109 Niagara Street

A cultural institution apparently

I was stopped dead today when Tom Flood posted this picture to BlueSky, because it’s also where I spent a chunk of my 20s.

In 1986, just at the end of the Vancouver Expo ‘86, Bill Vander Zalm was elected Premier of British Columbia. I could recount his political history, but will suffice to say that he had a castle, built in downtown Vancouver, barged to his theme park Fantasy Gardens, and then moved into it.

In any event, it was a good time for my wife Victoria and I to leave BC, packing up our Kawai grand piano and a mountain of records, to drive a 5 ton Ryder rental truck across Canada to Toronto.

I don’t recall how we wound up renting at 109 Niagara, but I do remember that our landlord worked in film, and was the then boyfriend of Megan Follows, aka Anne of Green Gables on CBC TV.

The building (according to Tom) was former coffin factory. We were on the second floor, at the back, over top of a film special effects workshop. The first time we visited them there were all manner of bloody body parts lying around.

We had big living room, and office, bedroom, a bath with a giant clawfoot bathtub, and great kitchen. Out the windows we overlooked the pig slaughterhouse across the street, where Victoria once recorded a tour for a radio documentary that aired on CBC Radio.

I can tell you that the over-night shift lunch breaks were pretty strange, with guys who killed pigs in the middle of the night coming out to their cars to eat sandwiches, listen to music, and drink beer.

Behind our building, on Bathurst Street, was what used to be a car battery manufacturing plant. It’s now, I think, a pre-school of some sort. At that time though it was the source of intense lead pollution. Eventually everyone within a few block radius was tested for lead levels, and all of the gardens and topsoil in the neighbourhood was dug up and replaced.

It as, and perhaps still is, a building full of musicians, artists, graphics people, and writers. The kind of place that every big city has, although with all of the redevelopment in recent decades, probably less than used to be the case.

And I’m pretty certain that the building wasn’t even remotely zoned for “Residential”, and that most of the improvements and upgrades were equally unapproved by the City. Those things are what keep the rents low, which was a good thing.

The other thing that I remember distinctly was my absolute favourite bit of graffiti, on a cinder block wall up Niagara Street, near King Street. It read:

Shetland Ponies Have Earlobes

And, I recall, this was where I first heard The Pogues, beginning a life-long love of their music. I even saw them, bizarrely, at Canada’s Wonderland. Mojo Nixon opened for them.