As Queen West has transformed over the decades from working-class neighbourhood to music/art epicentre to high-end-retail strip, one thing has remained constant: William's Shoe Store. We find out how this family-run business has held its ground.
The stretch of Queen West between Bathurst and Ossington has, over the decades, experienced many disparate waves of development and culture, from its roots as a working-class neighbourhood, to serving as the staging ground for Toronto’s underground music and art scenes in the ’90s and ’00s, and then onto its current status as a mecca for style-minded Torontonians with deep pockets.
Throughout these ebbs and flows, one of the few businesses to stand resolute has been William’s Shoe Store (750 Queen St. W.), along with its instantly recognizable neon façade and packed-to-the-gills interior. For proprietor Theodore Czarnota, William’s is more than just a place of work, it’s a family institution.
“The store was opened by my parents in 1950, so I sort of grew into the store,” he says. “There was no question about a summer job or anything, because you had one built-in—and, obviously, after school every single day.”
In fact, Czarnota’s mother is the one in charge to this day, even if she isn’t working the floor of the shop on a daily basis. “I still work for my mother—she’s 92 and she’s the boss.”
As to what has kept the business going for so long, Czarnota says much of it has to do with customer service and product expertise. “I’m surprised how much information a lot of shoe stores don’t know,” he says. “We hear this all the time: People come in here all the time and they’re impressed with the information we give them.
“We’re not going to pressure a customer to buy anything; we will tell you absolutely everything you want to know about a pair of shoes. It’s all about being honest, being patient and helping the customer decide, not deciding for them. It’s about loving people.”
Through his early days of working in the shop, Czarnota has been able to watch the neighbourhood’s evolution from an especially clear vantage point. “All the poor people were coming here; there was always high density,” he says. “In all these gentrified homes now where there’s one small family [living], there used to be one family per room. All they wanted to do was get a job, earn some money and start a life.”
In many ways, this circumstance an idyllic notion of community that is now, for the most part, lost. “There was a close bond between people,” Czarnota says. “We were all operating our businesses side-by-side-by-side, raising the family side-by-side-by-side, so the parents worked on the street and the kids played in the laneways. Now the influx has been gentrified: Those people’s children and the grandchildren—who are really well educated, really well off and have really good jobs—are coming back into the neighbourhood.”
But Czarnota doesn’t look at this as a bad thing. “There’s no negativity happening,” he says, “I’m really impressed with what’s happening, because we’re getting your typical Queen Street customer coming into the store for several years now.
“Twelve, 15 years ago, this was the dregs, these buildings were all empty. Landlords couldn’t give them away. They couldn’t sell them, they couldn’t rent. Nobody wanted them. The influx of artists and people looking for low financial accommodations—they’re the ones who turned the street on its ear and then other people started moving in.”
That said, despite all the advances made in recent years, the strip’s real heyday for retail might be long past. “When I talk to my mother about it,” Czarnota relates, “she says, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s really, really good, but you can’t believe how good it was in the ’60s and the ’70s—we’re not there yet.’ But because of the rising prices of everything, I don’t know how long, if ever, it’ll be to get there.”
Czarnota feels that the increasing costs associated with real estate serve as a barrier to the type of independent businesses that, at one point, revitalized the neighbourhoood. “We’re grateful that we own the building and grateful we don’t have to pay rent—we put all the money into inventory,” he says, noting that many others don’t share this advantage. “Every time I turn around, there’s a store going [out of business]. Often, I don’t know the people, but I’m sad, because that’s eight or 10 years invested in someone’s life.”
Of course, operating a storefront for as long as Czarnota has, he’s been witness to many a business’—if not the entire domestic fashion industry’s—rise and fall. “There isn’t a lot of Canadian manufacturing left, but Toronto was a hub of shoe manufacturing at one point,” recalls Czarnota. “Probably the biggest brand around was Star Valenti. He started his factory at the corner of Queen and Bathurst—second building from the corner, second floor, one room—making five or six pair a week and then he went to making 8,800 pairs a day, so his success story was just fantastic. There were many stories like that, but it was the lack of support for these private factories that drove them out.”
As for what’s next for Czarnota and William’s Shoe Store? “There’s never a point of ‘what’s next,’” he says. “You get up every day and you do the same thing and I love it. I guess for me and my mother and my dad it’s the same. You try to be healthy to keep the door open to do what you love. Can I do other things? Yeah, I can go out and do a lot of other things. But do I really want to do them? No. This is really a passion, this is my life.”
