The Nicest Little Whore House on Pembroke Street

     Kids will be kids no matter where they live or who their parents are. As a ten-year-old boy living in the slums of Toronto some of my best friends came from families whose occupations were not always on the right side of the law- but in our little world that didn’t seem to matter. 

     Of my three closest friends, there was Marvin whose father was a receiver of stolen goods and kept a still in his basement, Nick, whose father was a bootlegger with mafia connections, and last but not least, there was Terry whose mother owned a 'special' kind of rooming house across the road from where I lived.  

     As kids growing up in a notorious area on the verges of Cabbage Town we saw a lot - but at our age, understood very little. 

     Terry and I, like the other kids in the neighbourhood, spent a lot of time participating in all the normal local after-school pursuits like snaring pigeons in Allan Gardens or dragging big magnets up and down the back lanes seeing what rusty treasures we could snag. 

     As kids will, we had sleepovers. Terry spent nights at my house but I liked it best when we stayed at his place. It was more fun.  His house was a real hive of activity. He had several aunts who lived in the rooms upstairs and there were all kinds of interesting men coming to visit them. It was as if there were a party going on all the time and, best of all, his aunts were always subsidizing our banana splits at the Chinese restaurant on the corner if we promised to stay there for an hour or so.

     After Terry, Nick and I joined the boy scouts we got into the habit of going to Terry’s house after our Wednesday night meetings to have some hot chocolate and finish off the evening with a game of monopoly. 

     We always played at a table located in a kitchen at the rear of the house. It must have been disconcerting for the visiting men to see us huddled around the table in our green shirts and blue shorts with our Stetsons tilted back on our heads. They would come strutting down the stairs from the second floor with cocky satisfied looks on their faces but when they spied our little scout troop they’d quickly hustle off looking confused and guilty. 

     Terry’s aunts sure had a lot of friends coming and going and strangely many of them were Chinese. I felt that that was a little unusual but I had become accustomed to seeing unusual things around Terry’s house. One day when I was about to start up the stairs to the second floor bathroom I was confronted by a legless man swinging down the stairs towards me using his arms to propel himself in a sort of hopping motion.  I say legless but actually his body seemed to end at the base of his rib cage and the way he moved put me in mind of some sort of giant insect.  I returned to the kitchen and told Terry about what I had seen but he just shrugged and explained that the man’s name was John and that whenever the circus was in town he came and visited his aunts. Then Terry pulled a fist full of free carnival tickets out of his pocket and waved them in my face saying, “ Look what he gave me.”

     Terry and I, and two younger boys who also lived in the house, took the streetcar to the CNE the following day and had a great time on the midway. We ended our day touring the freak show spending most of our time in front of 'Kandar The Human Torso' with whom we exchanged knowing winks. 

     There was always something exciting happening at Terry’s house. One evening the three of us were sitting quietly in the kitchen after our scout meeting when we heard a loud bang and a crash as the front door caved in. Then a man came running down from the second floor taking the stairs two at a time. He was given chase by several uniformed policemen who were pouring through the gap where the front door had been. They all made their way down the hall past where we were sitting - first the man from upstairs and then the cops in hot pursuit.  The fugitive brushed passed and made it out the back door, then leapt over the porch rail and ran through the back yard. We leaned over the table to protect the game board as the police men, looking like a version of the Keystone Cops elbowed their way passed us, crowded through the back door then bunched up on the narrow porch. Two of the officers drew their guns and fired several warning shots then the whole group clambered down the back stairs and continued the chase. Nick and I got up from our chairs and watched the group disappear in the distance but Terry remained at the table calm and unimpressed. I think he used the opportunity to move his marker to a better location on the game board. 

     In truth it wasn’t always fun and games around the place.  One day as we sat on the front porch we saw a cop chasing a man down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. The policeman was losing ground so he stopped and threw his nightstick at the guy who was getting away. He missed but a garbage man who was perched levelling trash on the top of a dump truck parked by the curb saw what was going on and decided to intervene.  As the man passed him he swung his heavy shovel down and struck the fleeing man on the head stopping him literally dead in his tracks. We watched as the policeman and the truck driver leaned over the motionless man while a puddle of blood gradually formed around his head. Shortly a little Italian lady from a nearby house came over, shoved them aside then made a little tent with a newspaper and placed it over the man’s his lifeless face. 

The saddest thing that ever occurred at the house and the main reason I stopped spending time there occurred during the summer of 1955. 

     Terry and the other kids at the house had been away for about two weeks when one afternoon he showed up at my place with tears in his eyes telling me that David, an eight-year-old son of one of his aunts had drowned while swimming. They had been vacationing at Wasaga Beach where his mother kept a summer cottage. Terry often invited me to join them there -I never went and hearing about what happened to poor little David I was glad I hadn’t been there to witness it. 

     I attended the funeral for a short time but after seeing the little fellow dressed in a tux lying in a small coffin looking more like a puppet than a person I couldn’t take it. I can still see Terry’s aunts dressed in unaccustomed black, clustered around the tiny coffin weeping.

       I didn’t know what to say or how to act so I just walked away vowing never to attend another funeral- and with a couple of exceptions I never have. I didn’t blame anybody at the house for the boy’s death- the kids there were watched over more closely than I was. Terry’s mother and aunts, when not engaged in their nocturnal pursuits, were normal caring people but somehow I couldn’t face being in the house anymore. Shortly after the boy's death we moved from the neighbourhood. 

     As I grew older, I of course realized what had been going on in Terry’s house- you can’t have lived on Pembroke Street and passed the Spot One Grill on Dundas Street every morning on the way to school, and not have known. During the late 1950’s, that corner was the epicentre of Toronto’s flesh trade, surpassing even the infamous Jarvis district. 

     Terry’s mothers' place was not the only residence on our block that sported a red light in the window, but I can testify from personal experience that it was the nicest little whorehouse on the street.

Reinventing The Wheel

        My Dad grew up on the bald Saskatchewan prairies, son of pioneers. It was an isolated existence with few accessible amenities and if you couldn’t make or repair something yourself, you had to do without.  Family lore has it that even as a very young kid he was already coming up with weird contraptions he felt would be useful around the homestead. What these first innovations were or how useful they proved to be, I have no way of knowing. I can only vouch for what I have seen myself and heard from my mother and older sisters.

        Dad was not one to brag about his successful innovations but he sure enjoyed sharing a good laugh with the rest of the family as we reminisced over some of his more outrageous endeavours. My long-suffering mother did not really see the humour in these recollections because she was the one most adversely affected by his flights of fancy.  My sisters and I would split our sides laughing when Dad told the story of how, in 1937, he brought electricity to a log cabin he had just finished building near Cold Lake, Alberta, but Mom would sit stern faced and was not at all amused. 

        It seems that somehow an old 6-volt generator had come into Dad’s possession -probably salvaged from one of the many cars that in Depression years had been stripped of their motors and converted into horse drawn Bennett buggies.  Dad had a lot of time on his hands that winter so he thought he might have a go at using it to rig up some electric lights. If he could make them work in their little dwelling it would be a first in their neck of the woods.

        The problem was how to power the generator. He was familiar with wind turbines. There had been a few of them back on the prairies, but that was not a practical idea in the still deep woods where they now lived. There were no fast flowing streams nearby so waterpower wasn’t an option either. For a time he was stymied but he did eventually come up with a plan. He knew that his idea might not be all that well received by my mother so he waited for just the right moment to spring it on her.  One morning he found Mom cleaning the soot out of the oil lamp chimneys, a job she hated, and figured the time was right. He seated himself at the table across from her and began pleading his case.  He opened with, “If my idea works out, you won’t have to do that for much longer.”

        As he described what he had in mind, Mom’s jaw started to drop in disbelief and by the time he finished twenty minutes later her mouth hadn’t closed.  When she could bring herself to speak she began her tirade.  “Let me see if I’ve understood you correctly. You propose to generate electricity using our pet dog running on a treadmill and because of the small amount of wire you have at your disposal it will be necessary to have that equipment located in the corner of my kitchen?”  She sobbed audibly and was just about to scream at him when suddenly a perverse notion came over her and she changed her mind. They had been storm bound for several days and cabin fever was taking its toll. Maybe watching Dad fail at yet another crazy project would be amusing and fill in some of those endless winter hours. “After all,” she thought to herself, “It’s not likely to really happen; he doesn’t have anything to work with and hell, there isn’t a light bulb within a hundred miles of here.” So, feigning enthusiasm, she agreed that he should give it a go.

        Dad began scrounging around the countryside looking for the bits and pieces he would require to build his little treadmill. He was looking for broken down equipment with suitable chains and cogs but things were not going too well for him.  A couple of days later, after he failed to find what he needed sticking out of the snow banks around his neighbours’ yards, he announced to Mom that he was giving up on the treadmill. She breathed a secret sigh of relief but as he continued to speak her anxiety was rekindled. He was moving on to Plan B.  “I’ve come up with a better idea,” he said.  “It might take up a little more room in the kitchen but it won’t take so many bits and pieces to build and I think it’ll work just fine.”

        He went on to explain that one his neighbours had donated a large wheel from a hay rake. It was made of heavy steel and cast iron and about five feet in diameter. “All I have to do is add some wood slats for the dog to run on and let the shaft of the generator rest on the rim of the wheel. The ratio should be just about right, providing the dog runs fast enough.” Searching for something, anything she could say that would forestall the madness, Mom asked, “But what if the dog doesn’t want to run?’  “Oh, he’ll run all right,” Dad replied, “I’m mounting the wheel on an angle so the dog will be running slightly uphill and anyway, I’ll have a harness on him so he won’t be able to get off.” 

        Over the next couple of days things began to take shape. The kitchen table was pushed against one wall to make room and the big wheel was installed. Even before he had attached the generator, Dad had his dog in training on the wheel. Initially there was a lot of barking, howling and whining and the dog would only run a few steps then flatten down and remain in that position while the wheel returned him to bottom of the circle and rocked him uselessly back and forth. However Dad’s inventing skills were only surpassed by his animal training ability so it wasn’t long before he had the dog trotting like standard bred racehorse and the big wheel spinning like a top.  A few meaty treats suspended from the ceiling and just out of the dog’s reach had done the trick. 

        He got the generator hooked up to the wheel easily enough but finding suitable light bulbs was another matter. They might have ordered a couple from the Eaton’s catalogue but that would have involved money and they didn’t have any. The only useful purpose that publication had served in the last few years had been in the outhouse. That didn’t stop Dad. He reasoned that a light bulb was just a jar with a glowing wire inside so why not make his own?  He needed some really fine wire to make the glowing filament for the inside of the jar and short pieces cut out of the mesh on the chicken pen seemed to fill the bill. In fact, when he connected his first prototypes up to the generator and elbowed the dog into action, they lit up like the real thing. The only problem was that after a few seconds the thin wire would burn out and he would have to try again. Despite several days of experimenting with different jars and wires he was about ready to give up. The only fun he was having with his new contraption was when he tricked his curious neighbours into holding the ends of the lead wires. He would then give the wheel a spin and it would shock the hell out them.

        He was just about to dismantle the apparently useless apparatus when inspiration struck. It occurred while Mom was ministering to her brother, my Uncle Jack. He had a huge boil on his leg and Mom was applying an age-old technique to relieve it. She poured boiling water into a small glass, emptied it and then quickly cupped the open end of it over the offending abscess. As the glass cooled a vacuum formed and Uncle Jack sighed with relief as the core of the boil was drawn out and the corruption spilled into the glass. “Vacuum,” Dad thought to himself, “There has to be a vacuum in the jars. If there is no air the filaments won’t burn out.”  He had no way of knowing that Edison had run into the same problem when he invented the light bulb and had corrected it in the same manner he was considering.  (Mentes Magnae Pariter Cogitant)

        I won’t pretend that I know how Dad created the vacuum or maintained it in his crude jars and bottles but I have it on good authority that for a brief period during the winter of 1937 a strange glow emanated from the windows of a little log cabin and lit up a snow covered clearing in the backwoods of Alberta.