Books that celebrate Toronto’s history are like strange, exotic specimens of taxidermy. They’re hard to come by – and when you do find them, you’ll usually do so in a bargain basement with the cling-wrap still on. That’s how I found Toronto, We Love You… “The Brunswick House,” an illustrated book of poetry from 1973 about the Brunny.
When I bought the book a few years ago, I had never actually heard of the Annex’s historic and now-notorious pub. My naïve ears were yet untouched by tales of underage girls getting felt up by thirty-somethings on the dancefloor. I didn’t know the stories of hawkish young cads with teen-staches, waiting in the wings to swoop down on girls drunk enough to make out with them.
But I learned soon enough that I could walk by the corner of Bloor and Brunswick on any frozen Thursday night to see 905ers in clubwear clinging to their IDs (real or otherwise), thirsting for shots and public make outs.
Ye Olde Brunswick House wasn’t always this way. It was founded in 1876 (yes, the “Ye Olde” bit is for real), at a time when the pub catered to the surrounding working class neighbourhood, chiefly populated by new immigrants. Over the years it became a neighbourhood staple for music and cheap beer and by the 1970s it became the University of Toronto student hangout of choice.
It was a golden age – and one heralded by editor Rolf Kalman in his 1973 introduction to Toronto, We Love You. “A community like this doesn’t need a ‘club,’” Kalman wrote, “it develops, indeed evolves, the classical meeting place in the classical Greek manner. The Brunswick House is this meeting place.”
Deborah Godin’s poetry in Toronto, We Love You tells of the Brunny’s eclectic tastes. The accompanying illustrations by Robert McInnis are loose and nostalgic. Back then, the Brunny was a place for everyone – an all-in-one “neon amplified Yonge strip showbar,” a “dark ethnic hideaway,” a “rah-rah college bar,” and a “gay glitter palace.” What kept it consistent were the pub’s regulars, the house bands and the stories that made the place a neighbourhood legend.
Albert oversees it all
A landmark, like the drinking halls
That serve the beer and make the claim:
No other pub is quite the same.
Pat, an artist now living in South Etobicoke, remembers being a regular at the Brunswick House in the late sixties and early seventies, when her sister’s boyfriend played banjo in a Dixieland band that performed upstairs at the Brunny, in Albert’s Hall.
“It was an odd sort of place upstairs, because it wasn’t really popular,” Pat explains. “It was a little down on the heels, and had older carpeting – and it was mostly local bands and things like Dixieland. It was quiet up there. But that might have been just the particular time that we chose to go. We were usually there for matinees.”
Downstairs, in the Brunswick House proper, the space was filled with pool tables out front, a stage for performances and Pickle Alley, where patrons could relax and sit down with a drink. There were people like Mr. Entertainment, who played the sticks and wore rhinestones; Miss Eve, who sang country tunes off-key; and Ivy the Honky-Tonk Queen, a middle-aged piano-playing pixie who always kept the stage alive. Godin’s verse tells of the outrageous contest nights, and the Ballad of the Glass Eating Frenchmen – wherein some French patrons raised hell and, well, started eating the pint glasses.
Conversation is possible
Keep it simple and shout
Point-blank in the ear
Or try lip reading out.
In the 1980s, the Brunny was just as popular as it was in the 70s. Rob, who was there every week from 1982 to 1984, says they used to have a sign up that read: “Dare to party where your parents partied.”
“The Brunswick House, the bottom half, was always a university thing, a sort of pub hangout. The whole idea of clubbing – and going out dancing and doing shots – wasn’t really there. It was more like, you sit around, have a lot of beer, and intellectualize.
“Right above the Brunswick was Albert’s Hall,” Rob continues, “and I used to go there with a guy named Ed in Grade 13 to see all the old blues guys – who now come to Massey Hall, or bigger venues. We saw Howling Wolf there, and Buddy Guy and I think we saw Muddy Waters.”
Buddy Guy, an American blues guitarist and singer, was and is still famous for his showmanship that went beyond the stage. He used a long power cable on his guitar, which let him walk around the audience, as he told stories or sang the blues. Guitar perpetually in hand, he’d go to the bathroom in Albert’s Hall to serenade its occupants, or order cognac at the bar while strumming a song. He even took his acoustic guitar to play to the crowds lined up downstairs, waiting to get into the show.
“I was going there almost once a week,” Rob recalls. “We’d go up to Albert’s Hall because there was always someone in town. The cover was cheap, really really cheap. But it wasn’t scuzzy, it was really nice, and it was always a packed crowd of people. All different ages, and anyone who was into music would come out.”
Theirs was a different time. As Kalman wrote in his introduction, “The Annex is avant-garde. By planning or coincidence, in the heart of the big city, ‘neighbourhood’ can exist. It is possible, towards the end of the twentieth century, to create an atmosphere where the facelessness of numbers has to take second place to those who created the numbers.”
But what’s strange about Kalman’s introduction is that you realize the familiar tunes of Toronto-bashing today are exactly what they were decades before. “Toronto twenty years ago was one of the most boring places I had run across on several continents,” Kalman wrote in 1973. “It was boring because Toronto twenty years ago managed to hide all the assets she had – Hart House, the Arts and Letters Club, the Art Gallery, the Museum – under a unique and unobtrusive greyness.”
Yet the Toronto of 1973 marked a change from the boring grey of two decades before. Kalman wrote about the city’s mosaic of cultures, its breakneck industrial growth, mixed with a uniquely liveable element. Toronto was a city where you could live a life “both human and humane.” And the Annex was its heart, a place where artisans hand-printed books or crafted leather goods, and where ushers in small theaters would saw hello to you as they led you to your seat.
That’s the thing about Toronto. No matter how impressive its industry, or how vast its suburbs, it’s still hard to go for a walk in a city neighbourhood without bumping into someone you know. These are the people you’ll see at the same shows, the same gallery openings, the same parks. Even if you don’t know them by name, you’ll recognize them from the TTC stop, and impart a small and potentially awkward acknowledgment of the number of times you’ve shared a streetcar.
The pride that Kalman felt for Toronto in 1973 comes as a relief. It’s a kind of justification for liking the place I live in, when so many outlets feel the need to apologize for Toronto’s lack of New York skyline or Chicago waterfront. Perhaps Kalman was still high on the success of Canada’s 1967 centennial – or more likely, on the hippie haze blown over from Yorkville. Those were the Trudeau years, when it was cool to be Canadian, and – perhaps as a microcosm of this country – it also was cool to go to the Brunswick House, whoever you were and wherever you were from.
But these days, the Brunny is more club than pub. It’s made a reputation for itself as the scourge of the neighbourhood, bringing in loud music and non-local crowds that are understandably unpopular with residents. Still, I was curious to see the place that still holds so much history. Indeed, the inspiration of Toronto, We Love You led me to do what was previously unthinkable. I decided to break my rule, and finally pay a visit to the Brunny.
I walked in a little before 11 pm on a Thursday night. I was wearing a turtleneck. Once past the impossibly dark coat check, I made my way into the place that once proudly advertised, “Dare to party where your parents partied.” It was nearly empty.
I took a seat overlooking the dancefloor. The people around me looked lost, like they’d wanted to go out on the town, but didn’t know where to go – so they came to the Brunny. There were no kind-eyed country singers, no honky-tonk players, and not even a glass-eating French person. I watched as the fabled crowds of what looked like high schoolers assembled in packs. Meanwhile, lonely boys in argyle lurked in the corners, attempting to make eye contact as they gazed longingly at the girls in sequined leopard print. I felt like Liz Lemon at a frat party.
But in the midst of my reverie, all of a sudden, Rihanna’s “We Found Love” came on, echoing across the empty dancefloor. It was no Buddy Guy, ambling through the audience ordering cognacs – but still, I made a conscious decision: I wanted to inject some life into this sad place, and relive some of the glory of the Brunny’s nobler days. “This is my jam,” I resolved. And I took the dancefloor, in my turtleneck.
On the ceiling I spied a mural with a painted, “Ye Olde Brunswick House,” as the club beats blared on. I recalled a verse from Deborah Godin:
Donnie Sinclair
Has a voice
Big as all
Oklahoma…..
And he can
Out-pelvis
Elvis
Perhaps something in that big, admittedly scary place, had managed to stay alive. I can talk all I want, but the truth is, I was having fun.
Erene Stergiopoulos writes for Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter @fullerenes.
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