Courtyard House

Rear of 2087 Davenport Rd., #JNC

Built: 2007.

What’s the draw?: It’s a warehouse that’s been converted into a courtyard-style home-studio space.

Don’t miss: The annual exhibition at this private residence, where owners transform their home into a showcase for artists.

Harris Institute

118 Sherbourne St., #SLM

Built: 1907

What’s the draw?: A 100-year-old industrial building that’s been converted into a music-business school.

Don’t miss: Tours offering historical talks and even the opportunity to watch live recording sessions.

Leaside Lawn Bowling Club

190 Hanna Rd., #LEA

Built: 1953.

What’s the draw?: A surviving slice of postwar suburban outdoor recreation, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Don’t miss: The opportunity to try your lawn bowling skills alongside veteran bowlers.

Robert McCausland Limited

30 Chauncey Ave., ETO

Built: 1962.

What’s the draw?: An active suburban stained glass design/manufacturing business.

Don’t miss: Learning how the oldest stained glass company in the Western Hemisphere (established 1856) designs and produces its works in over 450 shades.

St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church

115 Bond St., #CHS

Built: 1897.

What’s the draw?: One of the most ornate church interiors in the city.

Don’t miss: Originally a synagogue, it features Byzantine-styled iconographic walls painted by a pair of monks from Greece.

Doors Open Toronto runs May 25–26 at various locations around the city. For details, see toronto.ca/doorsopen/2013.

The stories below are ranked in accordance with this sliding scale:

1. Who: Anthony Orazietti

Where: City Hall

What happened: “I was stuck in an elevator with a complete stranger for about 15 minutes. We were close to the main floor, so I didn’t fear for my life. We had to use the call button that’s linked directly to the fire station, which generated a police report, in which they mentioned ‘two women were stuck in an elevator at City Hall Thursday morning.’ Since then, when calling for help, I use the deepest voice possible.”

2. Who: Mark

Where: CN Tower

What happened: “I used to work at the CN Tower in the ’90s, and the main elevators would get stuck every so often. I didn’t feel unsafe when that happened; there are eight cables on them, and each one can hold the weight of the elevator. It is still a bit unnerving. Seeing outside is a big help, though—the view is nice up there. The best was being stuck with the dessert cart on a service run up to the restaurant. The pastries were quite tasty.”

3. Who: Sarah

Where: DNA Condos, King West

What happened: “During university, I got stuck on the elevator in my building with four drunk twentysomething women who thought it would be funny to start jumping up and down while the elevator was moving. At first, I was annoyed and disgusted, but that quickly turned to complete claustrophobia. When the fire department arrived 30 minutes later, the women all wanted photos taken of themselves with the firemen to post on Facebook.”

4. Who: Anand Rajaram

Where: Etobicoke

What happened: “When I was about six and my older brother was nine, we were in our apartment elevator in Etobicoke heading down for school. He said that we would feel anti-gravity if we jumped when we were going down, so we both did, a few times. Clank, bonk, stop. We were in there for I don’t know how long—it felt like half a day. I remember just sitting there and him panicking and saying we need to take small sips of air because we were going to die. He was freaking quite a bit.”

5. Who: Jozes Bielski

Where: Ridelle Ave.

What happened: “I was in high school. The elevator in question was in the building where I grew up. It got stuck. And I had to pee really bad! It sucked and I peed in the elevator. And then I was stuck in an elevator that smelled like pee. I’m glad I didn’t have to poop. I think I was only stuck for about 10 minutes before the elevator started back up on its own.”

6. Who: V.M.

Where: Sick Kids Hospital

What happened: “I was doing a workshop with a bunch of exchange students, but none of us knew each other. We get about two floors up and it just stops. It was the middle of August, the elevator was not really air-conditioned, there were 12 of us in it, and it was maybe built for 14 people. So we’re packed, and it’s boiling and we’re all sweating. It took two and a half hours. We spent basically the whole time paring down clothing, pouring sweat. It was so gross. When they finally opened the door, it was refreshingly cool.”

Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? How did your experience compare to the ones above? Share your story in the comments section below.

There were few sports John Francis Scholes tackled that he didn’t master. The Irish-born, Toronto-reared athlete racked up championship titles in boxing, rowing, and snowshoeing during the Victorian era. His first trophy, earned during a 220-yard hurdle race in 1869, was proudly displayed in the Yonge Street hotel that eventually bore his family’s name.

Illustration of John Francis Scholes,
as it appeared in the March 25, 1871 edition of the Canadian Illustrated News.

Scholes entered the hospitality business around 1880, opening a bar and hotel at 185 Yonge St. He moved his business a few doors north to 203 Yonge St. in the late 1890s, christening it the Athlete Hotel. Scholes used it as a base to mentor local athletes, including his sons John (who inherited his amateur boxing skills) and Lou (a champion rower). Scholes’ tough nature carried him through to his end—when doctors indicated a stomach ailment was terminal, he insisted on dying at the Athlete Hotel, where he entertained friends and former competitors.

The Scholes Hotel, circa 1945. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 537.

Following Scholes’ death in March 1918, the hotel stayed in family hands and adopted their name. Ads for the Scholes’ Hotel offered typical hospitality promises—“good food, cleanliness, and efficient service.” Less impressed were provincial liquor officials, who suspended the hotel’s booze license in May 1946 for overcrowding and the heinous crime of permitting unaccompanied men to enter the women’s beverage room. (At this time, men and women legally drank in separate rooms.)

The business was sold in 1947 to Goody and Harvey Lichtenberg, who renamed it the Colonial Tavern. They secured the second cocktail lounge licence along Yonge Street (after the Silver Rail) and began booking jazz acts. Their first performer showed their enlightened attitude: pianist Cy McLean, who had led the first all-black jazz band in Ontario.

Disaster struck on September 27, 1948. Around 8:10 p.m., a refrigerator explosion blew out a wall and sent four men to hospital. “I just remember reaching for my beer when I went sailing across the table top and toward the bar,” patron Douglas Wilson told the Star. “A seven-foot paneled door landed right beside me.” Refrigeration at the Colonial was cursed: Faulty wiring led to a fire on July 24, 1960 that required a year-long reconstruction effort.

Amid these disasters, the Colonial became one of Toronto’s finest jazz joints. Headliners spanned the jazz spectrum, including Chet Baker, Sidney Bechet, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, and Sarah Vaughan. Not all patrons found the surroundings enticing. “Nobody ever called it an ideal place to hear music,” Robert Fulford grumbled in the Star in 1987. “The ceiling was low, the food bad, the waitresses surly, the patrons sometimes loudly drunk. The room was a tunnel-like hall with a square bulge in the middle. If you sat in front of the bandstand the musicians seemed too loud; if you sat to left or right of them you had the sense of over-hearing rather than hearing the music. There were no good tables at the Colonial, only less bad tables.” Yet Fulford admitted that because of the quality of the music, “none of this mattered.”

The Colonial benefitted from the Yonge Street Mall pedestrian-zone experiment of the early 1970s. Goody Lichtenberg was stunned at how packed his new patio was when Yonge was closed off in May 1971. “If I don’t look excited,” he told the Star, “it’s only because I’m dead beat.” Demand forced Lichtenberg to gather food from another restaurant. Within a week, he hired 20 part-time employees and found they weren’t enough.

Inside, the entertainment line-up changed through the 1970s. Jazz performers faded as the upstairs room gradually converted into a discotheque. A basement venue—whose names ranged from the unfortunate Meet Market to the Colonial Underground—aimed for a younger crowd through local acts like Rough Trade and the Viletones. Upstairs and downstairs didn’t always mix—when bluesman Long John Baldry sent staff downstairs to tell the Diodes to turn it down so that he could play an acoustic set, bouncers charged at the punks with pool cues.

After the Lichtenbergs sold the venue in the late 1970s, the Colonial descended into the general sleaziness of Yonge Street during that era. Ads for the “Bump and Grind Revue” in 1978 promised a combination of rock bands and “exotic Black Bottom serving maidens.” The venue’s strip-club phase ran into trouble when a dancer was convicted for public nudity. City regulations enforcing g-strings were blamed for chipping away at business. Several attempts were made to return to jazz programming, but none took.

In 1982, the City purchased the property. It intended to use it as a connecting link between Massey Hall and the Elgin and Winter Garden theatres to create a mini-Lincoln Center-style entertainment complex. Despite protests from the local jazz community, City Council approved plans to demolish the Colonial in 1987 and replace it with a parkette.

The Colonial Tavern, post-demolition, 1987.
Photo: Ellis Wiley/City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 124, File 3, Item 152.

The following year, the Star’s Christopher Hume laughed at the notion the tiny park would improve its stretch of Yonge Street, viewing it as a hole in the streetscape. “This is one of the few stretches of Yonge where there are significant numbers of historical buildings left,” Hume observed. “It doesn’t make sense to mess it up for the sake of creating an ‘open’ space hardly anyone will use.”

Bracketed by the ghosts of the old banks surrounding it, the former site of the Colonial awaits its next incarnation as part of the Massey Tower condo development.

Additional material from Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk and Beyond 1977-1981 by Liz Worth (Montreal: Bongo Beat, 2010), the January 11, 1937, October 25, 1940, and July 13, 1978 editions of the Globe and Mail, and the March 5, 1918, May 6, 1946, September 28, 1948, July 25, 1960, June 10, 1961, May 31, 1971, February 20, 1979, April 3, 1987, May 9, 1987, and September 24, 1988 editions of the Toronto Star.

The latest addition to the western edge of Dundas’ retail scene is Blue Button Shop. Despite owner Brian Cheuk’s inexperience in the industry, he has managed to assemble an extensive collection of over 30 highly coveted men’s and women’s Japanese brands, many not available anywhere else in Canada, including Haversack, Minotaur, Digawel, Momotaro, The Superior Labor, Decho, Sunny Sports, Evam Eva, Mizuiro Ind, and Still by Hand.

How he got started: Despite the scale of the undertaking, Cheuk’s decision to open his shop was rather spontaneous. “I have no background in retail,” he says. “But I’ve always wanted to open up a store and last year I thought, ‘Well, I’m not getting any younger….’ So I opened up a store.”

Cheuk’s lack of formal fashion-retail experience is offset by his extensive knowledge as a consumer, something that’s allowed him to identify an underserved niche in Toronto’s retail environment. “I find there are some stores that carry Japanese stuff,” he says. “But, at the same time, my stuff is more mature and less streetwear. I’m trying [to attract customers in their] late 20s to 40s or even older, so maybe there’s a market for that. I don’t want to have an age limit—you can still look cool whatever age you are.”

As a long-time fan of Japanese fashion, Cheuk took what might be considered a rather naive approach to acquiring his brands. “I’ve always liked this kind of style—I read Free & Easy and magazines like that religiously,” he says. “And I always look at Japanese websites. I went to to this one called Knocked Out and I really liked the brands they carry, so I decided to contact each brand by email and see who would get back to me. I said, ‘Hey, I really like your brand, I have some of your stuff, would you sell to me?’ and 80 per cent replied back to me saying, ‘Sure, come to Japan, and we’ll talk.’ The trip was planned before I even had the idea of the store—it was a family trip—so last month I went to Tokyo and to Osaka. I spent one day in Tokyo meeting 10 designers. I don’t speak Japanese at all, so with some designers I was using my iPhone and Google Translate at the same time while we talked. And, in Osaka, I met this really cool agent who introduced to me to even more brands.”

A producer’s touch: Cheuk’s background in television production has served him well in his new career. “I’m very good at doing this kind of work, because I’ve been producing TV commercials for a long time,” he says. “It’s mostly just negotiating. What I learned in production is that if you ask, you’ll get it. Just ask. What’s the worse thing they’ll say? No. So you move on.”

Meeting face-to-face is an important part of doing business for Cheuk. “I try and meet with all of my designers,” he says. “And not just through a trade show—I think that if I went the trade-show route, I would be buying all the same stuff everyone else is buying.”

This approach has afforded Cheuk the opportunity to see firsthand the conditions in which his inventory is produced. “I went to a factory in Kyoto and I’ve been to a factory in China myself,” he says. “The difference is night and day. The factory in Japan was the size of this store with six or seven people working there.”

Ethical production is important to Cheuk on a personal level. “Do you really need this jacket? No, you don’t,” he says. “But it makes you happy. I buy clothes to make myself happy, but why build my happiness on someone else’s pain?”

The reno: Blue Button Shop’s eventual home required a complete gut job. “It was a really run-down furniture store,” says Cheuk. “My neighbour upstairs told me they never opened—it was a mess. Everything is completely new—I even changed the toilet downstairs.”

The aesthetic of the shop is quiet and calm. “I like to be relaxed,” says Cheuk. “The change room is a big thing to me. I like to have a chair so you can sit down to try your pants on or put on your shoes. At some other stores, there’s nowhere to sit. And I have mirrors inside the change rooms so you don’t have to walk out with no shoes on looking all gross in jeans that don’t fit you.”

There grows the neighbourhood: With shops like Lost & Found, Woodlawn, The Chief Salvage Co., The Monkey’s Paw, and Grasshopper Records all but a stone’s throw away, Dundas west of Ossington is swiftly becoming a retail destination. For Cheuk, proximity to likeminded retailers is something to be embraced. “Maybe my mentality of building an area is a bit different,” he says. “For example, Woodlawn is great—they carry made-in-the-U.S.A. stuff, so I would like to have a store close to them that’s made-in-Japan. If people don’t buy anything from me, they’ll buy from them. I don’t want to move somewhere that’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s an antique shop next to me that people love to go to and some really nice restaurants down the road, so hopefully we’ll see some foot traffic.”

What’s next: Blue Button Shop opened within a very compressed timeline—in a four-month period, Cheuk has gone from initial concept to contacting his brands to a trip to Japan to an extensive renovation project. “I’ve worked every moment possible for the past four months,” he says. “And I’m still working my day job—I did two commercials.”

And there’s still more work to come. “This is only the beginning, because for A/W [autumn/winter], I have a lot more brands coming in,” Cheuk says.

Rather than burning him out, all this activity has energized Cheuk, for whom—like many of his retail peers—opening a store has been a labour of love. “We’re all just nice people, trying to get by and enjoy ourselves,” he says. “If you want to get rich, you’ve got to work at the bank or something.”

Blue Button Shop, 1499 Dundas St. W.

Toronto’s growth spurt isn’t over just yet. While we’ve built or are building more super-tall skyscrapers (200 metres or higher) over the past three years than in all previous years combined, that’s nothing compared to what could be coming: There are a grand total of 16 buildings taller than 200 metres currently planned. Here’s how they’d measure up on our skyline.

Data courtesy of the City of Toronto’s City Planning Division. For proposed projects, only those for which planning applications have been submitted to the city are included (and those could still get taller or shorter—or, possibly, not be built at all).

CORRECTION (May 22, 4 p.m.): When it was first published, this chart mistakenly included an outdated height and number of storeys for Aura College Park, and misidentified Ïce Condominiums at York Centre. Thanks to reader Craig White for catching the errors.

GOT SOMETHING THAT YOU WANT THE GRID TO FIGURE OUT? E-mail it to ask@thegridto.com, and we’ll see what we can find.

Last year, Metro East’s 12 courtrooms handled almost a fifth of Toronto’s 53,280 criminal cases. Found in an Eglinton East strip mall across from a Winners, the low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit space is the city’s second-busiest courthouse after stately, crumbling Old City Hall. Here’s a snippet of the human drama that played out on Wednesday, May 8.

› 9:30 a.m., courtroom 407: Presiding over a busy, low-level administrative court was Justice of the Peace Chimbo Poe-Mutuma (one of only two black men behind the bench at Metro East on this day, where the caseload was largely black and brown male defendants). To save the cost of transporting prisoners, some of the briefest interactions happen via video link. The court clerk scrolled through a menu of Ontario jails using a remote. On the Sony Bravia, men in orange jumpsuits appeared grainy and askew.

› 10:25 a.m., courtroom 408: Of the 5,481 youth trials in Toronto last year, 1,215 happened here. A black teenager with glasses and a slightly pointed goatee sat in the prisoner’s box, his long-sleeved maroon t-shirt a sign that he was being held in Roy McMurtry Youth Centre in Brampton. He was charged with two murders, 21 counts of aggravated assault, and discharging a firearm. His lawyer couldn’t be found so a police officer put him in handcuffs and walked him back down to the holding cells below the courthouse.

› 10:45 a.m. courtroom 405: A woman in a pale aqua salwar kameez was seated next to a translator, crying through her son’s sentencing. He was tall, with a short ponytail, and had been in custody for 184 days. Last year, when he was 17, he stabbed two people. One ended up with a collapsed lung. The Crown wanted a two-year jail sentence. The defence lawyer argued for a group home, so the accused can attend mosque and spend time with his wife.

› 11:40 a.m., courtroom 413: Sixty per cent of Toronto’s murder arrests make it to trial. Ahmed was accused of shooting a man at a bar in September 2011. A forensics expert with a flashy watch explained how to distinguish between a stab wound and a gunshot wound (length, depth, and abrasions at the entry point). After the testimony, Ahmed’s trial ended for the day.

› Noon to 2 p.m.: Most courtrooms closed for lunch. One judge headed to Pho Saigon around the corner.

› 2:02 p.m., courtroom 407: About 20 people piled in for an information session before their first court appearance. A short, straight-talking white woman with a long, brown ponytail introduced herself as duty counsel, the government-appointed lawyer who can help those accused navigate early appearances (but can’t represent them at trial).

› 2:45 p.m., courtroom 411: Justin, who’d been there since 10 a.m., was sentenced to a year of probation and 50 hours of community service. He has a record for robbery and weapons possession. This time, the white twentysomething stole a $52.70 bottle of champagne on Valentine’s Day.

› 3:20 p.m., courtroom 406: A blond female police officer with a full tattoo sleeve observed the final day of trial for a chubby man named Bilal, who faced 16 counts of identity theft and fraud. The judge promised a decision by June 5—it takes, on average, 160 days for a case at Metro East to make it from first court appearance to completion, 34 days higher than the provincial average.

› 3:30 p.m., courtroom 407: The people left in the room weren’t on the docket (a daily list of the accused, their charges, and scheduled appearance times), so the court clerk started pointing at random to determine who would go next. Last of all was an old, heavily wrinkled little man holding his official appointment sheet. No one could figure out what was supposed to happen to him here today. Poe-Mutuma signed the sheet to prove he showed up. “Don’t lose that,” said the JP. “Hold on to it for at least six months so the police can’t charge you again.”

› 4 p.m.: Metro East was done for the day.

The Canadian Pacific Railway was tired of arguing. Negotiations with government bodies over the development of a replacement for the existing Union Station were heading nowhere fast. Fatigued by squabbling, in 1912, the CPR moved several passenger routes from downtown to a line it controlled in the north end of the city. While a train station already existed on the west side of Yonge Street near Summerhill Avenue, it hardly matched CPR executives’ visions of grandeur.

Fresh off designing the railway’s office tower at King and Yonge, architects Frank Darling and John Pearson were assigned to create a new North Toronto station. The centrepiece of their plan was a 140-foot clock tower inspired by the Campanile in St. Mark’s Square in Venice. The clock would be synchronized via telegraph signals from the CPR’s Windsor Station in Montreal. Also included was a grand waiting room with a three-storey high ceiling and marble facing.

When Mayor Tommy Church laid the cornerstone on September 9, 1915, he praised the CPR for being “the first railway company to give Toronto proper recognition.” He hoped the station would be the first of a series of railway gateways to the city, improving inter-city commuting. When passenger service began on June 4, 1916, destinations included Lindsay, Owen Sound, and Ottawa. The most popular route was Montreal, which attracted wealthy businessmen who lived nearby.

Circa 1920. Photo: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 1748.

The station’s demise began when the new Union Station finally opened in 1927. Passengers found transfers easier downtown, while the streetcar ride between the two stations grew longer as vehicular traffic increased along Yonge Street. The final four passenger routes were scrapped in September 1930, though freight trains continued to use the facility. The station was pressed into service for the arrival of King George VI’s train during the May 1939 royal visit, and for unloading returning troops at the end of the World War II.

In the interim, the building’s long association with alcohol began. Brewers’ Retail opened a store on the north side of the station in 1931, while the LCBO settled into the south side in 1940. Not until late 1978 could liquor-store customers pick their own bottles instead of filling out forms fussed over by judgemental staff. “Often, a clerk would smugly inform you that the cheap sherry you wanted was O/S (out of stock),” Toronto Life recalled in 2003. “Another clerk might confide that the guy who just waited on you had been a teacher but had suffered ‘a nervous breakdown.’ You knew that every one of the staff had been voting Tory since before that Benedictine monk invented champagne.” Adding to the institutional feel was the lowering of the ceilings and covering up of many of the station’s grandiose touches.

Circa 1916. Photo: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 930.

Talk of site redevelopment went on for years. Proposals alternated between providing improved retail space and returning to its railway origins as a GO station. Developers who talked of building homes and apartment towers on land adjacent to the building ran into neighbourhood opposition. No plan stuck until the liquor store closed in December 2001 for extensive renovation work. False ceilings were removed and wood paneling was torn off to reveal the marble underneath. New blocks of limestone were produced by the Manitoba quarry that provided the originals. The tower clock resumed service after half-a-century. What was already the busiest LCBO store in the province expanded by a factor of eight to provide 21,000 square feet of shopping space for booze connoisseurs. During the grand reopening ceremony in February 2003, Ontario Consumer and Business Service Minister Tim Hudak tipped his hat to the building’s transportation origins, promising shoppers “a journey of discovery of the world of beverage alcohol.”

While stocking up for your long weekend drinking needs (or hoarding in case of an LCBO strike), take a moment to observe the station’s railway heritage. Look up to the ornate ceiling covering the domestic and Italian wine selections. See the ticket booths nestled among the Chilean wines. While walking through the western portion of the Vintages section, imagine strolling along a walkway to your train platform. Ponder if the bottles on the shelves of the “Vins de Table” section are fine beverages or deserve to be dumped down the toilets like those which graced this portion of the station.

Additional material from Toronto’s Railway Heritage by Derek Boles (Charleston: Arcadia, 2009), Toronto Observed by William Dendy and William Kilbourn (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986), the February 4, 2003 edition of the Canada News Wire, the September 10, 1915 edition of the Globe, the June 2003 edition of Toronto Life, and the June 3, 1916, November 26, 1978, and January 19, 2002 editions of the Toronto Star.

Lisa Miyasaki, owner of the longstanding Queen West children’s store Kol Kid, has been supplying locals with toys, clothes, decor, and diaper bags for 14 years now. The key to the store’s staying power? According to Miyasaki, it’s been trusting her instincts.

Getting started: Kol Kid opened in 1999, two doors down from its present location. “The store is named after my first son,” says Miyasaki. “Kol was born with a lot of special needs and I needed to do something that would give me the flexibility to attend to him. I didn’t have a job at the time, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing to lose at this point, so I might as well.’ It was total gamble and it was a totally scary thing for me to do, but I did it and it turned out great.”

Location, location, location: Back in 1999, Kol Kid’s stretch of Queen Street West was not a likely retail destination. Despite this, Miyasaki always saw the neighbourhood’s potential. “When I opened up, people were like, ‘This is a really odd location for kids store,’” she says. “This is going back to when the street was really down and out. We had a crack bar across the street—they’d come out with pool cues. So it was unusual, but there were a few stores that were interesting, and a lot of the real estate was just starting to build up—Liberty Village was just on the cusp—so I knew the area was going to populate and change. Now, you can definitely get away with more prestige items than I would have 10 years ago. You’re looking at houses that are going for over a million dollars, so the neighbourhood has changed.”

The key to success: If there’s a secret to Kol Kid’s longevity, according to Miyasaki it’s a rather straightforward one. “Ultimately, it’s all in the buying,” she says. “If you’re not good at buying, you won’t do well. Because I had Kol and he had special needs, I was particularly tuned into child development. When buying a toy, I never was interested in buying ones that did the playing for you. So I was always interested in toys that fostered children’s imagination, toys that were more open-ended, toys that were tactile. I don’t really go with trends—my buying is very instinctual.”

Luckily, Miyasaki has an eager focus group at home. “I know from experience,” she says. “When I bring home a toy, or my kids get a toy that’s mechanical or they press a button and it does something, they’re definitely excited about it, but it gets played with for a day, or an hour, and I never see it out again. The only toys they ever do over and over again are open-ended ones, like dress-up stuff, arts and crafts—that stuff you can always get them to do.”

Who shops there: Kol Kid’s customers are largely from the neighbourhood. “We get a lot of business from the area,” says Miyasaki. “But what’s amazing is that we will see the same people in the store three times a week, like it’s a convenience store. It’s the same people coming in. It’s people who appreciate good-quality merchandise and they are looking for something different, more unique. I can’t really sell things that are mainstream. I’ve had few products in the past that are more mainstream and they don’t sell here—people just don’t want to buy that here. They come in expecting something different.”

That said, Miyasaki does make some concessions to popular taste. “I do try to offer more mainstream stuff during the holidays, because I understand,” says Miyasaki. “As my children are growing, I get to see what they’re interested in. Like, boys of a certain age are into Star Wars and superheroes—you can’t avoid it and you’ve got to offer it, because that’s what they want.”

Wooden, it be nice: Wood toys are an important part of Kol Kids business. “In the 1970s and ’80s, there was a lot of plastic,” says Miyasaki. “In fact, when I started, it was really hard to find wood and now it’s everywhere—there’s been a call for it. People just became more conscious of being eco and they like the tactile quality of wood. In Europe, kids always played with wood, that’s just part of their culture. I used to have families who had just moved to Toronto and would be like, ‘We didn’t bring anything with us because we just assumed we could get it here and then we got here and there was nothing.’ America has slowly started to develop a lot of similar toys.”

The look: A childhood trip served as the basis for Kol Kid’s aesthetic. “I was really inspired when I was young and I went to Paris,” she says. “You look at the patisseries and everything is just so beautiful and abundant and presented in a way that’s pleasing to the eye. To me, that’s so important: to create an environment that inspires you. I’m always amazed that you can walk into a toy store and not be inspired—you know you’re not doing a great job if you walk into a toy store and you’re bored by it. So I wanted to create something very visual.”

A minimal aesthetic holds no appeal for Miyasaki. “You know when you walk into a store and you can see everything the store has, like an art gallery?” she says. “I’ve just never been into that. I always want the store that, when you walk in, it takes you 20 minutes to leave because you’ve got to look at everything. I think abundance sells.”

Kol Kid, 674 Queen St. W., 416-681-0368.

Don’t worry, it’s not another retro videogame club.

The Digital Media Zone, or DMZ for short, is a business incubator and accelerator. Anyone with a great business idea—not just Ryerson students—can apply to the program. For three years now, the DMZ has been getting intrepid entrepreneurs rolling by providing access to workspaces, financial incentives, and advisory services.

There’s no such thing as too many beanbag chairs.

The open-concept offices have ample room for people to recline while dreaming up their next big idea as they gaze out the window at the hustle and bustle of Yonge Street. Since the startups work side-by-side, a kind of electricity flows through the air as so many different disciplines combine. “The reason we’ve done so well is because of the energy in the room,” says the DMZ’s executive director, Valerie Fox. “The whole openness, the collaborative spirit, but also having a lot of brilliant voices and minds has allowed us to grow.”

They’re getting people out of wheelchairs.

Many startups at the DMZ are riding the wave of cutting-edge medical innovation in Toronto. Komodo OpenLab, for example, is making it possible for people in wheelchairs to use tablets and smartphones with the aid of its Tecla device, which allows them to control mobile accessories with a button, joystick, or even by blowing into a straw. Down in the DMZ’s basement, Michal Prywata, CEO of Bionik Laboratories Inc., is going one literal step further with his creation, the Exolegs. “Essentially, if you have a spinal cord injury from the waist down, you put on this device and you have the function of your legs again,” Prywata explains. The Exolegs resemble the thin metal legs of a walking robot and strap onto the outside of the patient’s waist and thighs. The internal computer calculates an algorithm specific to the user, so the motion the legs make is custom tailored. After its clinical trials, Exolegs will be available through rehab clinics starting in August, as well as through distribution companies, but Prywata also hopes to get them into the home market.

They’re attracting aspiring world leaders.

On March 27, now Liberal leader Justin Trudeau paid a visit to the DMZ and went on a full tour guided by Ryerson president Sheldon Levy. Trudeau is using Soapbox, the first product created by DMZ startup HitSend, on his campaign website Justin.ca. It’s a crowdsourcing application that allows a community to combine, organize, and implement their ideas and opinions across multiple social-media platforms. Trudeau hopes it wil provide a dynamic debate forum for turning up intelligent discourse and fresh ideas—which sounds a lot like the environment at the DMZ itself.

There is something faintly miraculous about Dairy Queen—and not just because the storied chain daily defies gravity by serving its trademark Blizzard Treats upside down.

Take its relentlessly local vibe. For a 73-year-old behemoth owned by billionaire businessman Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway dynasty and boasting 6,000 locations worldwide—10 per cent of them in Canada and another 10 per cent just in Texas—Dairy Queen somehow feels like a mom-and-pop every time you step inside.

In smaller communities, the neighbourhood DQ is the ad-hoc social hub, quainter yet more kaleidoscopic than A&W. Its seasonal presence in resort towns ensures vacationers associate meals there with good times, while its eclectic menu of burgers, hot dogs, onion rings, sundaes, cakes, and that wickedly delicious soft-serve ice cream baits customers from cradle to grave.

Though many locations operate year-round, Dairy Queen is synonymous with summer. And kids—a supreme and highly leverage-able branding position if ever there was one. Of course, DQ requires serious ammo to simultaneously face off against noisy fast-food giants like McDonald’s and Burger King on the left and treats titans like Baskin Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s on the right.

That it continues to flourish year after year in town after town—evoking cherished childhood memories of Peanut Buster Parfaits gobbled in the August sun for countless thousands—makes the whole operation rather remarkable for a giant, categorically for-profit global chain slinging food that is no one’s idea of health-conscious.

“When you say ‘Dairy Queen,’ most people think treats and ice cream, about celebrating and having a good time,” offers Denise Hutton, Dairy Queen Canada’s vice president of marketing, from her firm’s Burlington HQ.

Want proof? Query “favourite DQ memory” on Facebook and prepare to be slammed.

“I remember listening to Boz Scaggs’ ‘Lido Shuffle’ on the little jukebox that used to be in every booth,” goes one from a friend in Vancouver.

“Dilly Bars and Blizzards. And since the DQ in our Manitoba town would close for the winter, it makes me think of spring.”

“Skipping school and eating ice cream. There was one right beside my school in Ottawa. Good location planning!”

“On our Sunday family drives around North York, one of the stops at the end of an afternoon—if we were good—was the good ol’ DQ.”

Any federal leadership candidate wanting to unite the country should consider stumping in DQs.

“Although food is about 50 per cent of our overall business, what our brand is all about is creating those smiles,” DQ’s Hutton proclaims. “And I truly believe when we launched the Blizzard 27-28 years ago, that was a turning point because we needed something to reinvigorate the treat side of our business. Even McDonald’s McFlurry, which came out years later, positively impacted our Blizzard sales because it reinforced the idea of indulgence and treating yourself.”

And treat themselves DQ customers do, especially at the first giddy sign of spring. On a recent midweek afternoon when the mercury grazed 20 degrees, a steady stream of punters of every conceivable age hoofed into the seasonally operated location at Broadview and Mortimer.

In the shadow of a newly constructed condo tower, customers sat at picnic tables overlooking the DVP, licking perfectly swirled cones as if the most biting winter in memory hadn’t just kicked our collective asses.

Whether you’re urban or rural—and unless you are much-disciplined and/or severely depressed—it’s unlikely you’ll go an entire summer without at least one visit to Dairy Queen. Given that International Dairy Queen, as the company’s officially called, also operates the Orange Julius chain of beverage stores (some 135 in Canada) means the so-called Oracle of Omaha will pocket some of your discretionary income one way or another between May and September.

“Warren Buffett loves Dairy Queen,” Hutton laughs, “and he’s a great ambassador for what we do.”

Naturally, a company as established as DQ boasts some awesome lore. The very first location in Canada opened in Estevan, Saskatchewan in 1953. In 2012, the highest Canadian sales happened in Lloydminster, Alberta followed by Charlottetown, P.E.I., Sherwood Park in Calgary, Alberta and Orangeville, “so Ontario’s highest volume store is ranked fifth in the country,” Hutton says, noting that Ontario boasts the most single-province locations with 184.

Globally, DQs can be found in nations including (but not limited to) Bahrain, Brunei, Costa Rica, Qatar, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Bahamas, Egypt and Thailand. (The first-ever store launched in Joliet, Illinois on June 22, 1940.)

Cartoon character Dennis the Menace served as company “spokestoon” from the early 1970s to 2002. Late American Bandstand host Dick Clark shilled for the brand in TV ads during the 1980s. Seasonal versus year-round operation is at the franchisee’s discretion (though the mother corp advocates strongly on behalf of year-round sales, natch).

That Dairy Queens are mainly franchise-operated helps underscore that essential, aforementioned local feel. Operators Ron Kraus in Fort Myers, Florida and Steve Cowgur in Gilbert, Arizona—both with testimonials on the company site—may run similar businesses with identical product offerings. But their connection to their wider communities is their own, and runs the gamut from scholastic achievement awards (read: free food for good grades) to restaurant tours, product donations, and student discounts.

“With a brand that’s over 70 years old, obviously we are in major cities and we are international, but we are perceived very much as a local brand,” Hutton confirms. “We’re in smaller communities and we’re widely franchised. That’s part of what DQ culture is all about. Being part of the community is extremely important to us—that’s especially true with our corporate social responsibility.”

Last year, Dairy Queen Canada raised $2.5 million through several initiatives for Children’s Miracle Network, which funds children’s hospitals nationally; to date, DQ Canada has raised/donated $20.8 million to Children’s Miracle Network. Across North America, the figure to date is approaching a staggering $100 million. (On May 14, a circus-themed DQ event takes over Yonge-Dundas Square again raising funds for Children’s Miracle Network by offering 10,000 mini Kit Kat Blizzard Treats in exchange for donations.)

“One of the challenges of our brand is that we’re in the food business, we’re in the treats business, and we’re in the cakes business. So that makes Dairy Queen very unique,” Hutton adds.

“But I have to tell you that every time I travel and people hear that I work for Dairy Queen, I get a smile and a story. That would not happen with a lot of our competitors. There is just no other brand within the quick-service category that has that connection to their customers through those fond and memorable experiences.”

Do you have fond memories of your local Dairy Queen? Share your stories in the comments section below.