A few steps from the subway with trolley tracks beside it, the parkette, as it’s called, is a little green oasis in the urban landscape. The ceremony marked its renaming to the Ed & Anne Mirvish Parkette. Mrs. Mirvish attended the ceremony.
“Both of them are icons in this city,” said Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone.
Ed passed away last year at the age of 92, just before his 93 birthday. Like more than half the current residents of Toronto, he came from another country.
Born in Virginia in 1914 to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Mr. Mirvish came to Canada with his family in the 1920s. His father, who died when Ed was only 15, had a grocery store which Mr. Mirvish dropped out of school to manage. He later turned it into a dry cleaner, but this didn’t fare too well and he got a job as produce manager for Loblaws founder Leon Weinstein.
Mr. Mirvish opened Honest Ed’s soon after. It wasn’t the light bulb- bedazzled landmark it is today, but it did have a sign no value-minded shopper could resist.
“Name your own price! No reasonable offer refused!”
On the day it opened a mob of shoppers crammed to get in. It later grew to the size of an entire city block.
David Racette-Campbell was in the park that day watching the renaming ceremony. He had heard about Honest Ed’s back in Saskatoon before he even came to Toronto.
“I’d seen it on websites as a sort of legend, having that certain something special kind of a place, you know.”
“We go there all the time,” he said, referring to himself and his young son, Ocean, who he was carrying in his arms. Honest Ed’s is one of his son’s favourite places to hang out, he said.
“Second only to Ontario Place,” he added.
“There isn’t anybody in the city of Toronto that doesn’t know of Honest Ed’s,” said Leonard Lombardi, president and CEO of Chin International Radio.
Mr. Lombardi worked at the store as a kid and used to shop there with his parents. He remembers Ed well.
“He was just one of these great colorful individuals who did more than just conduct a business, he really kind of just shared his whole life experience while serving his community. He brought so much more to it than just selling dry goods and foods.”
Mr. Lombardi describes Mr. Mirvish as one of Toronto’s founding fathers who helped create the city.
“Ed was one of the first immigrants to Toronto and virtually all the things that he did were untested and untried so he was like a pioneer in so many ways. He was trying new things and attempting to start a business that would serve his community and he was a phenomenal success at it. It’s those kinds of leaders, those kinds of pioneers, that really set the example for a can-do attitude in Toronto”
But it wasn’t because of his retail-revolution, discount department store that the theatres of Broadway in New York City dimmed their lights on the day of Ed’s funeral. That is an entirely different legacy all together.
In 1962 Mr. Mirvish bought the Edwardian Royal Alexandra Theatre, built in 1907. Although it was about to be demolished, he fixed it up, turned it into a classy venue and started bringing big acts to town.
He bought and sold another theatre and then in 1993 built the Princess of Wales Theatre, the largest new theatre in North America. Soon the Mirvishes were producing or co-producing the biggest Broadway acts in Toronto; shows like The Lion King, Mamma Mia!, The Producers, and Hairspray. The pair is credited with fostering an arts renaissance that put Toronto on the live theatre map and revitalized the community.
It’s the kind of story parents tell to their children to remind that what hard work and big dreams can achieve. The store and theatres Mr. Mirvish left behind stand as living testimonies not only to his determination but to his colour and vibrancy.
The plaque unveiled at the parkette that day tells Ed and Anne’s story in a few words and mentions something else they were famous for: Ed’s annual and free public birthday parties attended by thousands and giving free turkeys to thousands of families at Christmas time.
It’s a story Deputy Mayor Pantalone hopes Torontonians will always remember.
“The people who follow us will only be as good as the memories they bring of the memories of the present and the past,” he said
“This is to help them to remember.”
