2004-06-04 - 8:27 a.m.
A week later and I'm still thinking about the Crystal Ballroom at the King Eddie, which was probably the most haunting thing I saw during Doors Open Toronto.
The King Eddie is quite a swank and bustling hotel, but they took us in a tiny freight-like elevator up to the top floor, where you walk out into dirt and cobwebs and astonishing dilapidation. The ballroom itself was clearly quite grand when it was in use, high ceilings and gilt plaster and astonishing windows that must be 20 feet high and give you an amazing view out over the city. But now there are holes in the ceiling and the plaster is crumbling and gilt and paint are peeling off in great swathes. Even the dance-floor surface was ripped out and sold. They had brought in a band to play, big-band stuff, and when I walked through the foyer and into the ballroom itself I was greeted by the sight of an old couple, dancing carefully across the ruined floor. It was tremendously beautiful and sad.
People tend not to think of Toronto as a mysterious city, and even I would never call it romantic, fond as I am of the place. But we have all these unused spaces, shut and empty and some of them forgotten for years, and it's a kind of mystery that to my mind suits Toronto somehow, as though our own past has to hide itself to survive the depredations of developers, until it becomes not history so much as haunting - not a complete account but hints and glimpses and impressions.
There are the disused subway stations under Bay and Queen, though those are something of an open secret now that half the movies that feature the New York subway are shot there. There was the Winter Garden theatre, now restored, and to this day I wonder how you lose a space as big as a theatre; did the owners of the Elgin just not notice for years that their building had another floor? There's the Carlu, big enough to hold its own theatre, as well as the ballroom, retaurant, and several bars, which was boarded up out of spite when the city wouldn't let the then-owner tear it out. They man who restored it this time around said there were still plates and mouldy tea-cups on the tables when they went in. The Massey-Ferguson warehouses are gone now, unfortunately, but I still remember those spaces - so huge and empty that they put a whole railway car and length of track into one for a play and you hardly even noticed it. By that time their inner stories has been torn out so that stair-cases ascended into empty air. There are those two splendid decaying bank buildings on Yonge, their facades half-covered by hoardings and fences so that all you can really see are the 'for sale' signs and and people sleeping on the steps. And who knows that else is out there? I like to think there are some still sealed up and unknown...
