it.
Shout out to Bay Blue Radio and the Mendelson family.
But pick it up again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another Etobicoke site was the house that they start off in where their dad's yelling
at them.
And we noticed right away that's Bugs Bunny's voice.
That's Mel Blank.
And Mel Blank is their dad screaming at them.
You never see him, but it's his voice kicking out there.
And the current Bugs Bunny voice is an FOTM Scarborough guy named Eric Bauza.
Yeah, Eric Bauza and him and Steve Gaskin are the guys that run Retro Kid.
You know what?
My brains are all over the wall right now.
You blew the fuck out of my mind again.
And the house, because I'm an architecture nerd as well with Toronto, the house is actually
in a fairly significant neighborhood.
It was part of a wartime housing act initiative.
There was 200 houses there at that neighborhood and they have this very strawberry box look
to them and they're made out of wood. But there was also one in East York called Topham
Park where I did a project a few years ago. So when I saw that house in the film later
on I went, that's one of those houses. And I searched it out and found out it's in this,
one of those little places by the Queensway near Queensway Park.
And you can tell these neighborhoods,
yes, which is kind of near Royal York.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is really, really close to Great Lakes Brewery.
Yeah. OK, we actually in this part, Queensway Park, you're describing
a couple of times we had after a TMLX event at Great Lakes.
They used to kick us out at nine.
Oh, wow. Now we can stick around till ten.
But we saw at nine we'd have to leave.
I think it was a liquor law thing or something.
And we would go and continue drinking in Queens Way Park.
So we've had and that's where the famous.
So you were right across the street from Bob and Doug's house.
100 percent. And that's because it's at number 82.
And I know those homes you're talking about, those war war homes or whatever.
And I will just say that there's an
infamous photo that Cam Gordon took of Liz Brio and
Stu Stone having a conversation because Liz called out Stu during the final recording
of Pandemic Friday.
This is kind of an infamous moment in the TMU.
But that photo, which I think won a Pulitzer, so Cam Gordon, let me know, or Rosie Gray
T.O., you can update Wiki if it won a Pulitzer.
But that photo was taken at this Queensway Park
you're describing.
Very cool.
Also, it's kind of significant lately because recently
those neighborhoods have been brought up again by the CMHC
because the Wartime Housing Corporation became the CMHC.
And the designs for those houses were brought up recently
as affordable housing for the current housing crisis that we're having
Because that's that's really the reason why they built those houses in the 40s. So
A couple things I got here. Yeah, that's one of the sort of typical plans from the book that they published afterwards on
Which is right here 67 homes for Canadians Wow. And these are based on the wartime designs
that they were putting in those neighborhoods,
which they're made out of wood,
but they stand the test of time.
They're very solidly built, still standing.
So there's a little bit of propaganda from then too.
What's he gonna come home to?
And one stipulation with these neighborhoods
was that you had to be a veteran that had a wife and kids
You couldn't move into this as a single guy that was more for the people that were going to Regent Park
So Regent Park kind of started off as well because of that housing crisis, right?
So let me tell the listenership that Jeremy is showing some visual aids here
And I am recording this video and I will put it
on the Toronto Mic YouTube channel so if you want to see the stuff that Jeremy shows you
can see it and I'll put it there but obviously when you're working out walking the dog or
on a drive right now listening to us you're not seeing these great these great photos
of these war homes or whatever. Very cool. Okay.
And thanks for doing that because I do like to do the show. I like the show and tell for the live stream so
hopefully it's not bogging anything down. No, no, no, no, no. That's why I record the
video here. So I'm trying to record more video. People want video. What can I do?
The pivot the video is happening here. You're gonna have a TV show in no time.
On cable 10. I want it to be next to the Tom Green show and Buzz maybe, Darren and Mo.
With a little bit of 10 forward in between.
Oh yeah, Ed Dasaw can be on maybe. And you know, I played a little, speaking of the
Cam and Stew toast that aired on last Friday, I had a clip of a Cable 10 show
that they, when they were in high school
And I'm within high school grade 9 or something. They had a show on cable 10 and their producers were
Steve Kersner and his brother whose name eludes me at this moment something Kersner, but the Kersner brothers were like producers of this
Cable 10 stuff that they were doing for a short period of time there
I mean, So there you go.
It all comes back to Ed the sock and speed.
That's like real quick.
Last thing here.
And I'm sure there'll be more later.
But I mentioned I got Retro Ontario on
the program tomorrow to talk about Harry Forbes and that's a TVO guy mainly.
But lest we forget, I will just point out
that on Saturday, this coming Saturday, it will be the 40th anniversary
of the launch of MuchMusic.
And since I learned from Ed that this 299 Queen Street West Dock that was much discussed
on Toronto Mic, and Sean Menard came on, and I've been talking to Michael Williams, you
name it, we've been talking about the 299 Queen Street West Dock, which I saw at Roy
Thompson Hall.
So I've seen this with my own eyes.
And then it toured around a little bit.
And then it was supposed to go on Crave.
And it never happened because of music licensing.
There's an issue with licensing the music that you
hear in this documentary.
Well, my chat with Retro Ontario,
which you'll hear tomorrow morning.
No, it's not in this chat.
It was off the record.
Well, not off the record, but unrecorded chat.
I don't think we're ever going to see this 299 Queen Street West. So there is no like definitive
piece of audio right now kind of telling you the story of Munch music. Retro
Ontario has written about it, but I don't even have a thing, I don't even, basically
this is just a long-winded way of saying that there needs to be, and I thought 299
Queen Street West was going to be that thing, but apparently it's never gonna be
available to actually, you know, consume. So there should be something like an audio visual presentation
that tells the full story of much music as it turns 40 years old on Saturday. That's
coming up. So that's something that I got to worry about. I'm going to consult my, my
experts retro Ontario, 1236 will have a summit of some sort
and I'll get back to you.
Subscribe to this feed because you never know
what will drop in there.
Behind the scenes, there's lots of balls in the air.
Nice.
I feel better now.
Thank you very much.
I'm glad you do.
Oh, one thing that just popped into my head.
I actually have this magazine at home from the 1920s
and it's called The New Outlook, and it was published
from the Chum City Building, what's now the Chum City Building.
And it's got this illustration on the front of the actual building.
But it was like a religious book publisher.
299 Queen Street West.
Yeah. And if you look at a lot of the little little carvings and and gargoyles there's books and gargoyles looking at books
and it's kind of cool that they had that that they restored that building
and kept it and I hope it stays somehow. Well you know what I'm glad you
mentioned those gargoyles because that kind of will tie into the the 11th thing
that we'll discuss so I don't even know what number we're at the the 11th thing that we'll discuss. So I don't even know what number we're
at but the 11th thing kind of has a tie into that but we'll save that. But please drain your swamp
on this wonderful Bob and Doug McKenzie movie Strange Brew. So somewhere Strange Brew, the
Elzenor factory where they the brewery where they it's a bit of a castle to one side which is
Casa Loma. The brewery is also R.C.
Harris Water Filtration Plant, which is technically in Scarborough.
It's on this side of Victoria Park.
And there's also the jitters.
It's on the cover of the Big Jitters album.
Yes. There's also a let's see.
What else is there? Castleoma, R.C. Harris.
Oh, and the Herne plant is the main brewery.
And they've kind of matte painted out some of it, which is a problem that I'm gonna talk about
in later movies, it's getting really bad now.
You can almost not identify things.
But one part that nobody ever really picked up on was,
if you look at the bottom of it where they're driving up,
what's the road there that's leading up to it?
Nobody knows.
And I looked at it and I'm like,
I've been there thousands of times.
That's the bottom of Bluffers Park.
So it's an amalgamation of like four different things altogether.
And they're driving actually at Bluffers Park at the very bottom there.
And to go up the hill, up to Elsinore Brewery.
J-Ho, you're bringing the heat today, buddy.
You're bringing the heat, but you said brewery so properly two times,
that maybe three times there.
So let me just make sure, you know, I'm sending you home with fresh
craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. Very what's that Elsinore Brewery is the
brewery from... So Great Lakes Brewery didn't exist when this movie was made.
Great Lakes Brewery was birthed in 1987 I believe but it sure exists now.
Delicious fresh craft beer. Enjoy responsibly Mr. Jeremy Hopkins.
Thank you so much. I enjoy that. Let's see.
You got a you got a Canuck Pale Ale. You got a burst, a couple of bursts. You got a Hay's Mama,
which is NF's favorite beer. I've enjoyed one of each of these and they're all great.
Okay, enjoy. You're gonna have more. Cool. Thank you so much. Yeah, apart from Elzendor Brewery,
let's see what else we got here. Oh, there's another brewer, Brewers Retail.
There is one in Scarborough that we knew about.
It became a pizza pizza for a long time near Midland and Eglinton Avenue East and recently
was torn down for the Ontario line, which a lot of things are lately.
But yeah, I drive by there and go, that's the place where Bob and Doug try to put, try
to get free beer by putting a mouse in the bottle, which I don't know if Great
Lakes beer ever gets guys like that trying that kind of thing. Well, no bottle. That's personal.
They're all canned at Great Lakes. So that was there. And there's also the, well, the herring
generating station. And other than that, I guess it's just kind of places outside Toronto. You got
Hamilton, a little bit of BC, an arena in the-
Wait, there's BC?
Apparently there's some Prince George, British Columbia in there, but I don't know if that's
right.
That's like the hub of BC.
I think that likes it in the middle of British Columbia, Prince George.
I couldn't really see them doing that.
Maybe it's just some stock that they threw in there.
I don't know.
But other than that, there's, let's see, Cinespace Film Studios is in there too.
Wow. Okay, very thorough.
I think that's pretty much it for that one.
So we've done...
Oh, the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital
is one that I forgot, which is now Humber, very close by.
That's where Bob and Doug are shocking each other.
Okay, well that's also gonna be a teaser
for the 11th movie.
Oh, very cool. Okay.
And that's, much like Ridley Funeral Home,
that's also a stone's throw from where we're talking right now. Definitely. And that's much like Ridley funeral home. That's also a stone's throw
from where we're talking right now. Definitely. You want to kick out in this one. I love this
one because I went to this school, but let me kick out a song and we'll talk about the
video. Is that cool? Oh, okay. Sure. You ready? Here we go. Although I'm nervous to play it, I might bring it down only because I want to, I just realized
I want to share this on YouTube so they can see your artifacts. And then once I play this
song, I'm going to get a take down order from the whoever owns this particular tears for
fear song. So I'm bringing it down, but everybody knows that song.
That's head over heels.
You've got songs from the big show.
That was so big.
I was so big and I was listening to a lot of 680 CFTR all hits
and shout I think was the first single,
but man, did it get a lot of airplay.
Oh yeah, definitely.
We remembered it.
Everybody wants to.
We loved it in the eightiess and then later on when Donnie
Darko came out, you know, who's in another resurgence and yeah, an FOTM. The best friend
of Jake Gyllenhaal is played by Stu Stone. Definitely. Just amazing. Pick it up here.
So pretend I played all of head over heels. I hope this is the kind of the problem and
this ties in to 99 Queen Street had music licensing problems because they would play I
Watch the doc so they would have I don't know in sync at 2 9 and Queen
Playing some in sync songs and I'm gonna guess right now that
Sean Menard did not pay for the song by in sync is what I'm guessing is the big problem
Yeah, and he's arguing some kind of a fair use thing for the documentary
Yeah, as long as you only play what four seconds? I don't know. Like, I don't know.
But there's there's a reason we're not able to see that movie.
Right.
So some some discrepancy somewhere.
The music mafia have gotten by the situation of this person has more money than this person.
But they kind of like, like, okay, so here I am.
I want to talk about the video for head over heels by tears for fear.
Yes.
But because and it's fine for you know, if you listen to the podcast,
I've been playing lots of music and none of them really get taken down once in a while.
Spotify takes something down, but I've been pretty I know I can get away with playing
some head over heels, but once I decide that I'm going to put this video on YouTube,
my mind knows YouTube, there's some algorithm is going to hear head over heels and I'm going
to get a not available in Canada thing or not available and sometimes I get the
This is not available in
232 countries and I'm like well
What countries is it available in if it's not available in these 230 countries bottom line is I may have already played too much head
Over heels. Yeah, but but tell me about this this iconic video from tears for fears
Well, a lot of people don't know it was filmed all in Toronto.
Who are these people?
And I thought it was just in England somewhere or somewhere.
Well, they didn't go to U of T like I did
because they would recognize that library.
It's the Emanuel College Library
and it's on Queens Park Crescent
right across from the old Flavalla House.
And it's just there.
And all the scenes are just going through, holding books,
a guy talking to a girl at the desk,
and eventually they become old together.
And it's an interesting video.
And yeah, it was all filmed in that library.
And just about nine years ago,
the students that were there did a recreation of that video,
trying to match shot for shot.
And it's kind of cool and a little bit funny they do some tongue-in-cheek stuff and yeah it's just
just a neat movie overall or a neat video absolutely but it's uh it was founded in 1925
but it has a very medieval look to it it almost looks like a church on the inside as well
so it just really fit with i guess the aesthetic that they wanted for that.
But why a popular British band is why is their video being filmed in Toronto? Do we know?
You know, I don't know. I'm not sure why. Maybe they were like a lot of times when people
are doing concerts and they're traveling around, they try to find something.
Maybe that's Roland. That's his name, right? Roland, the main guy. The other one, of course,
Duran Duran, another popular British band from the 80s, the reflex
video, right?
That's filmed at Maple Leaf Gardens, I want to say.
Yes, it is.
You would not know it though, because it's just a stage really, and it's all dark around,
so you can't really tell where it is.
No, but I believe I've now encountered 106,000 people who were at that concert.
Oh, wow.
Which is wild when you think about it.
But all right.
Head over heels.
The what's the name of that?
Emmanuel. Oh, yeah.
Emmanuel College. It's the library of
Emmanuel College.
It has over 80,000 theological
books, texts on every religion.
And a lot of people go to study there.
And a lot of gargoyles in that part of
the campus. Yes, definitely.
All right. So shout out to my alma mater there.
You ready for the next one?
This is a big Canadian television series.
Definitely.
All right, this is a mini series maybe.
Anyways, we'll play it and talk about it.
Here we go.
We're getting a little boy from an orphanage in Nova Scotia
and he's coming in on the afternoon train.
Oh, how do, Matthew?
Is the afternoon train due soon?
She's waiting for you on the platform. Is she?
My name is Anne Shirley.
Anne's felt with me.
It's a girl.
I can see that.
Where's the boy?
There weren't any.
Just her.
We have absolutely no use for that girl.
You don't want me because I'm not a boy?
She's no good for us.
We might be of some good to her.
Good luck.
This is a friend and neighbor of mine, Mrs. Rachel Lynn.
She's terribly skinny and homely, Merlin.
Awful heart. Her hair is as red as Karen's.
How dare you!
I've heard before that you're kind of a strange girl, Ann Shirley.
But I have a feeling we're gonna get along really well.
That little girl ought to have all the kindness we can give her.
We got no call to raise her as cheerless as we was.
You promised we were going to be friends.
I hear you're giving the highwayman at the White Sands recital.
I'm going to try to get you an encore while you're up there,
so make sure you have a second selection ready.
Nobody's going to encore me.
Well, I would.
Especially if I had the honor of escorting you to the concert.
Um...
You're not an old ogre at all, are you?
I didn't mean that. I most certainly am an old ogre at all, are you? I didn't mean that.
I most certainly am an old ogre, and don't you let on any different.
Anne of Green Gables.
Anne Shirley.
What in heck are you doing?
Fishing for Lake Trout.
For Lake Trout.
There you go.
I originally thought these were movies, but they were made for TV movies.
Yeah, they were definitely on CBC. And yeah, they would be on TV all the time and we watched them. Hugely popular the this one with
the uh with Megan Follows was massive. People will travel the world to check out Anna Green Gables
literature and the places in PEI that are mentioned and also here and it's it was a very
popular cult classic but also I don't even know if it would be cult
it was just in the in I don't know it was just pop in Canada. Lucy Maud Montgomery?
Yes. Yeah and I was I was I've been to PEI and yeah it's a whole like
industry there is the Anne Green Gable stuff. Yeah and the the house that's in this series
you would think it's out in PEI somewhere but but it's in Scarborough, Ontario on Steeles Avenue East.
And the farmhouse is still there today.
It was a place where people up until recently had horse boarding there.
Unfortunately the barn burned down and that was a tragedy, but a lot of people are still
farming up in that area.
And what a lot of people don't
it's convenient for the movie industry because there's this country area that's so close to the city and it's all expropriated land.
They actually wanted to build another Pearson type of airport up in that area.
They bought up the government, bought up all of the land back in the 70s
and then gave the people that own the property originally
the option to rent them back. So these are all rented houses up there and little by little they're
disappearing over the years. But this one's staying strong and a few of the ones in the
area are too.
Wow. Megan follows. There's somebody I would love to get on Toronto Mike. Like she was
so huge back then. And there's another movie that was made for TV that I watched. I was
about 10 years old, you know, big hockey
Leafs fan, if you will. There was a movie called hockey night. And it was I think a lot I think I'm now just finding out that
centennial arena. So this one could be like a future a future because we're gonna I should say this now, we're doing 11
today, but Jeremy will be back in the future to do another 10.
Like this will be a series where we won't do them all in a row necessarily, but you
will be back to do another 10 because we're just going to do 11. But there's so many big
movies and films and big films and television series that were filmed here. But Hockey Night
had Megan Follows and Yannick Bisson. Rick Moranis was in this thing too, but I remember
loving this TV movie.
Murdoch himself is in there.
Murdoch himself too.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's another guy who should come on Toronto Mike, but I'd love to get to him.
And I think that this hockey night, I think maybe it was before Anne Green Gables or around
the same time, but.
He actually used to live very close to that.
One of the those housing developments that I was talking about from the 1940s. And he lived close to Topham Park,
very near like St. Clair and O'Connor.
But he sold that house and I think he's pretty much
all LA now except for like a cottage up north.
He's got that Murdoch money.
Yeah, oh yeah.
He had a kid show, he drew stuff,
I can't remember the name of the show,
but my kids watched it.
Oh, is it Napkin Man?
Napkin Man, yeah.
My kids used to watch that, yeah. I never saw, I've never seen an episode of Murdoch Mystery. Oh, Miss Napkin Man? Napkin Man, yeah. He would do that.
My kids used to watch that, yeah.
I never saw, I've never seen an episode of Murdoch Mysteries.
Oh wow. I know.
But I've seen multiple episodes of Napkin Man.
So it's like, I know this guy from Hockey Night
and the Napkin Man for goodness sakes.
Like, I don't know how, I don't know,
Murdoch Mysteries just never felt like it was for me.
Like I never had a moment where I'm like,
oh, I want to check out this episode of Murdoch Mysteries. But meanwhile, it's probably in season 47 or something. I have no idea, but it was for me. I never had a moment where I'm like, oh I want to check out this episode of Murdoch mysteries
But meanwhile, it's probably in season 47 or something. I have no idea. It just keeps going strong
There's you watch it. You look like you watch like mystery
I'm into the history stuff
So I watch it and I call out the historical inaccuracies here here in there like I do with every movie and but overall they do
A great job of just giving a general overall of how Toronto was back in the day
But overall, they do a great job of just giving a general overall of how Toronto was back in the day.
The great fire of 1904, they did that as well.
They passed 1904 and they did an episode on that.
And so they do touch on a lot of Toronto history that's relevant.
Well, I have a guest coming up named Marilyn Gross, who remembers Toronto in the 20s.
So that's a first.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, she's 100, right?
101.
Oh, 101.
Amazing. So I can't ask her about that fire.
No.
If you have any questions about Toronto in the 30s and 40s or whatever, this is the guest
for you.
I do love to get first person accounts because it just gives you so much more of a personable
angle on what the time actually was like.
So that would be very cool.
Yeah, tell me about this stock market crash.
Yeah.
Let's talk about Black Monday or whatnot.
But it's appropriate that we're mentioning Yannick Bisson and that studio because it's in Scarborough where they have the Main Street for
Murdoch mysteries. It's very close to the Magdar studios where they filmed a lot of the interiors for Christmas story and
They did a lot of SCTV there and all these other productions. So it's a little bit of a film hub there in in Scarborough
That's still going today.
Well, you're educating me today.
That's why you're here.
They also filmed Wind Up My Back there.
I don't know if you remember that series.
I remember the name.
Like I know all these big CBC shows,
but that's another one that never felt like it was for me.
I never tuned in.
And one year Wind Up My Back, the studio,
I was driving back and I saw it was on fire.
The whole street went on fire
and all those, the backlot went on fire. Oh my gosh. on fire and all those the back lot went on fire so
they had to reconstruct and then eventually that evolved into the Murdoch back lot. So a lot of
those sets there's still pieces in there from Wind at My Back. It's just they've been refurbished.
Fascinating. Okay is that it for Anne of Green Gables?
Anne of Green Gables ties into that as well because I let's see well there's the Noor Risa
House, the Spadina Museum where I got married and where we go and hang out right beside
castlema yeah D LaSalle college isn't it how do you say that name I always call
it D LaSalle oh D LaSalle or D LaSalle okay what do I know I don't know it I have
to check my pronunciations as well well you know better than me trust me on that
one but um there's also the Toronto connection
in with Mayor Crombie, Jonathan Crombie,
who is Gil in the movie, that's his son.
And unfortunately he passed away due to a brain hemorrhage
a few years ago, but it broke the hearts of many people.
They loved his character and they memorialized him a lot
But yeah, that's that's one more Toronto connection
They're more not with the scene but with the people and I'll just throw in that over the trailer
I was talking about how Richard Farnsworth is an actor
I've always loved and I fell in love with him because of the natural like like he's got this great
He's got you know, and he is final movie. I think he was on a lawnmower. I feel like yes, we love that movie
That I love that movie to straight story, right?
And it's like he's great in it and he's just every time you see this guy
He's got those, you know piercing blue eyes and he's got this great presence and he's in that so he's obviously they imported some American
Talent for Anna Green Gables, but Richard Farnsworth is always great lots of shouting out to Ridley funeral home right now
Shout out to Ridley funeral. Okay, you ready for the next one?
This is a bit of a blockbuster.
Yeah, for sure.
Let's see.
Yeah, I think that's pretty much it for Adam Green Gables.
Yeah.
I don't want you to feel rushed.
We might touch back on this again because other movies have locations that sort of bleed
into this one.
And again, it's just like the first in a series.
Because you do visit every quarter.
Yeah, we don't want to take all the meat off the bone, right?
We'll spread it out a bit.
Eleven today and you get ten more next and there's so many places
we can go. But let's go. This is a big blockbuster here.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now seeing the beginnings of another stage of human evolution. The truth is that mutants are very real and they are among us.
We must know who they are and above all what they can do.
Some of them are FOTM.
We're not what you think, not all of us.
Who are you people?
What kind of place is this?
I'm Professor Charles Xavier. I built this school where mutants could learn to focus their powers in a positive way.
And also learn that mankind was not evil, just uninformed.
You'll be safe here from Magneto, a very powerful mutant who believes that a war is brewing between mutants...
...and the rest of humanity.
There is a war coming.
You sure you're on the right side? I've never seen anything like this before.
We are the future, Charles, not them.
They no longer matter.
Hold on to something.
Whoa.
Is that FOTM Charles Dicker, Patrick Stewart?
Future FOTM Charles Dicker or Patrick Stewart?
Future FOTM.
I love it when I play these visual trailers on a broadcast.
Imagine the great effects you're missing.
missing.
Don't give up on them.
Mankind has evolved.
Not an.
Oh.
Wait for it.
Oh, no, that's just something.
OK, that was I could see in the way file that there was more coming and it
was just that thing they put the end of
some trailers.
All right. Talk to me about X-Men.
Yeah, X-Men from 2000.
We were very excited because we were driving around and actually happened to find this fight scene happening down in this valley.
And we I walked down and checked it out and it turned out it was Hugh Jackman and somebody fighting on the road.
Oh, so you watched them filming this?
In the snow scene. Yeah, I just saw a little tiny bit far, far away,
but at the time I had no idea who they were, what they were doing.
Right.
Didn't say that it was X-Men. I'd loved X-Men since a kid. I was a kid.
It's the only comic book I really wanted to buy and I was right into it.
And when I found out they filmed it here, it just blew my mind.
And then when it came out, I would look for any scene in it and just immediately know like, hey, that's Gooderham and Wurtz. And like the scene
where Magneto is a kid and he has his, he discovers his powers and he bends the gates. And that's the
distillery district, which was Gooderham and Wurtz at the time. Right. And yeah, other places like Casa Loma,
the Parkwood Estate in Oshawa.
Casa Loma, common for some obvious reasons.
Oh yeah.
Frequently used for filming.
So in the future, there'll be probably other movies
or series that were filmed at,
or videos actually that were filmed at Casa Loma.
Oh definitely.
It's in so many movies and films and TV shows.
Well, shout out to Midtown Gord, who knows his Casa Loma history.
He used to work there.
And there's also Roy Thompson Hall, Metro Hall.
The road I was talking about was Twin Rivers Drive in the Scarborough.
It's sort of halfway between the Scarborough and Pickering border,
somewhere out by where Ernie Coombs used to live back in the day.
You were in a Mr. Dress Up shirt on Saturday night.
Yeah, I loved Mr. Dress Up growing up
and yeah, I just, I love wearing that shirt
and when I'm not dressed up in an old timey suit,
I'm Mr. Dress Up.
Well, by the way, you're not in an old timey suit today.
Yeah, I'm playing.
I almost didn't recognize you at the door.
I'm like, who's this guy?
I'm playing clothes undercover Jeremy right now.
Okay, is it just too hot for that suit?
What's going on?
No, not at all. I just, I gotta give the suit a rest every once in a while. It's it's starting
to show its age and I got to get a few more suits.
I want it back next quarter. I'm putting in an order for that. Hey, can we just quickly
one little note about Lucy Maude Montgomery? Oh, yeah. Who who passed away in the 40s?
I see. So she dies in 1942. But VP of Sales was also at the Toronto Maple Leafs
baseball game on Saturday.
It was fun hanging with the VP of Sales.
He's on the live stream and pointing out that she lived
her final years and died on Riverside Drive in Swansea.
Yes, I've heard something about that.
Well, there you go.
So just to bring it back to Toronto.
So there's Lucy Maud Montgomery dies in the Swansea area.
She's a neighbor to Toronto. She's popular enough in Canada to you'll find
historical plaques all over of where she was. It's sort of like George Washington
and in the States like George Washington slept here and wherever Lucy Montgomery
was, you'll find a plaque. Amazing. Okay, so back to X-Men though. Yeah. Any more?
Any more fun facts there? Some other fun facts. Let's see.
Well, they don't even have to be fun as far as I'm concerned.
There's some shots in in Hamilton, like they did some shots at the Canadian War
Plane Heritage Museum, which is where they fly that Lancaster bomber out of that.
You see all the time.
I saw it on the weekend and I saw yesterday.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very cool.
It goes right over my home.
Like it's right. It goes by.
You can't miss it.
It's loud and it's there.
And it's like, oh, there's a Lancaster bomber
My dad built a model of that back in the day and and he's loved that ever
Really? We watched that get restored from when I was a kid
We'd always go out to those air shows and check it out and one day it was flying
We couldn't believe it and we got to meet a lot of veterans which are now gone and yeah, but it's it's a nice tribute
it's one of only two in the world flying so they did some scenes there for X-Men and it's not really about the warplane
heritage. It's more an airport scene where they're walking around.
And there was also I think Hamilton there's a station in Hamilton.
I think that might be an X2, but yeah,
X2 was good, by the way. And I actually prefer X2 to X-Men.
Oh, and there's very few movies out there that I prefer the sequel to the original.
Also, very close to you here is the Via Rail Maintenance Center.
They filmed a lot of the train scenes there
and also, I guess the other mention would be another reason I brought X-Men into
this is because of the popularity of Deadpool right now.
And 24 years later, Hugh Jackman's still at it and kicking ass as Wolverine.
And it's just amazing that he's back. They even dropped some tributes in there to Toronto.
They have a decapitated CN Tower laying on the ground there while they're having these
big fight scenes.
I gotta check this out. That's amazing.
Yeah, it's kind of neat. So yeah, I guess that's pretty much it for that one.
Okay, love it very much. X-Men 2000, big movie's kind of neat. So yeah, I guess that's pretty much it for that one.
Okay, love it very much.
X-Men 2000, big movie, big blockbuster.
Now this next movie, we were gonna make it a top 10
and this was gonna drop and I made you resurrect it
because I have a personal anecdote about this movie
which means a great deal to me.
And I love this movie and let's kick the trailer out
and then talk about it.
Okay.
In that order, if there's a trailer here, I said to see a fighter
that was once the caliber of James Braddock.
Listen to me. Your legs are getting heavy. She might be too slow. Love this
guy. It's over. Yes. Just give me another fight, Jim.
Russell Crowe. What's done is done. Nominated for three Academy Awards.
I'm sorry, Jimmy. I love this movie. I'm always behind you. I believe we live in a great country.
I need nine men and only nine.
A country that's great enough to help a man when he's in trouble. I had a run of bad luck.
I owe everybody money.
I didn't always lose.
I won't always lose again.
I can still fight.
I have a lot to be grateful for.
I have three beautiful, healthy, trouble-making kids.
You know, I have the prettiest wife a man could wish for.
Britney Zellbegat. We live in a great country. could wish for. Britney's Elbow Kid.
We live in a great country.
I guess I'm grateful for the opportunity.
I know that these'm fighting for. Cinderella Man.
Oh yeah, Cinderella Man.
Just an amazing movie and a lot of it filmed in Toronto, but masquerading itself as New
York or sorry, New Jersey?
New York.
Because of old Madison Square Garden.
So you tell, you do, you drain your swamp and then I'll bring in my personal anecdote
because I got a couple of them here.
Well, Ron Howard directed it.
And when they were looking for sites, they wanted to get some place that looked like
Madison Square Gardens, the old one, and Maple Leaf Gardens looked a lot like it.
And it just turned out that the Maple Leafs had abandoned it and it was up for sale.
So perfect, perfect
way that they could film is just have this building all to themselves. And they did.
And they also shut down a good portion of Queen Street East. And they loved that there
were streetcars here and they used the streetcars that were here, including one that the TTC
restored with a gentleman named, well, in tribute to Ray Corley, who was a big historian of the TTC.
They actually still have one of the 1920s streetcars on the TTC, and they actually ran it up and down just south of.
Oh, south of the Bay Hudson's Bay. Yeah, the main flagship store downtown made that look like the outside of Madison Square Gardens And had the streetcar just keep driving by and driving by with all these old cars. Well here let me step in here
So my second born Michelle who I'm gonna miss very much. I could cry right now because this weekend
She went back to Montreal for another school year at McGill and I'm gonna miss Michelle, but okay, so
All sad think about Michelle
because Michelle was born on July 29th 2004 Oh at woman's college hospital early
in the morning I was driving home I guess now we're talking early in the
morning on the 30th of July 2004 so I'm driving along Bay Street going south and traffic has
stopped because they are filming a scene at the Simpsons. What was the Simpsons? I
guess it was a Bay by then. I think it was the Simpsons back then. I can't remember.
It might have been Simpsons. I think it was the Simpsons. So they were basically they
made this ice. I could see the marquee outside Simpsons to look like Madison
Square Garden and all the cars were old cars and you mentioned the old street
kind of thing. So basically I was, it was wild. It was like in a time machine where I'm and to look like Madison Square Garden. And all the cars were old cars, and you mentioned the old street car and everything.
So basically, it was wild.
It was like in a time machine where I'm driving south
after my second born was just born
at Women's College Hospital,
because I had to get home because my mom was watching
my first born, James.
So it was just surreal to see them filming this movie.
And then I subsequently learned that they were filming
exterior shots of Madison Square Garden for this movie called Cinderella Man. So I was very interested in Cinderella
Man, which I loved. But they're listening to the big fight on a radio in a church in
Cinderella Man and this might be coming. I'm probably stealing a bit of your thunder.
No, it's okay. Go ahead.
This is St. Cecilia's church on Annette Street, not far from Runnamied. And man, I went to
St. Cecilia's school for a few years.
That's where I met Joe and T.O.
When I met him in junior kindergarten
at St. Cecilia's school.
And do I ever know St. Cecilia's church?
I can raise Catholic here.
I know St. Cecilia's church very, very well.
And it was wild to see interiors.
And then even see scenes of these like apartments
that were like, this is not too far from like Annette
and Runnymede and this neck of the woods,
I knew very, very well.
But you pick it up.
So I had a personal anecdote about them filming this movie.
I'm just, yeah.
I like your anecdote more than what I have.
Well, it was like three in the morning.
That's amazing.
And my second born, I just, well, Michelle was just born.
What a memory to connect with it though.
Yeah.
That, yeah.
And I was so happy the movie didn't suck.
Like I'm like, oh, this could be a shitty movie that I witnessed being filmed. I was so happy the movie didn't suck. Like I'm like,
oh, this could be a shitty movie that I witnessed being filmed. But I fucking loved the movie. And I
don't, I don't think it gets the respect it deserves. To be quite honest. It got three Academy
Award nominations and yeah, it did very well. People loved it. And yeah, I'm surprised it didn't
win more. But, but this whole area on Queen Street East, very close to Degrassi Street,
they made up to look like it was the 1930ss and it was just incredible. And I remember that portion of
it, but I didn't get to go downtown. I wish I could have saw what you saw down there.
Very early. It was like three in the morning when they were filming this thing. So amazing.
Yeah, I just stumbled upon it. Oh, of course. How random is that? But it was wild. And again,
Giamatti is in this thing and Russell Crowe and of course Ron Howard and Russell Crowe
had done a beautiful mind and he won an Oscar for that, I think. And it all just
came together really nicely. But those scenes in the St. Cecilia's, I'm like, that was pretty
cool too. And just just see a whole bunch of like Toronto.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Amazing. Okay. You ready for the next one? I realized that in my mind, I'm like, oh,
this is like an hour episode, but no, it's like a two hour episode. Okay, so let's get
to this one. This is
for sure. I'm probably rambling too much to no no no no
We're both very excited by this topic and there will be subsequent episodes and we'll figure it out
They may be a little they'll be shorter than maybe we'll figure out the the theory
Hey, what's up?
I'll leave you alone forever now.
You know this one girl with hair like this?
Yes, that's Ramona Flowers.
She's out of your league.
You know her?
Tell me now.
She just moved here.
Got a job at Amazon.
I have to order something really cool.
Scott, are you waiting for the package you just ordered?
Maybe.
Scott Pilgrim?
Hi, I was thinking about asking you out, but then I realized how stupid that would be. Are you waiting for the package you just ordered? Maybe.
Scott Pilgrim? Hi, I was thinking about asking you out, but then I realized how stupid that would be.
That's okay. You just need to sign for this, alright?
So do you want to go out sometime?
I say yes while you sign for your damn package.
So yeah, 8 o'clock?
Come to this battle of the bands thing.
You have a band?
Yeah, we're terrible.
One, two, three, four!
Yeah, we're terrible. One, two, three, four!
Ah!
Mr. Pilgrim!
I'm Ramona's first evil ex-boyfriend.
What?
Wait, we're fighting over Ramona?
Didn't you get my email explaining the situation?
I skimmed it.
Mm-mm.
What was that all about? If we're gonna date, you may have to defeat I skimmed it. Mm-mm.
What was that all about? If we're gonna date, you may have to defeat my seven evil exes.
So what you're saying is...
we are...
dating?
I guess.
Does that mean we can make out?
Sure.
Scott Pilgrim!
Prepare to feel the wrath of the League of Evil Exes.
Ramona dated twins.
At the same time?
If you want something bad, you have to fight for it.
Step up your game, Scott.
Break out the L-word.
Lesbian?
The other L-word.
Lesbians. Pow! ["Spring Day"] ["Spring Day"] ["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
What are you doing?
Getting a life.
You wanna fight me for her?
Why on earth would you wanna do that?
Because I'm in love with her.
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"]
["Spring Day"] ["Spring Day"] ["Spring Day"] ["Spring Day"] ["Spring Day"] Because I'm in love with her.
Scott Pilgrim versus the world. Maybe next time we don't date the girl with 11 evil ex-boyfriends. Oh, that's not that bad.
Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Awesome movie too.
2010.
Yeah, awesome.
Very highly rewatchable film.
And I knew it earlier as the graphic novel.
And it was a series that was done by Brian Leo Malley.
But by then, I guess I, you know, I was still all head over heels about X-Men.
So I never really got into it.
But then when this movie came out, I just wow, pretty cool.
And finding out that there was so much film in Toronto and it gets to play Toronto, too.
Right. Yeah. And it's actually it's actually Toronto.
Toronto starting to come out of its shell and not just being masquerading as some
American city. It's actually Toronto. And like, wow. OK, that's amazing.
Absolutely. Oh, by the way, there's another film that we should put on the list for a
future episode. At some point, we should do Hurricane, the Hurricane about the boxer.
Oh yeah.
Hurricane Ruben Carter only because there's another one where Toronto got to play Toronto.
Very cool.
Okay.
It's got Pilgrim vs the World though.
Quick anecdote before we get to your facts and stuff is that I'm listening to a podcast
and they're talking about stuff that comes out 30 years ago, 20 years ago and 10 years
ago. So this, I guess, when did this movie come out though?
This was 2010, so it's 20.
Okay, so it's not an actual anniversary of anything,
but okay, so.
They're doing the anniversary though
this year of the comic.
Okay, maybe that was it.
So a big box set came out of the original comics.
But the American host, or one of the American hosts,
said something to the effect of,
because this is small town Canada
You can order something from Amazon and know that the person you know who works there is going to be the delivery person because of course today
You can't you don't know who the hell is going to deliver your package from Amazon
But I was taken aback by the notion that Toronto was referred to as small town, Canada
When how many American cities are as big as Toronto to.
Yeah it's it's it's odd I don't know.
Anyway I just thought that was funny that one of those over looks pilgrim versus the
world was taking place in small town Canada and I was thinking you've never been to
Toronto have you.
OK please continue on your facts.
Well Scott's home is 65 Alberta Avenue.
It's near St. Clair and Ossington.
It recently, it sold last year after being in the same family for 70 years.
So it still looks like it does in the movie pretty much.
It's got that little weird room at the bottom and everything where the garage used to be, I guess.
Ramona's home is at 294 Carlton Street and her neighborhood's Cabbage Town.
They also do scenes in Lee's Palace. at 294 Carlton Street and her neighborhood's Cabbage Town.
They also do scenes in Lee's Palace,
Artscape Witchwood Barns, which used to be a street car barn.
Also Honest Ed's, you see that prominently
in when they're eating pizza, you see the sign.
And that's the pizza pizza going there.
Is that the pizza pizza?
The pizza pizza's still there,
but the Honest Ed's is long gone.
Fortunately though, the sign of Honest Eds
has been saved by David Marvish.
And I was recently talking to Jacob Marvish, his son,
and he said, oh yeah, he's still working on it.
They're still gonna have some kind of a reveal somewhere.
And they were talking about having a neon museum
on Victoria Street in behind the theaters
and having that all set up there.
But we'll see what happens eventually. Well, we're big on our signs in behind the theaters and having that all set up there. But we'll see what happens eventually.
Well, we're big on our signs in this city, you know, like you can take you can kill the
chum building there that was on Yonge Street.
Just make sure you save the sign.
The Sandler Breckerman.
Yeah, that could become, you know, TMU, the other TMU.
But just make sure you save the sign.
Just save all the signs.
It's some kind of a memory that they can have.
I recently saw the sign for what was that place called?
The hair cutting place.
Oh, House of Lords.
House of Lords is up for sale for some ridiculous amount.
I used to go to House of Lords.
I lived at Charles Street in Young and I used to walk over and get my hair cut.
House of Lords. You'd hear about it on CFNY.
Neat. Absolutely.
What else? The Baldwin steps coming down from where
Castle Home is, those big long set of steps. He challenges him to skate down
it and just lose his control and that's how that one evil boyfriend dies.
Also yeah, Castle Home is in the background and it's actually being used
as a filming set in the movie. There, he fights that guy from the film
that's actually being filmed at the time.
Right.
So there's also the Canary Restaurant,
which is a very famous filming location
down on Cherry Street at front.
The Canary District.
That's recently given the name to the whole district.
Right.
And the sign, that sign was saved.
I did see it a few years ago at a pop-up for the neon demon
Where it was just neon demons signs neon signs, but also these historical ones and that that was there amazing Hopefully it gets restored one day or or just at least put in a proper place because we really don't have a museum like they
Do like in places like Nevada where they have an actual neon museum and you can go check out all the old signs from old
Las Vegas and that sort of thing. Yeah. Well well darn it I want one of those and what are we
doing you probably don't have an answer I'm thinking out loud in here but you
got the the city pulse truck embedded in the side of 299 Queen Street right when
when Bell Media rebranded it with CP 24 or something which I guess is there
right they own the damn thing yeah but lest we forget that was a city pulse
truck of course from City TV but which is now a rock
and it was all complicated.
That's now Rogers property.
So the game CP 24 bell media property,
but when this when they vacate this building,
what happens to that?
I really hope we have an actual city museum by that time
where we can store something like that
and actually put it on display.
But then we have to read,
we have to bring it back to City Pulse truck, right?
The whole CP24 rebranding was just a Bell Media marketing plan.
It's just something to make it more trendy and more easier to say.
Just to make it more Bell.
Yeah, that as well, yeah.
Well, that's all it was.
Oh, yeah?
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's all it was.
Because City Pulse was a City TV thing, which Rogers ended up owning, and they moved to
Young and Dundas.
Oh, so they wanted to put their stamp on it.
Yeah, the Bell Media owned CP24, so they wanted to put their stamp on it. Yeah, the Bell Media owned CP24.
So they wanted to put their stamp on it, of course.
Right on.
All right.
Yeah, more than that, there's the Portlands.
There's a lot of the Portlands in there,
along with those areas and Bloor Street West,
Pinewood Studios, and also Cinespace.
They filmed a lot in lots, I guess sound stages.
Love it, that's a great one.
So you're kicking out a lot of big ones
in this first episode.
Yeah, hopefully.
There's a lot more to come, a lot more to come here.
You ready for a, well we're going in order,
essentially up until now it's been kind of
chronological order.
So this is the most recent film,
and then we'll end with something a little different,
and then we'll do a bonus 11th because I demanded it at Christie Pets.
You ready for this one?
Sounds good.
Yeah.
All right, here we go.
If I told you about her, the princess without voice.
Richard Jenkins is another actor I love.
That's his voice.
He's the father in Six Feet Under. Is she deaf?
Mute, sir.
She can hear you.
You clean that lab, you get out.
This may very well be the most sensitive asset ever to be housed in this facility.
You may think that thing looks human. stands on two legs, right? But we're
created in the Lord's image. You don't think that's what the Lord looks like, do you? This
creature is intelligent, capable of language, of understanding emotions. When he looks at me, he doesn't know how I am incomplete.
He sees me as I am. I admit I didn't bathe you, my love
Before I saw you
The natives in the Amazon worshipped it
I'll do God
Get him out
What are you talking about?
No
We need to take it apart
Learn how it works
I don't want an intricate, beautiful thing destroyed.
We can do nothing. I'm sorry.
Don't do this, Eliza.
What did she say?
Don't do this.
Oh God, it's not even human.
If I told you about her, what would I say? I wonder.
The Shape of Water.
Yes.
2017, directed by Guillermo del Toro.
And when this first came out, I thought, is there another Hellboy coming out?
Because the guy in it looks a lot like Abe Sapien from Hellboy.
But no, it's not him. But they also look like a creature from Black Lagoon.
But yeah, just a very iconic movie that a lot of people recognize is filmed in Toronto.
And you see the Villiers Street warehouses down there, Keating Channel.
Let's see, what else?
Oh, Massey Hall.
Oh yeah, Massey Hall.
Big time.
U of T Scarborough is in there even.
Well, she lives in Massey Hall, right?
Well, doesn't she come down?
It's a little strange.
It's like Massey Hall is the outside that she comes out of.
But the inside is actually the Winter Garden Theatre.
Right. So it's this beautiful interior.
But yeah, I don't know why they quite did that.
Maybe it was just the aesthetic of what they wanted to have as a store.
But it's wild to see the scene where she's kind of.
Yeah. The outside of her house is Massey Hall.
Like, yeah, but you're right.
It's Winter Garden Theatre's interior and the Lakeview restaurant even makes an appearance in there and a few other places.
But one thing with this movie and that you'll see increasingly in movies that are shot in Toronto,
they're using so much CGI even to make buildings look bigger than they are. So
you'll see the core of the Toronto buildings at the bottom, but the tops are all,
all are all just imaginations, right? So where we used to point at
and go, that's Toronto or whatever, now it's going to be really hard to do because it's getting so
good where you don't even realize that it's Toronto. Yeah, like now they can use CG or post
processing or whatever to change the look of street signs and stuff, like all these things that
were tells or whatever, like oh those are Toronto street signs or those are Toronto newspaper boxes or whatever all these tells I mean short circuit to put that on the list okay for your episode but but yeah now these tells are so easily like erased in post yeah so they'll fix it in post increasingly it's getting harder to find something authentic that's that's in there that's Toronto and but a little what you know there's a lot in this movie like I mean it's getting harder to find something authentic that's in there, that's Toronto.
But there's a lot in this movie.
Just Massey Hall alone I think it deserves the Academy Award for Best Picture.
For sure, yes. And one thing too about Guillermo del Toro, he's kind of adopted Toronto as he loves Toronto so much now and he's here a lot.
And recently he filmed, I think it was a Frankenstein movie down at the Portland so there's a big ship down there through the winter time that they were
filming and uh but yeah he's always on social media talking about local Toronto places he
hangs out and he tries to promote Toronto things and he did something at the I want to say he did
something at the art gallery of Ontario with uh FOTM Jim Shedden oh yeah I want to say absolutely
and um I think you know you were asking for new guests
and stuff, I thought he would be a great one
if you could snag him to like,
maybe come and visit you here down in the basement.
Would he do that?
Well, look, maybe Jim Shedden has an in with this guy.
So FOTM Jim, I'll be seeing if you could introduce me
to Guillermo.
And he also made that series,
The Cabinet of Curiosities, which is sort of like a twilight zone type thing
But more gruesome, but yeah, it uses the hern generating plan and all these places around Toronto, too
So that might be another one we could do in the future. Oh amazing. Yeah, I hope you're taking notes on all this
Okay. So again, I'm gonna try to keep this safe for YouTube
So I'm only gonna play a little bit of this song and I'm gonna break it down
But everybody listening to Toronto Mike right now knows this song unless Oh, unless there is more you wanted to say about the Shaped Water.
Oh, that was pretty much it.
Okay. Great, great choice though, because there's such a, you know, just with the
Winter Garden Theatre and the Massey Hall alone.
I tried to get a bit of a variety with these, so we're not just...
And it won how many? It got nominated for, I had this info a moment ago, 13...
It did win some awards, as far as I know.
It won big awards, as big as it gets. As big as it gets, are you kidding me?
It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards
and it won four of them.
It won best picture, best director for Deltoro,
and it won a couple of others, which I would tell you,
except they didn't put it in the first paragraph
of the Wiki page.
So you'll have to take my word for it.
And maybe, I don't know, music, effects,
who knows, makeup, who knows? That creature looked pretty cool.
I could definitely see the makeup running something for that.
Yeah.
Like that.
Okay.
Here's the song we all know and love.
I feel like that's all you need.
If you're a listener of Toronto Mikes, you know a song I'm playing right now.
Okay.
Talk to me about this and I have a bonus jam you sent me that I'm going to load up as well.
So.
Well, at the very beginning in that he says, was at me about this and I have a bonus jam you sent me that I'm gonna load up as well So well at the very beginning in that he says was at your house this morning
And I know exactly where that house was and again, so if the people who don't know I know everyone knows
But that's Bob Cajun by the tragically hip. Sorry I didn't like that
But yeah 1999 they came out with this music video and I
But yeah, 1999 they came out with this music video and I was very much on in the the history of Scarborough at the time I was on the board of the Scarborough. Well, the Scarborough Historical Society and
I just newly joined and I was looking around I wanted to take a picture of every 19th century house that had ever been built
In Scarborough, so I drove all around and I took a picture of this house
It was all in yellow and then a little while later this video came out and I'm like, that's that house.
Wow.
But it's purple now.
So I looked and I'm like, yeah, that's the house.
It has the same decorations and everything, but it's been repainted.
And it's the one where Gord Downie comes out of the house at the beginning, walks across
the porch, gets into his car as a trooper, as a, I guess, OPP officer and drives away
after kissing his girlfriend or
wife at the door.
Amazing.
And I don't know what the relationship is there but yeah, he drives away and I recognized
it and it's on Beer or Bear Road, just south of Plug Hat Road.
Well, it was there up until 2004 or 2007 and it burned down. Oh, but I used to go up there before
the video was shot and hang out with the farmer that was still there, who was semi retired,
but he just sit there on the property and just enjoy the day. And I talked with him
about the old days, about how the property used to be and their family came up through
Pennsylvania and a lot of the people up there are Mennonites and the Reeser family and Reeser Road is named after them.
So because he's one of those people that I was talking about earlier that had his property
expropriated by that airport coming in, he rented the house.
It was his house, it was his family house, he grew up in it, but he just rented it.
So I talked with him about that and about with about the films
that happened there. And he's like, Oh, people film here all the time. And of Green Gables,
Rota and Lee, every place had gone through there. And they loved this guy, Joe Rittenhouse,
because he just let his house anytime they wanted, he would really just do it. And he'd
be happy when they paint the house a different color, because then he didn't have to pay
to have it painted. And, and, well, but when the house is being rented out though, I guess
he didn't really care anyway, but, but yeah, so it was interesting. And, uh, I would talk
with them every once in a while and I'd say, Oh, can I go check out your barn? And I'd
check out the barn and see all these old things hanging out in there. And, uh, there was bought
some boxes and I said, Oh, do you oh, would you sell those boxes to me?
So I bought some of these old crates
that were from like the 19th century
and just random things.
Where do you store all this stuff?
I have a storage unit,
but I also have just things around my house.
I'm trying to get rid of stuff
because I have no space.
You're collecting a lot of stuff.
I did up until recently.
And now that I'm in an apartment, no,
I'm not really collecting that much stuff.
Not big stuff. I'll do photos and things, but those boxes actually cut the ends off because
the ends are rotted. I have those hanging on my wall in the kitchen. And yeah, just memories of
visiting Joe up on the farm. And actually I've got some shots here I can show you guys, but
there's Joe on the farm on his porch. And wow. And there's Joe. And there's the actual, there's the house where,
Oh yeah.
And there's the door where Gord Downey comes out
and walks across the porch.
Amazing Bob Cajun video.
Which alludes to a lot of Toronto, right?
Cause that night in Toronto
and then the checkerboard floors
and a lot of, that's the horseshoe tavern.
Some people say that the riot that's happening
was actually referring to the Christie Pitts riots.
But some people think, no, it's more about a riot that happened Christy Pitt the Christy Pitts riots, but some people think no
It's more about a riot that happened around the time the video came out
So they're still not sure the origin of what what that was but a lot of it was right
was that that when the video came out in the 30s there was a
Well the 30s you're something yeah, but I'm pretty but okay. There wasn't a riot. I missed like in the
Early 2000s or whatever is it well and then in 90s, there was some kind of a fight that happened.
I'm not sure which one it was that they're referring to in that that I've
that I've seen things about.
But yeah, it wasn't in Christie Pitts, though.
It's somewhere else in the city.
Yeah, I know. I remember.
I remember the when the verdict came down, the L.A.
cops were found not guilty.
Absolutely. There was a bit of a riot that night.
Yeah. But how does this all tie? I'm just curious because I load up this kids in
the hall. Oh yeah. Well this all ties in because if you have a look at Joe's
clothing here, they loved his clothing and the kids in the hall were like we
want to do the skin of a farmer and you have all this clothing. Can we borrow some of it? And they actually wore a lot of his clothing for this kids in the hall were like we want to do this skit of a farmer and you have all this clothing can we borrow some of it and they they actually wore a lot of
his clothing for this kids in the hall skit which they filmed on joe's farm and in his
kitchen which is just through this window off the north side of the old building okay
let's play a little clip of this well he appears to be having some difficulty getting the salt.
No, no, you've been getting salt pretty good.
So you're saying there's nothing we can do?
No, I never said that.
I said, there's nothing we can do.
That's what I said you said.
Did I? I'm sorry, you called me in the middle of a party.
I'm a little drunk.
Good luck.
Could be worse.
Coulda used to be smart.
I got an idea.
Oh.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm smart. I got an idea.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
I don't know what went wrong.
Always seem to work on the Flintstones.
Very good, Jeremy.
Jeremy, you're kicking ass again.
How many times?
This is your third appearance on Central Night.
Yes, yeah.
Okay, so the listenership hasn't caught on yet.
Every quarter we get a visit from Jeremy Hopkins with a different theme. So we did
like 10 Toronto buildings that were destroyed but should not have been
destroyed and then we did 10 Toronto buildings that were saved and now we're
doing 10 things that were filmed in Toronto and then we'll do at some point
we'll get more things that were filmed in Toronto, but Just before we close with the 11th
Thing that was filmed in Toronto that I demanded you add to the list when I saw you on Saturday night at Christie Pitts
One more thing about the kids, of course
You'll notice in that skit. There's a train blaring its horn all the time in the background
There's a crossing very close to Joe's house and it would always blare its horn there and you just hear it out in the middle of the horn all the time in the background. There was a crossing very close to Joe's house
and it would always blare its horn there
and you just hear it out in the middle of the country
all the time.
And he would go down to the crossing
and collect all the hubcaps that had fallen off cars
that hit that crossing because it was a high crossing.
So that was a little hobby of his.
He'd walk down the hall and I'd say,
Joe, what are all these hubcaps from?
Because he'd go and give them to the scrapper down the street.
Fascinating, fascinating.
So before I kick out the final trailer here and talk about one more movie, and I could
throw a stone at some of the filming locations, I will let you know about recyclemyelectronics.ca
because if you have collected some stuff, some old tech devices, electronics that maybe
you need to dispose of. Don't throw it in
the garbage. The chemicals end up in our landfill. Go to recyclemyelectronics.ca, put in your
postal code and find a place near you where it can be properly recycled. You got that,
Jeremy?
Yeah, I got that. And I almost left out one big thing.
Go ahead.
I'm so sorry.
No, don't be. Sorry.
I took a memento from the house that even means a little bit more.
After the fire, I actually got to go up there with the Historical Society
and we examined the whole property.
There is this lamp on the ceiling of where Gord came out of the door.
And I went, I want that.
I got to have that.
I got to have some kind of a memento of, you know, him coming through that door
and everything else was burnt.
So the whole ceiling was bowed down
and it was scary as hell.
Like above this, the ceiling was maybe sagging down
about four feet.
And I went, if I go in there, I'm gonna die.
So I kind of leaned in with the snips
and my buddy Don Allen helped me and snipped it
and pulled it off and got it out.
And I just thought I'd bring it by today.
Well, you have it.
Okay, we can even.
OK, so wow. You're going to hold that in the photo.
You got to hold that in the photo.
So I'm going to hold this in the photo.
That's unbelievable.
But that's got it right there.
Yeah, this probably almost hit Gordownie on the head on the way out.
And I cleaned it up and everything.
But I love that you saved that.
I saved I saved that along with a few other things.
Good for you. Good for you.
All right. Last one here.
You've been awesome, Jeremy.
We're going to we're going to bang this one out and then we're going to take
a photo. You're going to hold that, uh, that lamp or light or whatever. But here is crime.
The city was full of desperate measures were needed. Watch you to go to the police academy.
The police academy is such a dangerous place!
Honey, don't worry!
Desperate measures were taken.
I'm joining the police force!
The mayor says we have to take this riff-raff.
I'm trapped here?
Oh yes, we all are.
What about guns? When do we get guns?
You will be schooled in firearms, police procedures, local laws...
and many, many other things.
High-speed driving...
and self-defense.
I need a volunteer.
Thanks, me!
I'd love it! I'd love it!
Police Academy.
Where did you get this gun?
My mom gave it to me.
Mister, I am warning you, half hour!
They're Lee.
You're funny, here. Me.
Does the radio bother you?
I can turn it down.
Obscene.
Each and every one of them striving to defend.
You make me sick.
Thank you, sir. I make everybody sick.
See the thighs.
Or offend. Come on, come on. I make everybody sick. See the thighs. Or offend. Come on come on
I haven't got all day the thighs. Now that they're ready for the real world.
Give me the thing. Tribe is no longer a number one problem. They are. Can you get my kitty
cat out of the tree? No problem, man
Police Academy so many memories of watching that with my family over the years. Absolutely
1984 okay, you talked to me about police Academy. Yeah police Academy. Um, there's quite a few Toronto locations and that it's all Toronto.
One of the first scenes is a photo booth scene where they grab some guys photo booth and pitch them into the water. Right.
Another scene with that baskeel bridge.
That's where they throw the photo booth off of.
Yeah. Cherry Cherry Street.
Yeah. Cherry Street.
And right at the shipping the shipping channel.
And I feel like that's where in strange Brew, where the car goes into the lake.
Do you remember when the scene in Strange Brew
where the car takes off?
I feel like that's right there too.
I think it's very close there.
Very close to there.
It's just a little, yeah.
Like in that, yeah.
In that Portland's area though.
Portland's area, okay.
I think it's Poulsen Pier, is that what it's called?
Yeah, I think so.
Okay.
Yeah, so they jumped that into the into the lake and
They survived by drinking the air from the beer bottles, which is amazing
All right, but back to police academy, but I will say one one connection between police academy and
Porkies is of course this huh? Oh gosh
I can't believe this scene when I I look back at it, like,
I hope my kids never watch poor kids.
But the character named Lassie was played by Kim Cottrell.
And of course, Kim Cottrell is in this first
Police Academy, she doesn't come back for any of the sequels,
but she's in this 1984 Police Academy.
Of course, most people just remember Steve Gutenberg,
but fantastic and directed by Hugh Wilson.
And again, we have the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in there.
It serves as the main campus of the academy.
That yeah, common don't Eric Lassard at the police came in.
So that's a place I point out to my kids every time we bike there a lot.
And that's in Colonel Samuel Smith Park on the Humber campus.
And quick anecdote is that like,
you can see it's not a gargoyle, but it's like a face,
some kind of face is in the outside of this asylum.
Asylum, what do they call it?
The hospital?
This one was-
They got a few names back in the day.
The Lake Shore Psychiatric Hospital.
See, I think at some point they called the Mimico asylum,
maybe?
Sometimes they were called lunatic asylums.
Yeah, I know. One time I called it that because it was known as that and somebody said I was like I got
me I've got upset at me for using the L word but I was just calling it by the name. Yeah,
so we're not I'm not using that. Well if you look at old maps there there it's there. Yeah,
it's just what they what they refer to it as evolved. Right. We've evolved. But they
had to carve out I guess they cut out this, I don't know, I'm not describing it well, it's like a face.
I could literally walk with you after this recording if I had time and I would show you,
we could do this another time, but it's so close to me.
But love that that's basically Please Academy.
Well, I do remember you from one of your blog posts that I looked up years ago, that you
toured there during Doors Open Toronto and got to actually check out the tunnels there
too, right? Yeah, a hundred percent and
Suicide squad was filmed down there too a more recent movie
But a lot of stuff filmed down there and it was really cool to get under the tunnels
But yeah, that's one of the great police academy filming locations. So Lassard's office was in building G. It's called building G now
From what I could tell sounds about they also filmed at the Silver Dollar Room, which sort of doubled as the blue oyster bar.
There's also what a scene that was.
Do you remember the character of Fackler, who his wife runs after him
and jumps on the hood of his car? Yep, yep, yep.
His house is at 81 Ellsfield Road.
The house is still there in a Tohoku.
Simcoe Place is where Mahoney is a
valet and you can see you know Roy Thompson Hall in the background and then the church that's there
and a few field buildings but now that it's no longer a parking lot you were talking about
parking lots earlier that were everywhere that's one of the ones that's now gone.
Also the toy factory lofts which was a toy factory back in the day very close to where
Nelvana was and all that kind of stuff.
Shout out to Clive A. Smith, FOTM Clive.
And Kensington, the Lakeshore Studio, and they also filmed a little bit in Rob Pruss's
old neighborhood in Brampton.
So there you go.
That's pretty much it for Police Academy.
I will just point out there's a scene where they're teaching Hightower how to drive and
Hightower is very, Bubba Smith played him, very big guy. And it's a small little car anyway, they're teaching them. So I think
he had to take out the seat to fit in there, if I remember correctly. But basically you
watch them drive along Lakeshore in this neck of the woods and it's wild. You can kind of
see, you know, the McDonald's and all the stuff going on in new Toronto in Lake on Lakeshore.
So hyper local, a lot of these scenes in Police Academy.
And I got to say, we added it as an 11th because I didn't want to do this first series without
mentioning Police Academy.
But dude, you were great.
You brought it as always.
And I can't wait till next quarter when we do something else.
Yeah.
Well, we'll mix it up.
Maybe we'll do movies again.
Maybe we won't.
We'll see what goes on. The main reason we're doing this now is because TIFF's coming up and, you know,
it's a good connection to the Toronto city. Stuff happening. And I love we did it basically,
went from going down the road to shape of water that covers decades. And I love that story about
the Bob Cajun video. Thank you so much. Amazing. Look, and I can't wait to see that, what is it, a light?
Yeah, it's a four arm or three arm pan light.
That's from the 1920s.
Okay.
So we're gonna see that in the photo
by the Toronto tree.
Shout out to Strange Brew, another movie filmed here.
And, oh, sorry.
Whoa, no, go. Can I say one more thing?
On the weekend, coming up, I'm helping run a festival in Leeside, just like the one we were talking about before for Doors Open.
I went to that. It was great.
You showed up. You actually biked all the way there, which was amazing.
I biked all the way to Leeside. I loved it.
So we're going to actually have a street festival out there with classic cars and people painting on the street and lots of things going on for both days, Saturday and Sunday.
So what day is this?
This is August 31st and September 1st.
Coming up!
Yeah, coming up.
This coming weekend.
We're doing a little bit about the history of the area and just trying to get people
together because Leeside's really never had this kind of a festival.
Love it, man.
If I can bike to it, I will.
That August 31st, of course, I will be celebrating
the 40th anniversary of Much Music. But if I can break away from that, I would love to
attend this. That's very cool.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Well, we'll see you there if you can make it.
And that brings us to the end of our 1541st show. You can follow me all over the place,
Twitter, Blue Sky, whatever. I'm at Toronto Mike. Go to torontomike.com. Jeremy, give us the best place to follow you.
Jeremy Hopkins Well, you can follow me on Hopkins Design
or under my own name, Jeremy Hopkins, all over social media. I'm on Twitter, I'm on
Facebook, Instagram. I'm also on, what is it?
Jared Polin Blue Sky?
Jeremy Hopkins Blue Sky. I'm on Blue Sky now too.
Jared Polin Mike Wellner is trying to make Blue Sky happen. Jeremy Hopkins Oh, good. Jared Polin You know, you never? Blue Sky. I'm on Blue Sky now too.
Mike Wellner is trying to make Blue Sky happen.
So you never know.
But it's great.
It just needs more people.
Yeah.
I notice a little bit of momentum every once in a while.
All of a sudden people will be like, we have to dump Twitter now.
It's gotten really toxic.
That Elon has gone too far.
And then I get a surge and then all of a sudden tapers off again.
So hopefully it comes around. Hopefully Elon just sells the freaking thing and we can enjoy Twitter. That would be nice. We can bring back the old name
Yep, Elon needs to sell it bring back the old name
Rehire cam Gordon. Yes. All right much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery
Palma pasta
recycle my electronics dot CA the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, can't
wait for the 2025 season, and Ridley Funeral Home. My next episode is a tribute to Mr.
Forbes. What's his name? Harry Forbes?
Yes.
Harry Forbes.
I can't wait to do it.
Of course, I only recorded it. I've already recorded it. I never do this, but I didn't,
I wanted to drop it on Tuesday morning. So tomorrow morning, a tribute to Harry Forbes. Of course, I only recorded it. I've already recorded it. I never do this, but I didn't. I wanted to drop it on Tuesday morning. So tomorrow morning, a tribute to
Harry Forbes with Ed Conroy from Retro Ontario. See you all then. The smell of snow warms me today And your smile is fine, it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Cause everything is rosy and green