Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Adam Bunch: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1480

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

In this 1480th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with award-winning storyteller Adam Bunch about Toronto's fascinating history, his Canadiana documentary series, the Toronto Dreams Project, The Festival of Bizarre Toronto History and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Yes, We Are Open podcast from Moneris, 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 [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 1480 of Toronto Miked, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Poma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. The Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, the best baseball in the city outside the dome. Join me May 12 at 2pm for the home opener at Christie Pitts.

RecycleMyElectronics.ca, committing to our planet's future, means properly recycling our electronics of the past. The Advantage Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada. Valuable perspective for Canadian investors who want to remain knowledgeable, informed and focused on long-term success. Season 6 of Yes We Are Open, an award-winning Monaris podcast hosted by FOTM Al Gregor and Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

Today, making his Toronto mic debut, is award-winning storyteller, Adam Bunch. Welcome, Adam. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. I'm glad you're here. You want to crack open your Great Lakes beer now. So you got a nice logger there, right in front of the mic.

Beautiful. What a great sound that is. So let me crack open my burst. And let's see if I can do this without spilling it on my board, but cheers to you. Cheers. Happy to meet you and I love your t-shirt. Tell the listenership about the Toronto Toros t-shirt

you're wearing there. Yeah, this is, I recently co-curated an exhibit at Museum of Toronto. It was all about Toronto sports. Okay, but now I'm thinking, I'm gonna get you closer to the mic. Just gotta wanna miss something up. You don't have to move, I can move this way.

Let's hear you again. Yeah, thank you. Oh, beautiful. Yeah, yeah, beautiful, Beautiful. Okay, sorry, you were saying you curated an exhibit. Yeah, I recently co-curated an exhibit at Museum of Toronto all about Toronto's sports history, which I took as an excuse to buy a few old Toronto sports t-shirts, which I love having in the closet and the Toros. Yeah, this great fascinating story about this team

that tried to rival the Maple Leafs and got crushed in part by Harold Ballard's and vindictive nature. I love any story that includes a vindictive Harold Ballard. Well then, you're in luck because you've got an endless supply, I think, to learn about. The Toros, because I was,

I remember being very young and being, I'm about. The Toros, cause I was, I remember being very young and being, I'm aware of the Toros, but where did they play their home games? Was it at varsity arena? Where were they playing? They played around a bit, including, I think at least one, maybe two seasons at Maple Leaf gardens, which is a deal. They brokered with Ballard's son while he was in prison. And then when he got out, he didn't like that this rival team was playing in his house.

So that's where the predictiveness comes in. He took all the cushions off the seats on the bench. He charged them more if they wanted to turn the lights off, said they had to play in the dark unless they paid a surcharge. Eventually that financial pressure helped drive them under and the whole league under and a few teams transferred to the NHL, so like teams like the Jets,

the Nordiques, that's where they came from originally. And we've got, yeah, nothing left of the Toros now but these memories. Some great players like Frank Mahavlach played there in the exhibit. We had his old Toros jersey hanging up on the wall from this, yeah, strange little chapter of Toronto's hockey history.

Yeah. The, the oilers played in this league, right? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Uh, shout out to the Edmonton Oilers. Okay. Is this, and this is formerly known as Myseum, right?

They rebranded. This is the, the, the, the complex Myseum that now is the, what is it? The Toronto Museum of Toronto. Okay. Now, do you ever have any summits, any, you know, grab a Great Lakes beer and chat up Ed Conroy from Retro Ontario. Do you guys ever get together and talk about interesting,

fun facts about the city's history? I think we haven't ever actually officially met. I think we follow each other online. I was at the opening of his exhibit about kids TV. That's why I was thinking, cause I was there with PJ Fresh Phil just last year, and he had the history of television programming for children coming out of this market,

and I feel like you guys would have a lot in common. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we cover a lot of the same stuff. He does such a good job of his thing, all that TV. It was a wonderful exhibit. Museum of Toronto, it just started doing exhibits. I think they're on their fourth one now, which is a wild Toronto, histories of raccoons and passenger pigeons

and coyotes and stuff. Amazing. So I regret not having checked out your exhibit, but now that we're like, we're gonna become friends now, you're now an FOTM. I won't miss any future exhibits curated by you, Adam. I'll be sure to be there. Well, thank you very much.

Because it's right up. And I'm glad you're here because I feel like what you're doing is right in my wheelhouse. Like I'm so fascinated by interesting stories about the history of this city and you're the guy. Like everyone's like, yeah, have you talked to Adam Bunch? Yeah, I'm like, no, but I gotta talk to Adam Bunch. Like you're the guy.

Well, I mean, I get so much joy just sharing stories about the history of the city, the history of the country, too, and I do think there's sort of a new generation, the last couple of generations maybe, of people who are taking Toronto and its history more seriously. That now we have platforms like this one where people are saying to talk about

the city more. Uh, so there was, yeah, a whole big group of wonderful people like Ed, Ron, Conroy doing, right. All this great historical storytelling. And I recently had a Jeremy Hopkins over and we were talking about like 10 Toronto buildings that were demolished, but shouldn't have been demolished. Like we just had a fun chat about this. And he was also singing your praises. So I'm glad we could finally make this happen. And I think I'll give you one of your many gifts

right off the, well, you've already cracked open a Great Lakes beer. So you are coming, you're bringing some Great Lakes beer home with you today. Just moments ago, I had a Troy Birch. So I got to get my Birch in my bunch. I got to make sure they don't get confused here. had Troy Birch. So I gotta get my birch in my bunch. I gotta make sure they don't get confused here. But Troy Birch was here,

because we were recording the most recent episode of Between Two Fermenters, which is the Great Lakes Brewery podcast. And he was saying that Great Lakes has collaborated with you in the past, right? You had a series on the history of beer, maybe? What's that about? Yeah, all alcohol, actually.

I do a bunch of online courses open to the public. One that's sort of an overview of Toronto history, but also specific sort of more niche topics too. So one of them is all the boozy history of Toronto from first founded to today, filled with stories about beer and stuff and Great Lakes sponsored that course the last time I offered it.

So Troy mentioned that I think if you signed up for that course, you got a complimentary eight pack of Great Lakes beer, something like that? They were amazing. They dropped it off at everybody's houses, two beers per class so you could crack open your Great Lakes while you were learning about this history of bootlegging.

What a small world, right? That you guys are collaborating on something there while you were learning about this history of bootlegging. But what a small world, right? That you guys are collaborating on something there and just all these worlds are colliding everywhere. It's a small world after all, Adam, is what I'm getting at here. You can sing if you want. So you know your Great Lakes and how is your lager there? It's very nice, thank you.

Fresh, crappy. Literally just came from the brewery crappy. I literally just came from the brewery. So that that arrived here today from the brewery. So keep it fresh for you now. So we're going to get to know a bit more. You mentioned platforms and like like where you can consume Adam's bunchiness, like all of your history and the stories that you share. And then maybe we can talk about a few like a choice Toronto stories. Like maybe you can, I just love hearing stories.

Of course. So maybe we can do all of this. All right. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Like, like, like I was reading, you were a music journalist at some point, like, like how, how does your origin story begin? Maybe share with us your, uh, how you get to where you are today. Yeah. I fell into history really by accident. I grew up in Toronto, grew up hearing stories about my parents and some of their parents too

grew up here, in fact, we're sitting in New Toronto right now, that's where my dad grew up, he was just over a few blocks away. Really? Yeah, so. Because it's not that big a neighborhood really. No, no. Geographically, I mean.

No, they number the streets so you can really wrap your head around exactly how many blocks there are. And he was just over a few numbers to the west. So I grew up hearing stories about him hanging out in this neighborhood. But then didn't go to school for history, went for film and English. And when I came out of school,

I was doing music writing, music journalism, helped run a couple of online music publications in the early 2000s, which turned out to not actually be the greatest time in the history of the world to try to make a living. So specifically, you were editor in chief of Soundproof Magazine? Yeah. And the Little Red Umbrella? Yeah.

So Soundproof, it was a bigger thing. We were around for a good number of years online. It's on the Polaris Music Prize jury for a while. Did the Little Red Umbrella as a smaller thing with friends so we could basically keep getting tickets to concerts and stuff. Smart, no, you're smart. Smart stuff.

So you're friendly with Ben Rayner. I'm just shouting out FOTMs now, but. Our paths have crossed, I think. I'm thinking we're gonna have to have a summit here. I'm gonna organize it. Like, we'll get you, Ben Rainer, Ed Conroy, get us all together and see what we, what magic we can, we can cook up here. Okay. And you were contributing to pop matters and of course the sun media, the 24 hour commuter newspaper I used to read on the subway. Yeah. Yeah.

A bunch of sort of Sam proof provided them with music content back in the days when we had, yeah, those wars between Metro and 24 hours. Yeah, which was a lot of fun, I loved doing it. And really drew me into the idea of writing more about Toronto. Like the thing that I love the most about writing about music was writing about new bands playing in little clubs, you know, on stage at the Dollar or upstairs at the,

at Sneaks. And sort of, yeah, drew me into loving more and more about the city and that sort of helped draw me into its past a little bit too. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned, I was reading your bio that you grew up along the Humber River. Like, so whereabouts along the Humber River?

Yes, it was really little. I was on the York side, and I moved through the Etobicoke side as well. Went to school both sides along too. So sort of up toward Eglinton Lawrence, sort of a little good distance north of here. Well, I love riding that Humber trail. Love it.

Yeah, just gorgeous. And I went to Humbercrest and Runnamie and Ritchie, all a little further south mostly. Okay, no, because I have two kids who went to Humbercrest. So I know well. Well. I know it very well. PK Subban went there, you know.

No, really? Yeah, yeah. In fact, when I go to like assemblies, you get, there's pictures in the hallway of all the graduating, oh, I don't graduate, but all the, I guess the grade eight classes or whatever. And the one with PK, it's like circled like,

you know, so PK Subban absolutely went to, uh, to Humber crest there in the West end of Toronto on the, like you said, the York side of the, uh, the, the Humber river. And then my kids went to Humber side. So Humber crest for primary, and then they went to Humber side for, for high school. Yeah. Which is where my mom went.

Okay. See, look, we West end stuff. So these stories, and again, I love a good story. So if anything triggers any story, you just go in, man. I'm just going to sit back, sit my Great Lakes beer and listen, but you did some teaching too. So I guess this helps you kind of, you're teaching at George Brown College.

Mm-hmm, yeah, they've got a Toronto studies and stories course there. And one of the professors who's already teaching the course was using one of my books, sort of a textbook, and couldn't do it at the last minute, so I got to step in and now I'm doing it. Yeah, most terms I get to go try to indoctrinate the youth with a little love of Toronto.

Is that book, the Toronto Book of the Dead? Yeah, that's the one. Okay, tell me all about this book, the Toronto Book of the Dead. Yeah, so it's, I was doing a lot of online writing and got an opportunity and the theme of death and dying always seemed to me like an interesting, there are a lot of exciting sort of grisly stories

you can tell on that theme. You can talk about murders and executions and duels. And it's, in history, every story ends the same way, right? Like every historical figure eventually has died. So it's also a bit of a cheat code that you can sort of talk about almost anybody you want to talk about. So I use that theme as a way to sort of cover

the history of the city, try to tell its evolution from before it was founded to today through every chapter being a different story about some sort of death related thing. Well, you know, one of the sponsors of this very podcast is a funeral home, Ridley Funeral Homes. So Adam here, here's a measuring tape for you to bring home courtesy of Ridley Funeral Home. In fact, right after you, it's funny how today's schedule went for me. So I'm going to do the Great Lakes podcast. Now you're my special guest on my podcast. And then

right after this, I'm going to record the Ridley funeral home podcast, life's undertaking with Brad Jones. So he'll be kind of coming in after you. But when I think about Toronto, you know, stories of that nature, I went to a U of T and I remember the legend because they still have the door with the, uh, the acts, the chunk of the door gone from the, with the axe, the chunk of the door gone from an axe and that's the Diablos Resnikoff.

That's got to be one of the great Toronto stories. Oh, it's maybe, yeah, easily one of the best ghost stories our city has produced. In fact, a couple of years ago I did a whole haunted tour of the campus of the University of Toronto because that place is just littered with ghosts. Everywhere you turn, there's another ghost story. But that's definitely the big central one on campus. And it helps. There's not a lot of evidence that any of it is true.

There's no historical. But there's a chunk of the door missing, Adam. But that's it, is that it's got something tangible you can look at. You can be, that's the door where the axe is supposed to have fallen as one of them was trying to murder the other one, chasing him up to the tower while it was still being built.

So it lets you talk about the real history too, which is what I'm always looking for, especially from a ghost story, is whether you believe in the ghost or not, they almost always have something to that teach you about the real history, and that's a great example. They've also got the gargoyles that they're said to have been,

they were stone carvers. So that's how their feud is said to have started, is that one of them carved an unflattering likeness of the other one, of Reznikov, and that Diabolos carved himself laughing at him, just around the corner, the two gargoyles, sort of the two grotesques staring at each other right next to that door with that chunk missing from it.

So it's got stuff you can point to and show people and sort of draw them into accidentally then learning about the actual history of U of T and how the college burned down and had to be rebuilt and the original stonework and everything, which is, yeah, just a wonderful way to have a story be. Well, it's like a spoonful of sugar. It helps the medicine go down. So, you know, the fact you can actually go there,

like I could bike there right now and I can touch the door and I can feel and see, you know, the actual chunk missing from the ax. And then it's like, yeah, the story brings it home and you can educate them along the way. Yeah. You sneaky son of a gun. Well, I think Toronto has earned a reputation

for being a city that doesn't really value its history and hasn't taken a lot of importance from it. You talked to Jeremy about all those beautiful old buildings that have been demolished. But I think that's starting to change a bit. And in part, it's because we have all these great stories and that once people start learning a little bit about it, once they break through that first barrier

of assuming that all Canadian history is somehow boring and dry and they start realizing it's filled with these very entertaining, illuminating tales, then you start realizing, oh, everywhere you look, there are these fascinating stories and there's so much to learn and it's actually an enjoyable thing to do. It's not history, so often it's taught as dry lists

of dates and events and names, but that we have all these stories and all these historical figures with feuds and passions. And my other book's the Toronto Book of Love, which is. Can ask you, so tell us about the Toronto Book of Love. Yeah, it takes sort of the same approach as the Book of the Dead, but all stories about romance and heartbreak

and sort of talking about the history of the city and changing attitudes toward love here throughout its history. but all stories about romance and heartbreak and sort of talking about the history of the city and changing attitudes toward love here throughout its history. And you realize pretty quickly when you start doing this research that all these historical figures are human beings just like us.

They've got crushes, they've got jealousies, they have feuds with other people who are falling in love with the same people as them. People are getting their hearts broken and dumped and it's all filled with feelings and energy once you start looking at it. Okay, you gotta choose between the dead and the loved. Sometimes it's the same story, right?

So can you give us one story that you quite love from the Toronto Book of Love? I can do a story that's actually in both books, because there's one of, there are two, my two favorite stories ever, the story of the circus ride and the story of Robert Baldwin. Robert Baldwin shows up in both books, and he's actually really deeply related

to one of the things people usually use as an example of Canadian history's boring, we don't have a big revolution. Instead we have gradual evolution of democracy, we have responsible government, which sounds like the most boring thing ever. But in reality, responsible government is being championed by Robert Baldwin,

who's one of the weirdest Canadians of all time. This guy who grows up in Toronto as part of the first generation of settlers here. So after the town is founded on this indigenous land, he's one of the first kids born in the first few years. Grows up here, his dad's a big influential figure, big politician on the reform side, on the side of democratic reform,

we should have real democracy. The British governor, the British government shouldn't be able to just veto everything we want. That's the town he's growing up with, with that is his dad. He's gonna follow in his dad's footsteps. As a teenager, he's also an incredibly romantic young man who's falling in love all the time.

He's got crushes on all the girls in town constantly. He writes letters to his best friend who's moved out to Belleville about all of the latest crushes. His best friend, this guy, James Hunter Sampson, is also, we think, probably deeply in love with Robert Baldwin himself. Writes back that, like, no girl could ever love you

as much as I could. Robert Baldwin doesn't really seem to have noticed this, doesn't respond to it, and said he falls falls deeply in love more than he ever has before with Eliza, his first cousin. And even in the early 1800s, that level of incest was frowned upon. So it's a bit of a scandal. The family decides to try to break them up.

They send Eliza off to New York City, hoping that he's falling in love all the time, he's just gonna get a new crush. Seriously underestimating the appeal of forbidden love, and especially to someone like Robert Baldwin. So instead they're writing love letters back and forth, they arrange a time every month when they know the other one's thinking of them

at the same moment. Eventually the family realizes this is not working. They give up, let her move back. They have a quiet little wedding ceremony at the little wooden church on the same spot where St. James Cathedral stands today. They don't make a big deal of it. Poor James Hunter Sampson has to serve

as one of the groomsmen at this thing, his heart broken. He'll actually spend the rest of his short life drinking himself to death in an unhappy marriage as one of the most conservative politicians in the colony opposing everything Robert Baldwin believes in. Robert Baldwin, it's the happiest day of his life. He starts his new life with Eliza. They start having children. He starts his legal and political career. They have three kids and everything's happy.

Eliza writes about how like over the moon she is with her life. But also early 1800s giving birth is a dangerous ordeal. And the fourth time they have a kid, it goes wrong. She needs a cesarean section. The wound never heals and very slowly and painfully kills her I think over the course of a couple of years. Robert Baldwin spends the rest of his life

in suffering from bouts of depression. He's gonna be fighting these incredibly dangerous taxing battles over Canadian democracy. There are gonna be gunfights. The day we get responsible government, the Tories burn the parliament buildings down in Montreal in protest, attack his main ally, Louis-Pilipin, the Montreal version of him,

like fire weapons at his house. You can still see the bullet holes in the stonework there. And all the while, he's not able to sleep. He's plagued by nightmares for decades. He's falling asleep in Parliament because he can't fall asleep at night because of this memory of his wife he loves so much. On the anniversary of their wedding,

he wanders the streets of Toronto like a ghost, visiting all the landmarks of their relationship. He goes to St. James Church, he visits their old house on Front Street, and then works his way up to the hill next to where Casa Loma is now, Spadina House. Spadina House now, it's a city museum, you can go visit it for free.

But the original Spadina House before the current one was the Baldwin family's summer home. And he spent a lot of time there with Eliza. And her room is still there. So he arrives and it's untouched. He doesn't let anyone else go in since she died. It's just for him to remember her, left the way she left it on her last day there.

And then she's waiting for him there in the tomb, which is built in the side of that hill. Baldwin longs for death himself, eventually having won the battle for responsible government, making Canada basically a real democracy for the first time, retires from politics, dies not long after, gets laid to rest in that tomb, and then a couple of weeks later,

they find a note in the pocket of one of his jackets or vests, and it's filled with this list of his final requests. Some of them are very sweet, very touching. He wants to be buried with the love letters that they exchanged. He's always kept them in his pocket his whole life. Every time you see a portrait of Robert Baldwin,

you know the love letters from Eliza are there by his heart. He wants to be buried with a locket that she'd given as a gift. But then some of these requests are deeply, deeply weird. For one thing, he wants to be chained to Eliza's coffin, but his coffin and her coffin will be wrapped in chains so they'll know they'll be together for eternity. And even weirder than that,

he says this champion of Canadian democracy, the responsible government guy, says that he wants his corpse to be given the same kind of caesarian section incision that had killed his wife. And he's very clear that he wants this done even if they don't find this list until after he's been laid to rest. So a few weeks after Robert Baldwin gets put in that tomb,

a few family members have to head back down with a doctor and a scalpel, crack open his coffin, split open his corpse, shut it back shut, and wrap him in chains with Eliza. The tomb eventually gets moved from Spadina House. Today it's in St. James Cemetery, but still there right at the edge of the Don and Rosedale Valley, where you can stand above this tomb, knowing that the edge of the Don and Rosedale Valley where you can stand above of his tomb knowing that like the bones of Robert Baldwin

are down there chained to the bones of the woman he loved. Wow, that's a true shout out to Ridley Funeral Home right there. And you know what I like about the way you tell a story, and I'm about to actually, I have so many more topics. We're still getting to know you before I get more stories, but your substack, I want to shout it out, torontohistory.substack.com. Like when

you read a story, for example, the other day, actually we were driving, I was driving home from Montreal with my daughter and she was reading me Heartbreak on Humber Bay, A Deadly Night for the Junction, okay? What I like is that yes, you deliver the facts because that's what a good historian would do, but you don't lose any of the flavor. Like it's so, you paint such a pretty picture and tell such a great story. So kudos to you.

Wow. Thank you very much. Yeah. And this is, you know, they're real moments. These people lived these moments. They were, yeah, moments in that story. It's about nine guys getting capsized and drowning. It's a sunny side. It's a sunny side. Yeah, right, right.

Just out in the water south of High Park. They were in a little boat in the early days of motor boats, got caught in a storm and nine of the 10 guys, all of them from the junction at a time when the junction was its own independent town, hadn't been swallowed up by the city, like a pretty tightly knit community, lost nine young men, 1920 year olds,

all drowning in the bay. The next day they're finding bodies washing up on the shores of Humber Bay and floating in the water. A just unbelievable tragedy. That mostly has gotten forgotten. I just stumbled across it looking through old newspapers, but is filled with, like they've got interviews with the survivor who's talking about it

as this very visceral, emotional experience for him. Of course, this is gonna be the worst day of his life. So yeah, try to just let that appear on the page too, like translate that as well. It's a human tragedy, but you don't lose the humanity of it all. Like, so yeah, this is a part of Toronto's history that you might not know about, but you don't lose the humanity of it all. Like, so yeah, this is a part of Toronto's history that you might not know about, but you don't lose the humanity. Like we, you know, these are, like you

said, young men from the junction, uh, back in the day when the junction was not a part of, uh, you know, muddy York here. So heartbreak on Humber Bay. And it's like, you know, as you tell these stories, particularly when it comes to these locations and now it all makes sense. Cause you're right. Now I know where you kind of were raised and what part of the city and stuff, but these are, these are all places I bike by or bike through daily. Like I was at Ontario place earlier today and I was going,

you know, I went by Humber Bay by Sunnyside and I just love the way you tell a story. So people should subscribe to your substack, torontohistory.substack.com. Yeah, the Toronto History Weekly. I send it out when I can anyway every week and I've got usually one big story like that in there and then it's got heritage news and like links to whatever new stuff has appeared online that week and event

listings too. So you can hopefully have sort of a one stop shop for Toronto history stuff. Absolutely. love it. Now I would love to hear about, it's in your bio I'm reading about the Canadian documentary series. So what is that exactly? Canadian documentary series?

Yes, one of the wonderful opportunities that rose out of the history writing is a couple of incredibly talented filmmakers, Kyle Kuko and Ashley Brooke approached me years ago with the idea of sort of using that approach across the country. So we've now been lucky enough to get some funding. We did the first season out of our own pockets,

just places we could drive from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City. But we've now managed to travel all across the country, everywhere from Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia with the wild horses out there up to the Klondike, all over the country, just looking for the most incredible stories we can find. And they're incredibly talented editors and animators too.

So going and filming in these locations, I'm the host on screen and then they help bring the rest of the moments to life. We've got, yeah, a whole bunch of videos all up on YouTube, all totally free to watch. Our most recent episode actually just came out yesterday and is going gangbusters, our best first day ever, all about the grisly history of the Rideau Canal.

One of our favorite things is to find stories about something that seems very familiar, seems like a mundane part of life in Canada that actually has some bizarre story behind it, and the Rideau Canal is a great example. There's an FOTM friend of Toronto Mike's named Mitch Azaria who makes those slow docks, I call them slow docks, for TV Ontario, you'll often see them,

but there was one, riding, boating, what I can't remember, but you're, I guess you're riding the Rideau Canal, and kind of, you see the locking system and everything, and it's quite something. He's got a new one coming out, I think it's about the French River, which is like debuting this month, I think, on TVO,

but you just reminded me of that when you talked about the riverboat. Yeah, I absolutely watched that while writing the script for that episode. There you go, it's all coming together. So let me get this straight, you're literally traveling the country and you're collecting these stories

and then you're sharing it with these inspiring, interesting stories you're sharing with Canadians. Is that what you're doing here in this documentary series? Yeah, so we do a bunch of research, which is a lot of fun, dig into these stories. We've got lists of future episodes that are like hundreds long of stories we wanna do. And when we get enough time and money together,

we head out on the road. Last time was 2021, we still have all this footage to get through, travel all over the place, filming these episodes, then coming back. And then luckily I'm mostly done at that point and Kyle and Ashley get locked in their house doing the editing and animating that takes so long and then sharing them all online for free.

Well, Adam, I'm the connector here. I think we need to connect you three, all your team there with Minaris, okay? Here's what I'm thinking here, because Minaris has been sending Al Greggo around the country to collect inspiring stories from small business owners. And then he shares these stories in a podcast

series called Yes, We Are Open. So here's another gift. I have a few gifts for you, Adam. You've got your beer already. You got your measuring tape, but I have for you here, a wireless speaker. It's a Bluetooth speaker. And that's from Minaris.

And with that, you can listen to season six of Yes, We Are Open. These episodes are dropping now. Al's most recent stop was in beautiful Canmore, Alberta. And that's the home of Sarah and Joe Titus, and they own Going with the Grain. And for over 20 years, they've been installing and restoring hardwood floors in the Canmore area. So we learn about this husband and wife team, we learned about So we learn about this husband and wife team. We learned about how they became experts in their craft

and how they have encountered many struggles and persevered building their brand. So that's the kind of story you can hear in season six of Yes, We Are Open. And now you got a good speaker to listen to it with. Yeah, that's fantastic. You're all set up there. Okay, so we're gonna, again, Manera says the money.

So you need the money, you can tell the stories. We're gonna connect all these people. We're gonna make it all, listen, you stick with me. We're gonna go places here. Okay, so there's a thing, a wonderful thing called the Toronto Dreams Project. Adam, I need to know exactly what, this is right on my alley.

What is the Toronto Dreams Project? Yeah, that's the first Toronto history thing I ever did really, other than writing a little bit about music history. And it's how, yeah, it sort of ended up accidentally taking over my life. And you were talking a bit about all these places we know that have these stories tied to them.

And that's sort of how I got drawn in originally was I was working sort of crummy office job in the heart of the city, right in the oldest neighborhood of the city, right in the oldest neighborhood of the city, right around the St. Lawrence Market. So at lunch, I would head out into the oldest neighborhood, get lunch at the market, be surrounded by these old buildings, start reading plaques,

get pretty interested in it. And at the same time, I'd been writing some fictional stories, just incredibly short, just a couple of paragraphs, little weird, surrealist sort of short stories. And had always been interested in the idea of sort of leaving things in public places, you know, like street art kind of philosophy of things. And this is the same summer that Banksy came to Toronto

and he left a bunch of art around, including one on the Esplanade behind one of those restaurants there. Do you know where that is right now? You know, I see it in that RBC water park that feels, yeah. There are two that survived. So there's one that they took the wall down and moved it into, I think, the path.

Yeah, so that's the one at Queens Quay and like York and Queens Quay. That'll be the one. Okay, I see that. Okay, go ahead, sorry. There's one that's still in its original location. Okay. They protected it, it's behind plexiglass

on a little patio right at church and the esplanade. Okay, see you're dropping these fun facts. I love it, okay. So at lunch I went to go see it, like the day it popped up, since it was right there, just a couple of blocks from where I was working. And I loved it, I loved Banksy, but on my walk back to the office,

I was thinking it was a bit of a shame that he'd done it on this old historic Toronto building, but it had no connection to that particular place. The art he did in Toronto looked a lot like the stuff he'd done in Melbourne like two weeks earlier. There was nothing specifically Toronto about it. And on that walk back to the office, I just, all these things that were bouncing around in my head all coalesced. I had these weird little short stories that I

didn't know what to do with that were sort of dreamlike. I had this burgeoning interest in Toronto history from wandering around that neighborhood and I thought it would be neat to do something location specific, something that really reflected Toronto and the place where I lived. And so I had this idea, put them all together into what I call the Toronto Dreams Project, where I started writing these surrealist little short stories as dreams that historical figures may have had.

So dreams that would reflect their inner life, they're related to their true history. Like Joseph Bloor. I'm trying. Oh yeah, he's. I pick on him because I just like the one picture I ever see of Joseph Bloor. It is absolutely fantastic.

And yeah, good way into Toronto history, for sure. And so I wrote these little dreams that figures like he would have had. So like John Graves Simcoe, the founder of Toronto, his dream is imagining the city in the future, what to him in the late 1700s, the future would look like. Little stuff like that. And then I printed them on little cards

that I made for them. And the other side, I have a collage, a little artwork of stuff. And then I leave those cards in public places related to that person's real history. So like Simcoe, you could leave it at Fort York or on Simcoe Street or John Street that are named after him.

And just start doing more and more of those. I've left them all over Toronto. I've even traveled other places. I got to crowdfund trips to Europe and the UK and leave them in Toronto history related places across Europe and across England and Wales. And every card has a URL on it. So you can, if you find the card,

if you stumble across it or you follow me and you collect them, which a lot of people did when I was doing this more frequently, you can go to the website, look up the person and the dream and then learn about the real history. And so I started writing the real history

to link those cards to, and in time writing that real history got bigger and bigger. I had good reaction to it and sort of took over my life accidentally from there. And now that's why I spend like all day, every day doing. Wow, look at you. Beats that dead end job you had there in the core there.

Now you've got your creator of the Toronto Dreams Project. Amazing, actually amazing. Quick questions that these things pop in my head as we talk, but you mentioned the Spadina house. I remember going at the Spadina house, like as a school trip, we went to the Spadina house. But of course we all call the streets Spadina. So can as a school trip, we went to the Spadina House. But of course, we all call the streets Spadina. So can you please explain to me, is this a different,

just one is Spadina House and then the station, the subway station Spadina, like why do we pronounce those words differently? Yeah, I think just the two pronunciations diverged in the early days of Toronto. Spadina is sort of an anglicized version. It's inspired by, I think it's an Ashnabic word, ish-pe-dina, which means hill or like rise,

because the house is there at the hill in Spadina when you get up to the northern end by Davenport, heads up the hill next to Casa Loma. So I'm not sure how you pronounce it. If you know how your indigenous language is better than I do. thanks to Casa Loma. So I'm not sure how you pronounce it. If you know how your indigenous language is better than I do. But with that, when you, the way you say that word,

I would think we should be saying Spadina. Yeah, so I think in time, one of the two, and I suspect it's Spadina kind of evolved as sort of a mumblier less. You know, it's not too late. Like, don't you think we should all make a concerted effort and bring it back to Spadina? Well, it's not asking too much. It might reflect the history a little more. I mean,

if you're actually hit head to that intersection of Davenport and Spadina, one of my favorite Toronto projects is a project called, I think it's Omega Mikana project, which is a couple of first nations, critters who sort of do guerrilla history projects around the city restoring indigenous place names. One of the places they did was Spadina in Davenport, put that word, ishpadina on, like pasted it up over the word Spadina

and a word that means the old portage over Davenport, because Davenport is actually the oldest city streets in Toronto because it was a portage route long before the city was founded. This place you could travel between the dawn and the Humber along. So they stuck those up with their permission, guerrilla artwork, and then people loved it enough

that they've now been incorporated into the official city signs for that intersection. You'll notice above Davenport and above Spanina, it has these old indigenous names. So some people are helping to bring back that history. Okay, now last time I was in that neck of the woods, I was on my way to the concert hall, the Masonic Temple at 888 Young to see a concert.

And do you have any stories about 888 Young in the Masonic Temple? I mean, yes. I'm giving you some stuff maybe for future stories here. This is Mike makes requests of a future Adam Bunch stories, but do you have anything in the- I don't actually, other than the Masons being a big thing in Toronto, the Orange Order was even bigger than that.

And I was never lucky enough, I'd never got to see a show at the Masonic Temple. I had friends who did all the time. I was obviously going to a lot of music shows back in the days when I was writing about music, but always somehow missed it. You weren't at those early hip hop shows that DJ Ron Nelson was putting on there?

I thought I saw you there, but no, okay. I wish. You know, and why do we call it the concert? I know they call it, okay, it's the concert hall, but why can't we just call it the Masonic temple? Like why isn't that the, shouldn't we just call it the Masonic temple? Why are we calling it the concert hall?

I'm giving you, this is for you guys so much content you're going to create, Adam. You're going to need some stuff to work on here. Another thing is, so I mentioned, you know, Troy Birch was here and I told him it's from Birch to Bunch. That was my big joke. Not that funny as I hear it back in my headphones

here, but we were talking about the TFO OB, which is the Toronto, Toronto festival of beer because he's getting me tickets to, um, see Cypress Hill there. Okay. I want to see Cypress Hill there. I actually, uh, backstage at the band shell at the C and E grounds there, I got to chat up Chuck D once. It's one of my favourite episodes of Toronto Mike to Chuck D from public enemy. Wow. But you know, I bike there often and Scatting Cabin is there. So I have a question about Scatting. Like you must have in your arsenal there,

you must have some information or a story regarding Scatting Cabin. Sure, Scatting Cabin's, I think, the oldest building in Toronto that's still standing. Right. It's currently, yeah, on the exhibition grounds. It's sort of Toronto that's still standing. It's currently, yeah, on the exhibition grounds. It's sort of- It's right there.

Like if you're not far from the band shell, there it is, just sitting there. Right, literally in the shadow of the windmill that's like right, right next to it. And actually right next to another old, important historical site, there's a big obelisk there. There's a monument for Fort Houillet, which is a French fur trading fort

that stood on that spot in the 1700s trading. I was just a young man back then. I remember when that was erected. Okay, sorry. So by the way, I really listening to you like, less me, more you, you could just drop by maybe once a month and just fill my brain with these facts and these stories.

But please continue on Scadding Cabin there. There's a Scadding Cabin actually got moved to that spot. I think because it's a big public spot, people would see it during the fair, it's right next to Fort Wayne. Where was it, do you know? It was in the Don Valley. And that's the Simcos who founded Toronto

and were handing out this indigenous land to the settlers left and right. A big chunk of it went to Simcoe's sort of right-hand man, assistant guy, John Scadding, who's a guy from, who lived sort of on the Simcoe's country estate in Devon, a place I went and left some dreams actually for the Scadding's son, Henry, who grows up in England a bit,

but also, I think, in the cabin for part of his childhood. Tiny little wooden thing from the 1700s. Who goes on to become one of the central religious leaders in Toronto, but also one of its first historians, the first historian of sort of the modern city, as we know it, the town of York that became Toronto. You can actually still find one of his houses. There's a church I think he helped build,

which is right outside the Eden Center. If you're sort of out back of the Eden Center, there's this little church. Next to- I, cause I like to bike places and take photos. And this always strikes me that, oh, this church is just here. Like I know exactly that church you're talking about.

Like, it's like, we're gonna build Eden Center now, but I guess for some reason they cannot destroy or remove this church for some historical purpose. Or so we're gonna like kind of build it around it, and it's just nestled in there. Yeah, almost a courtyard. And it was a big fight. It's one of the buildings that very nearly

became a building you would have been talking about with Jeremy Hopkins the other week. Because originally when Edens wanted to build the Eden Center, it was gonna be an even bigger thing. There was gonna be like office towers as part of it. They were gonna demolish old city hall. They were gonna demolish the church.

They were gonna demolish the, I guess it's a rectory right next to the church where Henry Scadding lived and wrote about Toronto history. There was big public outcry. For a while they were gonna just save the church tower of old City Hall and demolish everything else. People still weren't happy with that. In the end, that plan kind of went away for a while

and came back as the Eden Centre of today. And when they came back with the plan this time, they had people like Jane Jacobs on board who cared more about Toronto's history than those older Eden's executives and managed to preserve, yeah, this little piece of Toronto history that's just sitting right out sort of the back entrance

of the Eden Center, couple hundred years after it was first built there. Wow. Wow, I'm just always curious about that. And so that is the oldest standing residential, any building in the whole city. Like that's number one. If you're looking at the oldest.

Yeah, the Scadding Cabin, the one at the X is. Yeah, the Scadding Cabin. I think the oldest surviving one from, I think it's 1794 or something. And Toronto was founded in 1793. So it's the very, very beginnings of the current city. You know, not very big, but still worth about $6 million in this current real estate market. So, uh, you know, you know,

what they call it? Charming. I think they'll say that's a charming, uh, charming cabin. Uh, location is everything, Adam. Okay. I'm going to let you know, uh, well, first I have a very important question. Do you enjoy Italian food? Of course you're Italian food. Of course. You never know. I always ask that and it's always yes, but one day I'm going to get a no and that person will not get the most delicious lasagna you can buy from a store. So Palma Pasta has sent over a frozen lasagna for you, Adam.

It's in my freezer right now. So this empty box will be full when we say goodbye today. You're gonna love it. You're gonna love it. So you're gonna have to review it for me too. Send me a note and just say, Mike, this lasagna was amazing or whatever. You know, I won't put words in your mouth. You're the love it. So you're gonna have to review it for me too. Send me a note and just say, Mike, this lasagna was amazing or whatever. You know, I won't put words in your mouth.

You're the great writer. So you're gonna get that just for your visit to Toronto, Mike. Well, that's wonderful. And yeah, Italian food also has like this really important role to play in Toronto history. But I think in a lot of ways the central story of Toronto is how we went from a place, and when I do this course at George Brown,

the first like 13 weeks of the 15 weeks, it's Toronto's incredibly British place. It's set up to be an incredibly British enclave. It wants to be a monoculture. For as far as the people who run the city are concerned, Simcoe actually sets it up so that you basically, if you wanna get married in Toronto for the first 50 years, you basically have to be Protestant,

basically have to be Anglican. He wants the Church of England. That's it for so much of its history, all the way up to the Second World War, even a few years after. And then suddenly between now and then, we become the multicultural Toronto we love now. And the story of how that happens, I think,

is one of the most fascinating and maybe the central story that Toronto has to tell the world. And a lot of it starts with people from other parts of Europe moving here after the Second World War, a lot of them Italians, bringing a lot of Italian traditions with them, bringing pizza, bringing lasagna,

bringing patios, which sort of revolutionizes Toronto. It's hard to imagine Toronto summers without patios, but just, I don't know, 70, 80 years ago, we didn't have them at all till places in little Italy and in Yorkville started opening with these European traditions that hadn't been a part of incredibly waspy, orange, Protestant Toronto

for more than a century before that. Well, they brought us lasagna for goodness sake. So for that alone, I will shout out Mr. Petrucci. And I'm trying to remember his name, Marcellus. I hope it's better to not say a name than say it wrong. Right? So Mr. Petrucci, that's the kind of honor we're going to bestow upon him.

He's the patriarch of palma pasta. A lot of peas in there. Don't pop them all. But he just turned a hundred years old. He's a hundred years old. That's that's what good Italian food does to you. A hundred years old. Well, that gives you that visceral connection to the city's history, obviously. Like my dad, who grew up in New Toronto when he was a kid, that's like he was a kid,

that's like he was born during the Great Depression now. He's right at the end of his life at the moment. So it feels especially nice to be here in the neighborhood he grew up in. That means he is, you know, when you've seen 80 something years of Toronto history, if you've seen a hundred years of Toronto history, that means you've seen a huge percentage of the time

since the city was founded. That these stories that feel very distant to us are actually just a couple of lifetimes, two and a half, three lifetimes ago, the people who were alive when, a hundred year old person is born, if you were a hundred then, then you were born in the very, very early days of Toronto. I know, great point here.

Do you have any history to share with me? I know I'm sure you have, this could be a whole episode unto itself, but you know, I reference new Toronto all the time on the show, not just cause I'm recording and live in new Toronto, but because people, when they come here, they say, Oh, I'm in MIMICO and then I'm like, no, you're not in MIMICO. Okay. The numbers start, you're out of MIMICO now, you know, go back to Dwight or whatever.

Uh, but what could you tell me? Like I been digging into it myself and it sounds like, oh yeah, like Goodyear was a big employer. And then the, they, this is like where the, the workers would live or I don't know, sometimes I read, if you go back further, like the exec, this was like cottage country here and this is like where executive cottages were, and that's what we're all living in. What's going on with New Toronto here?

Yeah, that I think it's a Goodyear plant is why my dad grew up here is that his parents, I think actually met working at the plant. His dad was in the kitchen, his mom was a factory worker, was making weapons during the Second World War too in Etobicoke and means that, yeah, I've grown up with some stories of New Toronto. The thing that really I think of,

and I was listening to you and Jeremy talk about, is it okay to call New Toronto Mimico and stuff? And my first reaction was absolutely not if you're from my dad's generation. If you grew up here. Well, it angers my generation, Adam. In the 40s and 50s. Blood's boiling over here.

Those would absolutely be fighting words that in those days especially. Well, they wanted to amalgamate, right? And it's like, I think New Toronto says like, no, screw that. Like we're not joining Mimico, those ass hats from Mimico, forget it. My dad talks about you don't wanna cross the line.

Like it's not entirely safe to be in Mimico as a kid from New Toronto in the 40s and 50s, that they each have their own gangs. And I started looking into this a bit, having heard these stories growing up, looked at old newspapers, and there are reports of little gang wars, all these teenagers with rocks and sticks

lining up at the border, hurling stuff at each other, the police dragging kids off because that distinction between New Toronto and Mimico, which is one that, yeah, most people in Toronto don't even realize exists. It's all one blob, right? Once they get dropped, like once you're down in this neck of the woods, it's all just one blob.

And I'm like, no, like, like, like there's actually, like there's Long Branch, there's New Toronto, there is Mimico. And then here's where I get a little There's new Toronto. There is Mimico. And then here's where I get a little confused myself. I used to think Mimico went all the way to the Humber River like on the waterfront here, but there's Humber Bay shores, right? Like, is this a new neighborhood distinct from Mimico?

I think it is. I think so too. Somebody told me this. Maybe it was Amber Morley, like the city councilor. But so I now I think it's like when you're crossing that Humber Bay bridge, that nice white bridge, which I biked over I now I think it's like when you're crossing that Humber Bay Bridge, that nice white bridge, which I biked over earlier today, by the way, when you're crossing

that, I think you got Humber Bay shores before you get to Mimico and then you get New Toronto, then Long Branch, and then you're in Mississauga. So very interesting though, these distinct Toronto is essentially just this network of neighborhoods, right? It's kind of kind of interesting that

way. It's like, where are you from? Like I'm from Mimico, I'm from New Toronto, I'm from Weston, whatever. It's just fascinating. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. And you know, where are you from? Like I'm from Mimico. I'm from new Toronto. I'm from West and whatever. It's just fascinating. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. And you know, your dad and I have a lot in common here. So a new Toronto route, though I only got here, but I will say, I didn't really know anything about this neck of the woods until about 11 years ago. So I'm sort of a

Johnny come lately, but catching up is what I'm doing here. Uh, should I mention, oh no, I didn't mention that was before the recording. I was talking about my kid's got a swimming lesson at Gus Ryder pool later tonight. And that's swimming coach. Well, okay. So that's where this goes is I find out, oh, Gus Ryder, he coached Marilyn Bell and your dad, apparently, and this guy named Cliff Lumsden. So Cliff Lumsden was a famous swimmer too. And Cliff Lumsden is the gentleman they named that park, the park where you get a great view of the skyline, which is like the

bottom of fifth at the Lake Ontario. That's Cliff, that's Cliff Lumsden Park. And he, he and Marilyn were a couple of the prized students being coached by Gus Ryder. And it sounds like your dad was being coached as well. Yeah, did not take to it quite as well as later. Never swam the Lake Ontario, no, not once. No, I don't think he ever tried. The only story I can actually remember him talking about the lake is finding right down there,

maybe even at the bottom of Fifth, a dead body floating in the water once, which is a very different kind of story. Where Gus Ryder was buried, no, Cliff Lumsden. I gotta confirm today, so Brad's coming in after. Was Gus Ryder buried at Ridley Funeral Home? I have to confirm that, but Cliff Lumsden absolutely was buried at Ridley Funeral Home,

and Marilyn Bell spoke at that service. You know what I mean? I did grow up with stories of dad sort of proudly tongue-in-cheekly because he knew he hadn't taken to swimming. Talking about the fact that, yeah, you had Gus Ryder, who was Marilyn Bell's coach, the first person in recorded history

to swim across Lake Ontario, fighting these big waves and cold weather and the lamprey eels that are trying to, you know, feed off her as she does the swim. And it brings us back to Sunnyside, where we were talking earlier about the heartbreak of Humber Bay, deadly night at the junction.

Through those same deadly waters. And again, Great Bay, Deadly Nights at the Junction. Deadly Waters. And again, Great Lakes, who collaborated with you in the past, their tremendous session IPA that only is available in the summertime and it's out now, is the Sunnyside IPA. So it's all coming back to Sunnyside there. Yeah, it's a place filled with history, but that's really true everywhere you look in Toronto.

We're surrounded by these stories all the time. All the time here. Okay, I have a little music because I want to ask you about the history of a particular now gone, a couple of now gone venues if you will, and a team that's got quite the history and I'm gonna gift you something something here but I did pull some old historical audio so let's listen to this no Toronto connection Had the fever and had it bad. Just to root for the hometown crew every few. Katie Blue. On a Saturday her young beau called to see if she'd like to go to see a show. But Miss Kate said, no, I'll tell you what you can do.

Take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the trowels. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. I don't care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for the home team. If they don't win it's a shame. For it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game. Adam, this audio's from 1908. Wow. Yeah, take me out to the ball game,

and I'm playing it because one of the gifts you're receiving today for making your Toronto mic debut is the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. That book is yours. I've been eyeing it ever since I walked in. It's all yours, man. Toronto baseball history is generally one of my central interests.

So this looks absolutely wonderful. Well, let's talk a little about that. So I am here to tell everybody that the home opener, the 2024 home opener is at Christie Pitts on May 12, 2 p.m. It's funny, because I used to tout, and this is still happening, that Rod Black was gonna be there and he's gonna grow his mustache for the occasion.

Rod Black was just in Milwaukee to witness his son's major league debut. Tyler Black had a base hit in his first two at bats, and Rod's one proud papa, and you can congratulate him in person on May 12. He's gonna be there But a lot of interesting people from Wendell Clark to Rick Emmett to Rick Vive to Stephen Brunt You know, I'm gonna be there Peter Gross is gonna be there Mark. Hebscher is gonna be there

We're gonna have a grand old-time Blair Packham is gonna be there. It's gonna be awesome Steve Paykin is gonna be there I could run down the list, but you should be there too. No ticket, of course You just come to Christie Pitts I think they're gonna start the ceremony at like a quarter to two to be there, I could run down the list, but you should be there too. No ticket, of course. You just come to Christie Pitts. I think they're gonna start the ceremony at like a quarter to two. You might wanna come around that time. And then we're gonna take in a ball game,

the best baseball in the city outside the dome. What can you tell us all, Adam, about Toronto Maple Leaf's baseball? Well, yeah, I think people think a lot of the time that the baseball history of Toronto starts and ends with the Blue Jays, but it's got this incredibly rich history that is deeply fascinating, both parallel to the Jays and long, long, long before Major League Baseball came here.

So the current Toronto Maple Leafs who play at Christie Pitts take their name from the even older Toronto Maple Leafs who play Christie Pitts, take their name from the even older Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club, which is older even than the hockey Maple Leafs. The hockey team actually kind of stole the name off our baseball. Is it too late for us to file some kind of a grievance or some lawsuit for like a lost, you know, money?

Is it too late for that? I guess I could ask that question of my lawyer, Lorne Honigman, but please continue. Yeah, never too late. Take it back. Rename the J's. Maybe that was the genius. Buy the team so you can file the lawsuits.

I get it now, Keith. Well done, my friend. Okay, back to the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. So for most of Toronto's baseball history, the Toronto Maple Leafs, were the big team. They were founded, their origins go back even to the 1880s, to Sunlight Park, the city's first baseball stadium that's a queen and broad view overlooking the Don Valley

where some incredible old players, Cannonball Crane, who's one of my favorites, who's the ace of the pitching staff and their best hitter, who, yeah, gets a chapter in the Toronto Book of the Dead, because he's got this fascinating story of being a hero in Toronto, hitting a walk-off home run. There's a doubleheader in the summer pennant race one year where they're fighting for first place.

They have a doubleheader on Saturday, because in Toronto, on Sunday, you're not allowed to play. That day is reserved for church. Thank you very much. I heard about this. Yeah, okay. So we always get Saturday double headers and this day they're playing Newark for first place.

Cannonball Crane comes out and pitches a complete game in the first game. They squeak by. In the second game, they've got another pitcher scheduled, but Cannonball Crane comes out unexpectedly and keeps pitching. And that game ends up going into extra innings. He gets the double that drives it into extra innings.

He keeps pitching. By the end of the day, he's pitched 20 innings that one afternoon and then hits a walk-off home run to win the whole thing. The crowd lifts him up on his shoulders. He's feted. They take first place and never look back. They start a 16 game winning streak that wins them

Toronto's first baseball championship. It makes Cannonball great. This is 18. Late 1800s. I don't know why this is the numbers. Okay, but that's okay. 1880s, 1887. That is an incredible story.

And it's just wild to me. Cause you know, I'm thinking of back in, when I was growing up loving baseball and, Oh, Dave Steve would throw a complete game and he'd throw like whatever, 150 pitch, whatever. And then I always think, Oh, today they're on the pitch count. Like this simply doesn't happen anymore. Right. But, but back then, this guy pitched both games of a double header. 20 innings and the walk off home run all in the same afternoon.

Wow. Ends up going to the majors from there. He helps leads the New York Giants to, I think back to back world series, world series appearances, like a precursor to the world series. Okay. And Al Spalding invites him on this tour of the world.

He's showing off baseball to the rest of the world as the American pastime, his own Chicago White Sox versus an All-Star team. And Cannonball Crane's supposed to be the ace of that All-Star team. But as they're waiting to board the ship in San Francisco, Cannonball Crane has what's said to be the first drink of his life,

and it turns out he really likes it. So he ends up spending the whole tour just getting drunk, usually on board the ship with a pet monkey, this troublemaking monkey he's been given, nearly gets him banned from France or not let into France during this tour, but it's incredible. You can see archival photos of them playing

in the shadow of the pyramids and climbing all over the Sphinx, they're at the Colosseum in Rome. Cannonball Crane, this Toronto baseball hero right in the heart of it. And one of the most famous, I guess the most famous probably story adjacent to the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team is when they played on the island.

So I guess, so, okay, so in the episode of Jeremy Hopkins, we talk about the Maple Leaf Stadium. That is where, you know, they built the tip top Taylor's building. Now it's called Stadium Road, actually. Bike by it today, did I mention that? But it's gone. I mean, I don't know, late six. I don't know when they,

in the seventies or something. Yeah. So it's gone before the blue Jays even show up this, uh, but I love looking at the photos of this old stadium. And every time I bring it up on the show, people will write me notes about, yeah, I used to go there as a kid or I used to sell programs there. And like, it's like, I love hearing from people and, uh, there's a great, great memories in the Larry Milsun episode of Toronto Miked because he used to catch games there all the time as a young

young boy but the most famous story I ever heard is the very first professional home run by some guy named George Herman Ruth you might know him as babe was hit on the island I guess he was playing for the Providence Grays and he hits this home run into Lake Ontario, uh, against the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. And, uh, we're still looking for that ball, I think, but that's like the Toronto baseball story that involves the Maple Leafs, I would think. Yeah. So their biggest stadium ever is the one that gets built in the 1920s.

The one you were talking about with Jeremy, the one people can still remember. My dad has stories of sneaking over the outfield wall to get in for free. It's Sparky Anderson, like all these cats like that are there, yeah. So that's like- When he becomes a manager is for the Leafs at Maple Leaf Stadium.

Right. Where Ty Cobb played his last professional exhibition game. Okay, so his last, so okay, it's an exhibition game, obviously, because we weren't in the majors, but his last professional game is at that old Maple Leaf Stadium. See, I don't think I knew that,

but now I'm never going to shut up about that fun fact. Thank you, Adam. That's a great one. But before that, before they moved to the mainland in the twenties, they're out on the Island. The roots go back to that cannonball crane team, the Toronto baseball club. They sort of evolve-ish into the Toronto Maple Leafs.

By the end of the 1800s, they're at least partly owned by this guy Lowell Solman, who also owns the Toronto Ferry Company. And his big thing is he wants to get people to go to the island so he can sell them ferry tickets and then have attractions out there so that then he can also sell them a ticket to the thing. So we get the Handlands Point amusement park out there

so he can sell tickets to that. He started as the manager of Handlin's Hotel right next to it. The family of Neil Handlin, the famous rower from the 1800s who his business partners with. And he takes the old lacrosse grounds and moves the Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Club out there so we can sell tickets to games and tickets on the ferry.

And that stadium eventually burns down. He builds a new one. That one burns down too. He builds an even bigger, fancier one. He's also such an entrepreneur that as his baseball stadium and amusement park are burning down, he's selling tickets to the ferry so people can go watch his stuff burn down and he can even make a profit off the flames. I think he's a suspect in the arson here. I would look into this guys, it's not too late. And it means that Alana Toronto's baseball history

happens out there by Hamlin's Point, right next to where the airport is now. It's where Babe Ruth, when he's in the minor leagues, which he's only in the minors very briefly playing for the Providence Grays, hits a home run that probably sailed out over right field over the roller coaster from the amusement park that went right around the stadium,

around the outfield walls, probably landed in the lake and maybe is still rotting away down there somewhere. And there are lots of amazing old, Toronto's had Napoleon Lajoine, who's like Ty Cobb's big rival. I know this name, of course. The only championship he ever won in his life was the Toronto Maple Leafs Championship.

He was the player manager in the later years of his career playing out there on the island, even though he had hydrophobia. So he was scared of the water that he had to cross on the ferry to go play those games out there. So you wouldn't know about a lot of Toronto's very richest baseball history from these Maple Leafs years

all happens out there on the other side of the harbor. And it's amazing that this, you know, that the name continues and that they're still playing, you know, professional semi-pro baseball at Christie Pits. And we got to get you, Adam, we gotta get you out to the home opener on May 12th. Christie Pitts, 2 p.m. What else you got going on?

Let's do it. Yeah, it is just one of the loveliest ways to spend the summer afternoon, sitting on that hillside watching baseball. They've been playing baseball on that exact spot for so long. It's got this rich history that Christie Pitts, right? It happens in a game that I think is baseball on that exact spot for so long. It's got this rich history, the Christie Pits, right? It happens in a game that I think is maybe on that,

in that same corner of the park even. So it is just, yeah, a wonderful way to spend a summer afternoon soaking in the park and the summer in Toronto and some pretty great baseball. Awesome. Now I have to pick up something that I should have picked up when we talked about your previous life as a music journalist because you did mention it very briefly and then I was asking about Pop Matters and Soundproof and then I got a little red umbrella

and I got to come back to it. You were a member of the jury for the Polaris Music Prize? Yeah, for a good number of years, which is, yeah, a wonderful experience. There are a huge number of music journalists from across Canada who are all part of it, who all, yeah, spend a big chunk of the year listening to just a ton of Canadian music,

chatting all about it, nominating stuff, debating back and forth, and all voting to narrow it down to that long list and short list, which was, yeah, a wonderful experience just to get exposed to so many great music writers from across the country and get to hear so, so much of it. And there's so much amazing Canadian music

being produced every year. There's a wonderful privilege to get to be part of that process. Amazing, yeah. You can keep your Juno, man. The Polaris Music Prize, that's where it's at if you're looking for the for the good stuff okay amazing quick shout out to recycle my electronics dot see egg because that's where you go Adam if you have a drawer

full of old electronics or maybe it's old cabling cables that you've been keeping for 20 30 years you know you don't throw that in the garbage because the chemicals end up in our landfill you go to recycle my electronics dot CA Put in your postal code and then hey, you should drop it off here and we'll properly recycle it So take note of that URL recycle my electronics dot CA Got that got that and while you're taking notes because I can see you got your notepad out you're taking notes there of that trusty pencil one more note for you is to subscribe to the advantaged investor podcast from Raymond James Canada hosted by Chris cook see I

once heard Rod Black call a game that featured Chris cook see son and I think Chris cook see son had If not a hat trick had a couple of goals that game like it was quite something He's a hell of a hockey player. But Chris Cooksey is also a hell of a podcast host and the advantage to investor podcast from Raymond James Canada is where Adam you can get tips and best practices and great advice from the experts, whether you manage your own financial investments or you have somebody who does it for you, you'll get a lot out of the advantage to investor podcast. All right. I want to ask you about something that's coming up very soon. So we're recording somebody who does it for you, you'll get a lot out of the Advantage Investor podcast. All right. I want to ask you about something that's coming up very soon. So we're recording on May 2nd and on May 6th through the 12th, the Festival of Bizarre Toronto History 2024 is taking place.

Adam Bunch, what the heck is the Festival of Bizarre Toronto History, and how can we be a part of this? Yeah, it's a festival that I've dreamed about doing for years, I'm so thrilled that actually finally exists. We did it for the first time last year, bringing it back for the second edition this year, which is basically just a week dedicated

to the strangest stories from the city's past. So Monday to Friday, every night we've got an online event over Zoom. So you can tune in live from wherever you are. They're all recorded. So if you can't make one, you can watch them later. And that means no pants required. Like I don't need to wear pants to attend.

Whatever you want. Your camera doesn't have to be on. We won't know anything. And every night we're talking about some particular topic with panels, interviews, lectures. The Friday night I'm gonna do a lecture about the grave robbers that were plaguing Toronto cemeteries in the 1800s.

We're gonna kick off with a night dedicated to strange and shocking murders on Monday night. We've got one talking about Henry Box Brown, a man who mailed himself out of slavery in the 1800s and then spent the final years of his life living in Toronto. He's buried at the Necropolis on your funeral home theme. And then on the weekend, on Saturday and Sunday,

we're gonna head out into the city itself for in-person walking tours. So there's gonna be four of them. We're doing one of, we're gonna head to the Necropolis ourselves and get a tour from Chantel Morris, a wonderful tour guide who does Toronto Cemetery tours. I love this stuff. Sometimes I'll just bike to a cemetery to see something that I read about or whatever. Like near me in this

neck of the woods, which is also not far from where you grew up, is Park Lawn Cemetery. And you know I've had Jeff Merrick on the program telling me about how he's the guy who was working at Parklawn and put the dirt on Harold Ballard's casket. Right? And I'll go check out Harold Ballard's, but very interested in this part of Toronto history and the cemeteries, et cetera, the graveyards. It was actually gonna be a tour of Parklawn by Chantel,

who's doing the Necropolis Cemetery for the Festival of Bizarre Toronto history. I've also been curating the walks portion of Doors Open, which is coming up at the end of May. Sean Talmoros is gonna lead a tour of Parklawn as part of Doors Open, so totally free to go to the weekend of Doors Open. You can explore some of that Parklawn history yourself.

And then after you check out the cemetery at Parklawn, you walk down rural York a little bit and you pop into Great Lakes brewery, get yourself a pint. You got to tie all these things together. Come on. I'm the connector. I told you we're going to do it. bizarretoronto.com is where people, you want more info because that's a lot of info. Like I mean, I'm now very, very curious and interested in all of this and I'm going to need to drink in the info about the Festival of Bizarre Toronto History 2024, May 6th at 12.

Bizarretoronto.com is where you can go to learn more. Yep, absolutely. Full schedule there, get your tickets, all the info all in that one place. I like the, you talked about the shadowy body snatchers who once stalked our graveyards. Wow, I gotta learn more about the shadowy body snatchers. But what were they doing?

Because people were buried with rings or something of value? Like what are they? No, they wanted the bodies themselves. So they're not just robbing the graves, they are snatching the bodies. So late 1800s, Toronto, I know it's shocking today to think there was a time when Toronto was booming and full of new people arriving all the time

and growing at an incredible rate. But there's lots of condos back then. That's what I wanna know. Well, the very first, I think, yeah, the very end of the 1800s, we got our first skyscraper, the temple building, a shocking 12 stories high. Very controversial. But there's so much of Toronto's history

is the story of growth. And one of the weirdest problems it's ever created is this problem in the 1800s that as the city grows, we're getting more schools opening, which is including medical schools, more and more medical students. And we end up having so many med students that we don't have enough dead bodies

for them to be learning. Kadavers, is that the term I'm looking for? That's it, we don't have enough cadavers. The med schools are running low. There's a big, big shortage. And there are laws at the time around like unclaimed bodies. If there's a John or Jane Doe who dies, then the body can go to the medical schools,

but there aren't enough of them. So there ends up being this black market for body snatchers, grave robbers, who are robbing graves sort of all across Southern Ontario and sending these corpses into Toronto. So you can see old newspaper reports of farmers running down Yonge Street, chasing after grave robbers

who have stolen their loved ones. There's a story about grave robbers digging bodies up out of a cemetery in Fergus, and then shipping a corpse into Union Station, someone showing up with a suspicious big trunk that smells weird and is like oozing stuff out of its seams. So that, you know, we've got this weird black market happening for dead bodies.

And in High Park, High Park used to be the country estate of the Howards, John and Jemima Howard. And as she was approaching the end of her life, she had cancer, he knew the end was coming, he started preparing their grave. And you can still find it there. In High Park today, it's right across from their old house, Colburn Lodge, just about a minute away.

You can see it. Big pile of huge stone cairn topped by a big cross surrounded by this iron fence that was built as this sort of fortress to protect their bodies against the body snatchers. Even paid, that fence used to stand outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London, England, one of the most famous churches in the world really.

He heard they were replacing the fence, so he paid out of his own pocket to save it, have it shipped all the way here. When the ship got caught in a storm and sank in the St. Lawrence, he spent like two years getting divers to pull the fence back up, all to preserve that bit of history,

but also to protect he and his wife from the grave robbers who were looking for dead bodies. The shadowy body snatchers stalking our grave. This has all been fascinating. How was it for you? Like, uh, I, I'm always curious when you're on your way here, did this go all right? Uh, did you want more gifts? Did I not give you enough stuff? How was this for you? Uh, it's wonderful. It's my favorite thing in the world is just talking about these stories and sharing some of the stuff I learned.

I learned them, you know, in my apartment, digging through archives online and stuff. So just getting to share those stories with other people is yeah, the great joy of my life. I love it. Like recently they sold this in, but it was known for being like a, this is in New Toronto on Lakeshore,

but it was known for being like a swingers. So you, the swingers, I guess there's a bar on the bottom floor and then you go up to the rooms and do your swinging business or whatever. So it was quite something. And then I learned about that, how that was tied to this new Toronto murder and the guy who owned it was murdered and there's this wild history

surrounding that in, which is now like a hotel. It's like a fancy hotel or something. It's no longer a swing or inn. So I'm sorry to disappoint all the FOTMs listening, but just what you can uncover by pulling at the threads of these old stories. That's it. They're all over the place all the time.

And once you start looking, you just get sucked in. And it's been, yeah, I guess 14 years of my life has just been falling down one big rabbit hole that started just like that. Cut from the same cloth. Now, before I play some lowest of the low and play us out, you've been awesome, I love this, but is there one more story, because like I said, I could listen to you tell stories for hours here.

One more story, maybe on your way here, you were thinking, oh, I hope I get to tell the story or you're prepared to tell the story. Just one more Toronto story as you're prepared to tell the story. Just one more Toronto stories you think the listenership would enjoy. Well, there was, I mentioned earlier that Robert Baldwin was one of my two favorite Toronto history stories.

My other favorite is the story of the circus riot, which is one of the stories that's so unbelievable. It's literally hard to believe that it's true. It comes from Toronto in the 1850s, in the summer of 1855. So it's a time when Toronto's now 60 years since it was founded. And it's still in a lot of ways a frontier town. So it's growing, the first railroad has just been built,

the very first photos of the city get taken the very next year, so you can see what it looks like. That it's this growing place, construction is already, you can see it in the first photos of Toronto ever, that's just scaffolding everywhere. But it's also still a place of muddy streets, wooden sidewalks, and it's a very hard drinking place. There are more taverns than streets in Toronto at the time.

And countless brothels too. We can't even know exactly how many, but there seem to have been dozens of them. And the story of the circus ride actually starts at one of those brothels around King and John. So like where the Tiff light box is now. Of course. Mary Ann Armstrong's place.

It happens in July, 1855 that there's this big visiting American circus in town. They're gonna do two shows on Thursday, two shows on Friday, big attraction, you're 150 years or whatever before Netflix, there's not that much to do. So everyone heads down to the circus. And then at the end of the night,

some of the circus clowns decide to head out onto the town. This is the days when circuses were pretty salacious places. Like there are these traveling communities that literally live on the edge of a society and then move before they can get in trouble for anything. So they're like hard drinking, gambling, sex work involved places. So the clowns, when they head out into Toronto

to enjoy the city, head to Marianne Armstrong's brothel. And while they're there, they get into a fight. There's some local firefighters at the brothel that night too. The Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company. These are the days when firefighters also have an incredibly notorious reputation. This is the days before a big central public fire department.

Fire brigades all over the place, in cities all over the place, are known to rush to fires. And then if two brigades arrive at the same, in cities all over the place, are known to rush to fires, and then if two brigades arrive at the same time, end up getting into physical fights over who gets to put the fire out, so who gets to get paid for putting the fire out. In Toronto, just a couple of weeks

before this night at the brothel, there's a thing called the Fireman's Riot, where the Hook and Ladders, I think, this literal same fire brigade, has been called to a fire on Church Street right downtown and instead of putting out the fire, they start looting the buildings that are on fire. And when the police show up,

the firefighters attack the police and start beating them up. So these are very notorious, hard-nosed firefighters meeting these very hard-nosed clowns, circuses, these very notorious places, also are notorious for violence. An old lion tamer said, you barely ever have a performance that didn't end in some sort of battle with the locals. So these clowns and firefighters,

both battle hardened crews, we don't know exactly how the fight started. Some people say maybe a clown knocked a hat off a firefighter's head. Others say they cut in line in front of them. What we do know is that the clowns end up winning that night. They beat the firefighters.

One of the firefighters. That's wild. Gets pretty seriously injured. They have to retreat. The clowns get to enjoy the brothel and peace for the rest of that night. But they have picked the wrong fight with the wrong guys on the wrong night of the year.

Because the firefighters are all members of the Orange Order. And it's something people don't realize, unless they're of a certain age, is that even not that long ago, the Orange Order ruled Toronto. For 120 years, the Orange Order was the single most powerful force in the city. Like the stone cutters on the Simpsons.

They operate a lot like the Masons. So when you talk about the Masonic Temple, I think about the Masons, I think about in Toronto, the Orange Order was even more powerful. The water buffaloes on the Flintstones. Okay, I'll give you a little bit. Very similar. Founded in Northern Ireland to be incredibly Protestant,

incredibly anti-Catholic. They're the Orange Order in honor of William of Orange, the Protestant King who invaded in the 1600s. The Orange Order is still a huge thing in Northern Ireland today. They're deeply associated with the Troubles, ties to the Protestant paramilitaries who are fighting against the IRA with the Troubles, ties to the Protestant paramilitaries who are fighting against the IRA in the Troubles

in the 60s and 70s and 80s and into the 90s. And Toronto in the 1800s is an incredibly Irish place, incredibly Irish and incredibly Protestant. So we've got lots of Irish Catholics who have come over during the famine and the great hunger and stuff, but we're still also overwhelmingly Protestant. And if you're Irish and Protestant,

you probably still wanna live within the British Empire, so you come to the Canadian colonies. So all the Canadian colonies are incredibly Irish Protestant in a lot of ways, Toronto especially, and they bring the Orange Order with them. So at one point, there are more Orange Lodges in the Canadian colonies than in all of Northern Ireland

put together, and Toronto is the most Irish city of all of those, sorry, the most orange city of all of those, the most Irish city on the continent, more Irish born people living in Toronto in the late 1800s than were living in Boston or New York even. And it means a lot of Northern Ireland's problems get imported into Toronto.

And all through the late 1800s, we have dozens of riots between the Orange Order and various other factions, usually Irish Catholics. It ends up with the St. Patrick's Day parade, doesn't happen for 120 years, it's not brought back to the 1980s because it seemed to be too dangerous. And the biggest day on the orange calendar

is July the 12th. It still is big day, big parades, marching through the streets with banners with William of Orange on them. A very dangerous day in cities like Belfast. And back in the day, a very dangerous day in cities like Toronto too. We had a huge orange order parade.

It still exists. You stumble across it on July 12th, maybe, but it used to be tens of thousands of people would go out. Thousands of people were in it. The mayor was always in it. Every mayor of Toronto for 120 years, except for one, was a member of the Orange Order. From the 1830s until the 1950s,

every mayor except one was in the Orange Order. That's the amount of power they had. To get any sort of public job, you almost had to be a member of the Orange Order, very, very hard if you're Catholic, to be a civil servant. The head of the TTC's in this parade, the police chief, the fire chief.

And this is why those firefighters, even though they just beat up those police officers, are still walking around free, is because they're all in the orange order and the police officers are all in the orange order. So when it comes time to press charges, to have trials, all the police suddenly can't remember the faces or names of any of the firefighters who beat them up.

So the firefighters are connected to this network that runs Toronto. And they just got beat up by these clowns visiting from the States on the night of July the 12th. The worst possible night to do it. There's been the big parade, the Orange Order's all whipped up. So in the morning, Toronto's young men

from the Orange Order all show up at the circus, and this mob attacks the circus down at the fair green, like front in Berkeley, where they're building an Ontario line station out right next to the distillery, and drive the circus out of town. They're pulling down tents, they're setting fire to them, they're circus performers fleeing into the lake,

trying to take shelter under the waves. The police show up, but they're all Orange Order members, and they're deeply corrupt, more used to joining riots than putting them down. So they do nothing, just save them from burning the cages of the animals. The mayor eventually has to come down and even though he's in the Orange Order,

he doesn't want this level of violence happening in his city, eventually has to call in the militia to put the whole thing down. Huge scandal, big inquiry into it. And in the next few years, there's scandal after scandal with the Orange Order and with the corrupt police chief eventually ends with every single police officer in Toronto being fired.

And they start the entire Toronto police service over from scratch. But it's also still incredibly Orange City. So a lot of the police officers get rehired It still stays a very orange force for a very long time to come. That's not to the 1950s really the things finally start to change So it is that kind of story that I love finding where you get this weird little story at the center of something that's actually Connected to this huge forces in the city's history that you might not even realize existed a generation ago

Fantastic story and I know you love telling that story, I can tell and that's what makes the story even better. So your enthusiasm, it's contagious, it's like I feel like tip of the iceberg stuff but you know you've left us with a lot of places where we could hear more from you but this can't be your last Toronto Miked episode You're going to have to come back at some point because we're just warming up here. Well, I'll be happy to do it. It was a lot of fun. And I knew Toronto, very Irish. My family, actually, is of Irish descent, came over. And I can tell you, of course we're Irish because the Irish Rovers are from Toronto. The band. Like the Irish Rovers were a Toronto thing.

And I always grew up thinking that Irish Rovers are out of Dublin or something. But no, they're Toronto band. Incredibly Irish place. Incredibly Irish place. Woo. Can have to have a cold shower after that one. Some great stories. Loved it.

I, is it bad for me to tell you I was rooting for the clowns I was rooting for the clowns. I just want everybody to know that so everybody several things to do here before I read the intro You can subscribe to that sub stack of Adams at the Toronto history dot sub stack comm You can find out more about the festival of bizarre Toronto history. That's running me six to twelve that's coming up Toronto history that's running May 6 to 12 that's coming up. May 12, what else is happening that day? May 6 to 12 that's at you go to bizarretoronto.com anywhere else you want people to go Mr. Bunch. Well you can watch the Canadian documentary series on YouTube just search Canadian. Shout out to Robert Baldwin and that brings us to the end of our 1480th show. 1480. You can follow me on Twitter and Blue Sky. I'm at Toronto Mike. I'm all over the place at Toronto Mike, but I, you know, Twitter and Blue Sky are two places you can find out what's going on over here. Much love to all

who made this possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, don't leave without your lasagna, Adam, RecycleMyElectronics.ca, Raymond James Canada, the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, Minaris, and Ridley Funeral Home. Somebody phoned during that episode. I think it might have been Brad at Ridley Funeral Home. I got to check my messages. See you all tomorrow when the CBC's Simon Dingley drops by for his exit interview. He was there for decades and he came by to tell me all about his career and why he's retiring. You'll hear from Simon tomorrow and yes I opened this conversation by playing the theme

song from Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings. So shout out to TVO. See you all then. I know it's true, how about you? They're picking up trash and they're putting down roads And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes And I'll play this guitar just the best that I can Maybe I'm not and maybe I am