It’s been more than 40 years since comedy writer Mel Brooks first conceived of the idea for what would become The Producers, the $10-million musical that opened December 11, 2003 at Toronto’s Canon Theatre, courtesy of real-life theatre producers Ed and David Mirvish. In town for the opening, Brooks appeared on stage at the show’s…
Tag: toronto
A sensational Toronto murder from 1894
by •
Eighteen-year-old Frank Westwood had gone out with friends about 7.30 that Saturday evening, October 6, 1894. By the time he returned to his family’s Jameson Avenue mansion about 10:30, his father, sister and brother had already retired upstairs; his mother, seeing he was safely in, shortly went up, too, leaving him on the stairs. The…
Profile: Honest Ed Mirvish (2001)
by •
If this year is anything like previous years, the sun will be shining when “Honest” Ed Mirvish, Toronto’s legendary salesman and theatre impresario, hosts a mammoth street party on Sunday July 22 in celebration of his 87th birthday, offering free refreshments and entertainment to as many as 60,000 people over a seven-hour period. The party…
An encounter with David Cronenberg
by •
Twenty years ago this summer (i.e., the summer of 1974) this reporter was a 20-year-old film student at York University, who had been lucky enough to find some meager employment as a pre-production assistant for a $180,000-budget feature film being shot in Montreal. The working title was Orgy of the Blood Parasites, the director was…
A sketch of artist Gerald Gladstone
by •
Humanity’s future: will it be “earthbound” or “spacebound”? My uncle, the artist Gerald Gladstone, posed this question to me recently outside Yorkdale shopping centre in North York. We were standing in the parking lot near The Bay, beside one of his major works, a bronze colossus called Universal Man, which was installed there in late…
Crossing the Yellow Line into Murder-Mystery Territory
by •
Toronto lawyer and writer Robert Rotenberg has produced a credible “police procedural” murder mystery called Old City Hall that is set in Toronto and features the famous building of the title — now home to an array of criminal courtrooms — as an iconic centrepiece of the story. Rotenberg’s debut novel focuses on Kevin Brace,…
Obit: nursing sister Dorothy Ann Macham (1910-2002)
by •
Dorothy Macham, a former army nurse who received an Associate Royal Red Cross medal from King George VI and headed Women’s College Hospital for three decades, died in Toronto in July, one week shy of her 92nd birthday. Ms. Macham had several years of operating room experience when she joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps…
Profile: folk artist Mayer Kirshenblatt (1916–2009)
by •
For most of his adult life North York resident Mayer Kirshenblatt’s hobby was sailing and taking camping trips into the bush. But at his family’s repeated urging, the retired paint-and-wallpaper merchant took up the painter’s easel about 1990 to record on canvas the many colorful scenes he remembered from his boyhood in Poland. Kirshenblatt was…
Obit: Eddie Goodman, lawyer, political power broker (1918-2006)
by •
Eddie (Edwin) Goodman, a prominent lawyer, decorated war veteran, philanthropist and political power broker, died in Toronto from Alzheimer’s and heart disease on August 23, 2006. He was 87 years old. Head of a large law firm employing nearly 200 lawyers, Goodman was a lifelong Conservative who befriended Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and was a…
Profile: Rose Friedman at 100
by •
Torontonian Rose Friedman, who arrived in Canada from the Russian province of “White Russia” (Belarus) in 1908, celebrated her 100th birthday at two parties in mid-July (2005), one at the home of a granddaughter and the other at the Apotex Centre where she is a resident. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Ontario Premier Dalton…
