56 Berwick

Do you ever drive by your childhood home to kindle some nostalgic embers?

What about old residence dorms? Summer camps? Or the first house you bought?

Well the other day as I was booting about town, I was shocked to see the first Toronto address I ever possessed was now reduced to rubble. It was 1988 when me and my buddies moved into 56 Berwick, fresh from university and ready to hit our first jobs.

In those days, Yonge & Eglinton, which is where Berwick is situated (right behind the Canadian Tire tower for those who know it), was affectionately known as Young & Eligible. The Mandarin that guards the southwest corner today used to be a hot spot called “Mr. Grumps.” It was filled with young corporates on school nights and 905’ers on weekends. Although it was so long ago, they were still 416!!! Around the corner was Earl’s Tin Palace and the Unicorn. The “Uni,” as we called it, specialized in long lines, Irish bands and many late-night beer-goggle disasters.

I lived in this house with my appropriately named best friend Rosie, my hometown buddy Heavy (who was anything but) and a little Greek guy who I went to university with. In those days, I was known as Herschel. As in Walker. The football star, not the star warrior.

The little Greek guy had a real name, but after the local garage wrote “little Greek guy” on his car repair claim stub, that handle stuck for us. At least behind his skinny little spine anyway.

But we owed him, as he was the dude who found the house. We were renting from his former boss for $1,000 a month. Which was a steal for a four bedroom centrally-located detached house.

It was a shack. But to four drunks, it seemed pretty good. We bought a tub converter at Canadian Tire, so our four-poster became a shower. We sealed my bedroom fireplace shut to keep the raccoons and their nest out of my sheets. We painted. We hammered. We raked. It looked pretty good to us.
The walls, they were pretty thin. So thin in fact, I could hear the answering machine messages left for the little Greek guy by a series of wounded young Chinese lovers. Ahh the days of the little tapes and loud beeps whenever someone called. I am sure he would kill me if I printed the details, but verbatim I am sure one of them sounded like this: “You got what you wanted and now you don’t call.”

Being so close to the bar district also allowed me to learn the finer points to closing the deal. My bedroom window faced the street, which was often the scene for some late night courtship as drunken guys dropped every line imaginable on even drunker young prospects. Listening to young men grovel for companionship probably honed my pitch skills over the years!

Our house technically had a fifth bedroom, which we didn’t discover until one ambitious day when we decided to clean out the basement. It was pretty clear that some hippie had spent the better part of the 60’s or maybe 70’s down there. It was clear he liked to paint, which was amusing, because like the cavemen his psychedelic hieroglyphics told a pretty clear story of what he was up to down there. Perhaps I should have run tours for some of the late night sidewalk courtiers and their objects of affection.

We were three kids from small town Ontario having a blast. Our house became party central. We hosted legendary Halloween parties. Anxiety-ridden New Year’s Eve parties, which always resulted in some poor girl crying on our front lawn as her boyfriend was practicing his French with some new girl out back. Caribana parties featuring a live reggae band in the living room. Leafs and Blue Jays playoff feasts… yes, those WERE the days. Plus, our never to be interrupted New Years Day NCAA Bowl feast, featuring day old KFC and beer we had furtively hid from the revelers from the night before.
After a few such soirees, we felt guilty and started warning the neighbours. To our west, was an elderly woman and we felt quite nervous in telling her. She was more than grateful for the heads up, as she had taken to sleeping on her kitchen floor behind her fridge when we amped it up. The advance warning gave her more time for soundproofing!

A year into our Animal House existence, we got busted. Turns out the people renting us the house didn’t own it. Turns out the people who owned the house owned the whole block. Turns out they were tearing down all these shacks to build condos. Turns out this was 1989.

Through some skillful negotiation on my part (see what I learned by being a late-night Peeping Tom?), we were allowed to stay. But there were conditions. The real owners would not give us a lease. The real owners would not give us any tenant rights. The real owners would not let us lease the house to anyone else. The real owners wanted us out with 30 days notice if they desired. The real owners wanted us to pay them the proper rent.

The proper rent was $396.00.
For a four bedroom.
At Yonge & Eglinton.
In Toronto.

So we capitulated, with one further condition!

The real owners wanted to be invited to our parties, cause he lived around the corner and always felt left out of the action. (Editorial note: he was the real owner’s lucky sperm club kid and was in his 20’s).

So we capitulated again.

It was 1989. We were told they would knock our house down within a year.

Turns out I could have stayed twenty more years. But I didn’t. A few years later, I met the girl I wanted to spend my life with. Soon, all the character elements of the house I partied in became eyesores to me. At this point, we may have been paying $532.00 a month (that’s $133.00 each) in rent, so saving up a down payment didn’t take long. Off I went to buy my first real house.

With no live bands, no music-less slow dances on the sidewalk, no raccoons growling in my ear.

I never thought I would want to go back to Berwick. But I just checked out the website for “The Berwick” and it looks pretty swanky. Perhaps I can convince my wife to move back there… or buy one now for when the kids want their first place?

I am thinking about a special order for unit 56.