Prelude

Tempted to believe that I was born on June the first 1960 when the Bohemian Embassy Coffee House opened in Toronto, I humbly admit having been born twenty seven years earlier, around the time Hitler came to power. It was an ugly time.

The only serious skill which I had demonstrated in school was an uncanny ability to imitate teachers. With that I became addicted to the sound of laughter among my peers. It is easy to love an audience which expresses its love for you first. By the time high school was over I seriously considered acting as a career choice. This was a bit silly. My parents were staunch evangelical, Bible-believing, fundamentalist Christian folk who had had moral contortions over the acquisition of a radio. After all the big three (the world, the flesh and the devil) would be entering our very home. On the other hand it was a good idea to keep an ear out for the arch candidate for the Anti-Christ Award, namely Adolph Hitler. When war broke out in1939 our puritanical family got a radio.

As a footnote to the above I remember reading a book which pretty well proved that Hitler was the anti-Christ and Hideki Tojo the Premier of wartime Japan was the Beast all mentioned in the Apocalypse (The Book of the Revelation in the Bible) Unfortunately I read the prophesy book in 1946. Both the Anti-Christ and the Beast were dead and no sign of Jesus. So much for Biblical prophesy. It is pretty obvious that the Apostles themselves believed that Jesus would return in their lifetimes. The End of the World sketch in Beyond the Fringe has the leader saying, “Never mind lads…same time tomorrow, we must get a winner one day.”

It was a giant leap from getting a radio to getting a career as an actor. Pat Boone was not around yet and no self respecting born-again Christian would appear on a theatrical stage or one of those disgusting movies you could catch for a nickel at the local Odeon. Much later Pat would make it OK. I had lacked the foresight to be born post Pat Boone instead of pre. As it happened I found the secular world warm and accommodating, full of decent people who wanted everyone to win. I had taken an ill fated trip some years prior in an attempt to get into religious films and/or radio and television. I went to Muskeegon Michigan to talk with the head of Gospel Films but that didn’t look promising. On to Chicago and the Moody Bible Institute’s two radio stations, WMBI (W plus Moody Bible Institute) and WDLM (W plus Dwight L Moody). I was shagged and did a bad audition…thankfully.

It is of interest to note that some fundamentalist Christians as late as the 1950’s argued about casting a vote. If you were already a citizen of Heaven, why would you participate in the dirt of earthly politics? Had not St. Paul said, “Come ye out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord”? Now that the Christian Right has voting clout in the USA such talk would be heresy.

My parents of course would never let me attend the local or any other movie house. When I worked up the courage to sneak off, I had to deal with the guilt of attending and occasionally the added guilt of lying, two sins for the price of one deed.

Another source of guilt was my failure to communicate with my friends the saving grace of Jesus Christ with the result that a whole schoolyard of my chums at Howard Public School would most likely end up thrashing around in the lake of fire which the Deity, in his infinite mercy, had prepared for their eternal chastisement.

In High School I became a rather good mimic. I could imitate teachers inordinately well to the delight of my peers. In a sense I developed into a school clown. A good buddy and funnyman named Doug Chamberlain and I were dared to join the Drama Club at Toronto’s Humberside Collegiate Institute. The drama coach was Duncan Green, a wonderful director and as it turned out later a very successful educator. He became a High School Principal, Head of the Toronto Board of Education, Head of the University of Toronto Extension and first assistant to the Deputy Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario.

Doug Chamberlain joined the cast of My Fur Lady a revue which had started at McGill University and was directed by a very young Brian MacDonald. The two of us having done Our Town and The Night of January the Sixteenth at High School worked together at the Charlottetown Summer Festival in Mavor Moore’s production of The Ottawa Man. Doug went on to a fine theatrical career centered at the Shaw and Stratford Festivals.

Saturday afternoons could be agony for kid whose buddies were all at the movie matinee. Admittedly those afternoons were as ritualistic as a church service. Friends planning to meet somewhere or at the Theatre itself, the popcorn, picking their seating, suspending disbelief and letting Hoppalong Cassidy carry the viewer through a morality tale where he defends the poor, the weak and the dispossessed.

Fortunately my mother’s elderly former Sunday school teacher had come to live with us. Her name was Millie Best. She was a liberal Christian attending the United Church, what a shame. She had a radio in her room. She loved Opera and listened to the Metropolitan Broadcasts every Saturday afternoon. Nobody told me that Die Gotterdammerung was only for officionados.

There was a lady named Laura Hart who was a substitute teacher. She lived in our house for a while, helping my mother. My parents had toyed with odd healing and health philosophies and they had met Laura at a gathering of vegetarians. When Laura moved in beef and chicken disappeared from the family menu. I soon learned that Mom and Dad were terrified of losing Laura from kicks under the table I received for the mere mention of meat.

This lady knowingly or unknowingly did me a huge favour. She introduced me to live theatre. Children’s plays were presented from time to time at Eaton Auditorium, things like Rumplestiltskin, Cinderella and Snow White. Movies of course were a no no. Perhaps it had something to do with celluloid but then that couldn’t be true because certain religious films were occasionally presented quite brazenly in our very own church. Suffice it to say Laura won my parents permission to take me to a play. A kids’s play to be sure but it was live theatre and I was entranced.

It couldn’t possibly have occurred to me that some time in the future I would be on stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in my all time favourite show “Beyond the Fringe.”

My longest lived mutually sustained friendship began in kindergarten. Richard Clarke had a stammering problem but fortunately he was a big kid which probably lessened the cruelty of his peers. Rich was gifted. He was an excellent student because he could focus. He could cut out the noise. At the end of high school he graduated with the highest marks in the history of education in the province of Ontario. His parents had had the foresight to get him a chemistry set when quite young. It gave him unique status and an interest in science. Sunday afternoons often saw us listening to the New York Philharmonic as it was then on Radio, deep in discussion about something we had just read.

At the end of high school parental disapproval of my attending a group called “The Young Canada Players” caused me to postpone entry into the acting profession so I tried the Dominion Business College, Toronto Teacher’s College and finally Radio and Television Arts at the Ryerson Institute. By that time my sister had become a missionary with HCJB the Christian radio station broadcasting from Quito, Ecuador. My parents had grudgingly approved of Ryerson believing that God might be calling me to the wonderful world of Gospel Radio. The thought in retrospect usually interferes with my digestion.

In 1958 I started bugging Marjory Hand, the employment lady at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for any kind of work and I finally got it. I became a copy boy in the National Television Newsroom of the CBC. I was so old by that time that they kindly referred to me as a copy clerk or more technically Editor D class. The word editor became useful when seeking further employment. Copy boy does not lend weight to an application.

In the TV News Department I met a rogue’s gallery of wonderful characters, newsmen and women, who in many cases had hauled themselves up by the boot straps. Some had even been copy boys. Because I had had a broad interest in many things, I gradually learned that I was better informed than many of my superiors. I had come across a general knowledge test which had been given to graduates of several world class universities. I got one point better than the Oxford average which had been the best scorer among such institutions as Harvard, Yale and Princeton. I duplicated the test on the CBC’s trusty Gestetner machine and passed it around. The results among the staff made me feel, temporarily at least, like a genius.

Having barely graduated from grade thirteen in high school, I now saw myself as a non-academic intellectual. By switching shifts in the TV newsroom, I took a night course in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Absolute truth and/or ultimate reality was or possibly were, what I was after but not necessarily in that order. One needs to start small. I soon learned that my philosophy course didn’t make me into an academic intellectual but I learned some neat stuff along the way.

I came to the conclusion that Absolute Truth was unknowable. It bore some resemblance to the word Utopia in that Utopia was unachievable but that didn’t prevent folks from trying to improve. True democracy can never be achieved but that doesn’t mean we should abandon it. Because science doesn’t know everything, doesn’t mean that science knows nothing. The ultimate unknowability of Absolutes should not deter us from the pursuit of Truth or from seeking a better and more useful description of things. In theory at least science loves the truth so devoutly that she will accept no absolutes lest new evidence tomorrow alters what we think we understand today. That gives everything outside of simple arithmetic an element of uncertainty be it ever so miniscule. And because I am arithmetically challenged there is a great deal of uncertainty in my own calculations in that field.

The First Edition

One of my fellow copy clerks in the Tv News Department had some sort of a problem with the pretentiously named Celebrity Club located across the street from the CBC on Jarvis Street. He had some financial resources and would equal whatever investment the rest of us might make in forming a new club. He organized a meeting in the Newsmagazine office of all interested parties in the newsroom. As we filed in he turned to me and said, “Don, will you chair the meeting?” I was aghast and totally unprepared. “Hey, this is your idea,” I said but he prevailed because of a certain disarming shyness.

“What kind of a club do you want?” I began. Silent blank stares were the responses. Hating the sound of dead air, I began to extemporize. Fortunately I had visited a private house in the west end owned by the Mills family. Harry Mills had been president of the High Park Tennis Club and after playing tennis people would gather at the Mill’s for coffee, cookies and music from Harry’s enormous collection of classical records. Sometimes guests would sing or play one of the many musical instruments available. It was a modern version of the nineteenth century salon. Conversation was always of the highest order and stimulating. I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Dr. Nicholas Bruchovsky for the introduction to the Mills' household. It was the model for what would become the Bohemian Embassy Coffee House. At that meeting I began to describe a somewhat commercial version of what was happening regularly at the Mill’s place. Everyone nodded a kind of approval and the meeting was adjourned.

The next morning the guy who had asked me to speak for him said that my description wasn’t what he wanted. I said, “Fine, next time chair your own meeting.” Ted Morris, who was national syndication editor at the time overheard the exchange and said that the ideas I had expressed the night before were as valid that morning. “What do we need Larry for?” We could go ahead ourselves.

Ted Morris was an eminently practical fellow. Out of a solidly Scotch Presbyterian background he always saw that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. At that point all I wanted to do was talk but I was more than willing to become Ted’s right hand man while he made the practical and fortunately incremental decisions. “Where should we look for a venue?” he would ask. I figured it should be within shouting distance of the University and that’s where we looked

The Bohemian Embassy opened its door on June the first, 1960. I had bought two fourteen cup percolators made of cheap aluminum at Eaton’s College Street department store and I had two hot plates, one of which immediately died when I plugged it in. I had never made coffee before. I counted foolishly on Ted’s wife Gail. She said, “Sorry, Ted and I just drink tea.” We had bought some cheap plastic throw away cups which gradually assumed Henry Moore shapes when the coffee exceeded 200 degrees fahrenheit. They just couldn’t take the heat. And the coffee acquired a curious chemical taste. We only operated on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday because I was terrified about what we would do if we had a really big crowd.

The name "Bohemian Embassy" was coined by a lady in the CBC costume department. She applied it to a Beatnik Pad occupied by three aspiring writers, David Harriman, Warren Wilson and Michael John Nimchuk. It was located upstairs at 590 Yonge St. Donald Sutherland had lived there and painters Bob Hedrick and Rick Gorman. When I first heard Bohemian Embassy, I knew that had to be our name. Later when I reminded the costume lady of her genius, she had no recollection. 590 became a kind of annex to the coffee house. I lived there myself for a while.

Three other partners were involved and they pitched in. There was Peter Oomen, another copy clerk, David Harriman , an editor C class like Ted and Steven Thomas Quance, a shipper. Paint the walls with old fashioned whitewash. Paint the floor dark red. Leave the ceiling, joists darkened with age.

We were located at number seven Saint Nicholas Street on the third floor. We were told that the building had been the stable for the city’s mounted police force years before and to be sure there were a pair of barn-like doors at the street end of the room and a large wooden beam extending out from above them, where a pulley had been attached to bring up hay for storage. We were in a real loft. It was in downtown Toronto. Saint Nicholas Street is a laneway located half way between Yonge and Bay streets running north from Wellesley, just far enough up to be intriguing and not far enough to be dangerous.

The newsroom had what was known as a spirit duplicator. If one was terribly careful, he could get about 120 copies from a single master. I wrote out a notice telling the world of our existence three times on a single master so that when I cut the copies up, I had three hundred and sixty notices. I would take bundles of them and distribute them to Fraternity and Sorority Houses around the University of Toronto. As fans poured out of Varsity Stadium after a football game, I would approach groups of them and ask, “Would you like some subversive literature?” It worked.

For our opening night Ted Morris knew a jazz drummer named Paul Neary who brought along a colleague named Brian Westwood. Brian played flute, saxophone and clarinet. The duo quickly became a quartet and played every Saturday night from midnight until 3 am for the better part of six years. The Westwood quartet became the longest continuing element in the life of the first Bohemian Embassy. If you are running with a winner, why change?

Also on that evening was Karen James and Bob Wowk, two excellent performers from Toronto’s folk community. Our contact with the folk music subculture was John Higgins who later changed his name to Sean O’Huigin a well known name in Canadian poetry.

Strangely enough I had still clung to elements of my religious indoctrination long after I had abandoned church attendance. By age nineteen I found sermons hard to take. You couldn’t ask questions. The Bible was an unassailable authority. The person using it by extension was unassailable. For a while I avoided Sunday morning sermons and served lunch at the Scott Mission on Spadina Avenue. Nine years later in mid 1960 I went to the offices of the Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship to inquire if they might be interested in taking over an evening once a week at the Bohemian Embassy. They indicated a considerable lack of interest. I struggled my way to agnosticism within a couple of years and have been grateful to IVCF for their apathy. Now I am positively Jeffersonian about the separation of Church and State of Religion and Government.

I gave the payments for the folk talent to Sean who in turn passed it on to its proper destinations. I learned that Sean believed so much in the Bohemian Embassy that he was sweetening the payments by adding money from his own meager salary as a copy clerk.

I was still working at CBC TV News. When I did a Sunday shift, I would quite regularly get to write bulletins, which would be read by Larry Henderson or Earl Cameron on the CBC National News broadcast.. Occasionally I wrote close to a third of the entire script. The lineup editor would assign me the work and the other lads on the rewrite desk just had a little less to do. Only very rarely did the editor hand back anything for another trip through the typewriter. I kept a copy of each contribution, until I had an impressive file of everything I had done.

I still felt insecure about writing. In grade thirteen English Composition I got 43 at the Christmas examinations and 17 at Easter. I was asked to leave the class three weeks before the departmental exams and I was never a discipline problem. The fact that I got first class honours in the deparmentals didn’t cure my insecurities about writing. I did finally feel OK about radio and television writing but have avoided the printed page like the plague until now.

Although the Bohemian Embassy was not a good place to rely on for income, prospects were quite rosey. If I was going for an upgrade in TV News, it might as well be now. I presented the file to the Editor in chief, Larry Duffy. He was extraordinarily apathetic about my contributing to the Sunday Night National. I don’t believe he opened the file. I would not be promoted from a D Class Editor to a C, at least not in the foreseeable future. I quit. Within a year I was back at CBC as a freelance writer, embarking on my first TV series.

It happened thus-wise. Singer Tommy Common was an old high school mate of mine. He had been given the anchor position on a TV series called rather sincerely ‘Youth 60’. It was supposed to be aimed at High Schoolers and the year was appropriately 1960. Clever. Tom’s co-anchors were a couple of young people with gigantic IQ’s and the accompanying academic personalities. The writing was anything but breezy or warm. Tom told me of attending a promotional visit to the combined junior and senior assembly at Harbord Collegiate (High School). Before introducing the trio of TV personalities he made the mistake of asking the assembled, “How many of you have seen Youth 60 in television?” Tommy reported to me that there wasn’t a single hand raised.

The CBC knew that something seriously had to be done and Tom asked me to submit a proposal. I had known Bonnie Brennan of the Children’s TV Department and she would be one of the judges. I might have a chance. Then I learned that Dave Harriman, a colleague and C class editor in the TV News Department was submitting a proposal. Ann Sutton, his girlfriend was in place as the script assistant on the proposed series. I told Dave that I knew enough about the inner workings at CBC to realize that he would be writing the series next year. Over his protests I opted out and gave him a few pages I had been working on.

All worked out as I had prophesied. A year later Dave came to me and said, “I’m going to be fired.” But I think I can swing the writing duties in your direction. He introduced me to the Producer, a marvelous Brit named Denny Spence. Denny’s wife was Barbara Bryne whom many of you will have seen as Mozart’s mother-in-law in the film Amadeus. I told Denny there were a number of reasons why he should avoid hiring me. I was a Bach freak, not a good start for a Dance Party. What I didn’t know about the currently popular music filled libraries. Then I took Denny to what was by then a thriving Bohemian Embassy and got the job.

That’s when the trouble started. How do you write a television series? Fortunately Dave bequeathed me all his old scripts. I saw that certain things happened at certain times but there were strange hieroglyphics which crossed the whole page at several times in the show, mystery words like SFX. and CML BRK. These lines were overlined and underlined so they had to be important. I hung around the control room a lot for the first couple of shows until I learned.

When the Bohemian Embassy got its very own telephone, Ted Morris suggested that it would be a real public relations coup if we were to be listed in the yellow pages under Consulates and Foreign Representatives. Ted received a telephone call from someone at the Bell asking if we should be listed under Consulates and Foreign Representatives. How Ted kept from laughing, when he said, “Yes” I do not know. He didn’t even use an accent. The day the Directory came out was a particularly slow day for news. We got mentions all across Canada and later in the New York Times, the New Yorker Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, McLeans Magazine, and Time Magazine.

Our personal contacts at both CBC TV News and counterparts at CTV didn’t hurt. After a few more years at CBC including a stint as Station Manager of the CBC outlet in the arctic at Frobisher Bay, Ted would be Head of Public Relations in Western Canada for Air Canada. I feel a huge debt of gratitude to Ted Morris. Without him the Bohemian Embassy would never have existed.

We were not the first. There was a coffee house in Toronto in the late 1800’s. There had been famous coffee houses in London England regularly attended by Samuel Johnson, his biographer James Boswell, the composer Henry Purcell, writer Oliver Goldsmith, the philosopher John Locke and other contemporary luminaries. In Leipzig, Germany Johann Sebastian Bach played his secular compositions at Gottfried Zimmerman’s coffee house. He even composed a Coffee Cantata. Bach by the way is my all time favourite guy. If his music was bath water I would soak in it every day and get pruney.

The House of Hambourg was the pioneer in the fifties renaissance in Toronto. Clement Hambourg emerged from a family of internationally famous musicians. His father had the Hambourg conservatory of music which was absorbed into the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. One brother was an internationally famous pianist living on London England. Another was a fine cellist. Clem started the House of Hambourg as a strictly late night Jazz outlet.

A folk artist named Greg Curtis was involved with two fairly short lived operations, one on Avenue Road and the other on Bloor near Bay Street. At the corner of Avenue Road a near Pears Avenue a British born entrepreneur named John Morely opened a coffee house dedicated to folk music. Howard Mathews, who would later open Toronto’s first soul food restaurant, namely The Underground Railroad, had a place called the First Floor Club. They did try a couple of literary events but Howard’s heart was with jazz. His wife after all was Salome Bey, an internationally famous vocalist in jazz and other related genres.

The Half Beat on Avenue Road, owned by John McHugh and his wife Marilyn, jazz enthusiasts, would later transmute into a place on Yorkville Street called the Pennyfarthing. As a promotional stunt John would drive around the environs of Yorkville on his own pennyfarthing bicycle. I know they are the devil to ride.

Just before the Bohemian Embassy opened a fellow named Peter Ellis opened a folk music club on Scollard Street. Peter in a great show of generosity came down to our operation to wish us well. I was touched. Sadly his Clef Club would not last nearly as long as it should have.

For the sake of accuracy I should also mention The Minc Club, the name derived from Music Incorporated. It was the only place I had visited prior to the Bohemian Embassy and I hated it. The owners were from Detroit and I later heard that drugs and prostitution were involved. I don’t believe they were dedicated to coffee. If liquor licenses weren’t so tough to get they would have instantly adopted night club status. I had a great deal of trouble seeing there because the lights were so low. To my astonishment well over half the male patrons were wearing dark glasses. How they managed not to bump into things remains a mystery to this very day. Everyone seemed to be hipper than thou.

Within a year or two of the Bohemian Embassy opening a bunch of other places came into existence. The Mouse Hole was owned by Bernie Fiedler and his wife Pat. Bernie would later open the Riverboat. He got into the talent management business. Teamed up with Bernie Finkelstein and managed for a time such stars Gordie Lightfoot, Murray McLaughlin and Bruce Cockburn. The Purple Onion was owned by Steve Witkin whose brother Barry had a good career as a writer. The Gate of Cleve was owned by my friend Joe Lewis who had a good career doing promotion for the National Ballet and other notable arts institutions. Joe had a folk music show on CJRT radio for about twenty years. The folk music community came to rely on that show as the folk music clubs faded away. The Fifth Peg was located on Church Street and had the involvement of Marty Onrot and Ken Danby who would become one of Canada’s greatest painters. Ken was a regular attendee at the Bohemian Embassy particularly when he was dating singer Karen James. Most of those coffee houses died before the Bohemian Embassy closed its doors. The Riverboat continued after the first edition of the Bohemian Embassy closed thanks to Bernie Fiedler and such talent as Lightfoot, McLaughlin and Cockburn.

As an aside it might amuse you dear reader that Vernor Graeber the owner of the Inn on the Parking Lot was sued by the owners of a well known posh hotel called The Inn on the Park for in part stealing their name. Pierre Burton and several other journalists had some fun defending Vernor’s clever take. The lawsuit was sheepishly withdrawn.

In some cases ignorance is an advantage. Because I knew so little, I was open to suggestion. I made myself as accessible as possible. I would listen to anyone, because I felt my own lack of knowledge so keenly. Fortunately we had a large and quite useful floor space. With difficulty we were able to premier thirty small production theatrical shows in six years. At the barn door end we had a low stage twelve feet deep and twenty feet wide. It would be used for seating when the portable stage in the centre, a four by eight riser, was being used by solo and duo acts. We had a series of shows called The Village Revue. In it the actors would walk through the audience to get to a sketch or monologue at the other stage. It turned out to be a somewhat exciting advantage, though a little dangerous.

When it came to our main thrust Folk Music was it. Guitar and banjo sales in Toronto were going through the roof. Vivian Muhling was promoting concerts at Toronto’s illustrious Massey Hall with such folk music giants as Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Josh White and Theodor Bickell. Prince Philip’s acknowledged favourite folk group, The Travelers were carrying Canadian folk music all the way to Moscow. Yes, and they played at the Bohemian Embassy.

At the behest of Peter Ellis I went to the Clef club to hear his most prized performers. They had become a quiet legend in the folk music sub-culture. It was love at first hearing. Though I coveted their act, I couldn’t dream of taking them away from Peter, so I recommended that people in my audience go up to the Clef Club to catch the magic of Mary Jane and Winston Young. Unfortunately for the Clef Club the Youngs went off to Great Britain where they played folk clubs from London to Edinburgh and on The British Broadcasting Corporation, both radio and TV. Because of certain leftist connections Mary Jane and Winston could not avail themselves of opportunities in the USA. McCarthyism was not dead.

The Clef Club unfortunately died. I wrote to Mary Jane and Winston in England asking them to take over every Friday night at The Embassy. On their return they invited me over for dinner. I had the strange feeling that they wanted to know me better before making a decision. I didn’t know if they were thinking of old labour/management problems or whether they just wanted to feel comfortable. They have since assured it was the latter. I still adore them. They played one night a week for about three years. They played to full houses from their first to their last performance. Winston was a crane operator. He even worked on the world’s tallest free standing structure, the CN Tower. He and Mary Jane went off to Sri Lanka to work on a Dam, which was part of a Canadian aid project.

Ted Shafer was another performer who sustained a long and healthy run. In self mockery he claimed that the reason he was so hugely successful at sing-alongs was that his own vocal equipment was a bit spiteful. I admired his ability to make audiences feel good. Ted hosted the very first Mariposa Folk Festival. He was sorely missed when he went south to be a professor of Industrial Psychology in California.

Very early on, a tall slim pretty young woman came to the Bohemian Embassy. She had come from Chatham, Ontario and played an instrument, which I believe was called an octophone. She played it left handedly. Her voice was very distinctive. Her name was Sylvia Fricker. She was soon performing as part of our literary reading series between the two scheduled poets. She also did many evenings as a solo act. She played at many other folk music venues and while at the Village Corner Club she encountered Ian Tyson. Ian had worked as a guitarist for Don Franks to supplement his income as a graphic artist. By that time Ian had developed as a strong vocal act on his own.

Ian and Sylvia came to me one day and asked about taking over every Wednesday evening. They tentatively suggested sharing the admission income on a fifty fifty basis.
I said, “No, I think it should be sixty forty in your favour.” I believe they were genuinely surprised but refused my offer in favour of the even split. It was obvious that they regarded the financial health of the Bohemian Embassy as important. We’re all in it together. And did they ever work on their presentation! Every week they were just a little bit better, a little bit more professional. After something like a year of Wednesdays, they went south, were signed by Albert Grossman who had Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and other folk super stars in his stable of talent. A Carnegie Hall debut followed and a very successful TV series on the CTV network and a couple of series on the CBC both radio and TV.

A folk duo came by with the amazingly uninventive name, “The Twotones,” Terry Whelan and a guy named Gordon Lightfoot. Gordie also worked as one of the square dancers on a very successful TV series called “Country Hoedown.” Soon he would branch out on his own. Folk in those days were very careful to separate their music from Country Music. But where does Bluegrass music claimed by the Folk community leave off and Country music begin? I believe that a certain snobbery was involved. In the early days Gord had a little touch of Country in his delivery. I admit to having had an unfortunate touch of snobbishness myself in that regard. Despite the slight aversion that I felt for his style of music, his performances were invariably well received. But even better from my point of view, he proved to be a very likable person. I visited him and his then wife in their home and noticed that Gord put away a lot of beer. Later I spent an evening with Gordie and Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins. We went bar hopping on Yonge Street until I could take no more. They were obviously just starting.

Gord seemed to tap into his Celtic roots and lost his countryish twang. He improved hugely as a lyricist and turned into one of Canada’s most dynamic and creative performers, a credit to his profession. If I’m not mistaken, Ian and Sylvia, who had been signed by the great Albert Grossman, trumpeted Gordie’s talents and Albert signed him on.

Steele’s Tavern on Young Street provided Gord with much needed income and a reliable place for him to hone his talent. Mr. Steele became a friend. Later Gord found frequent employment at Bernie Fiedler’s Riverboat in Yorkville. Bernie for a while managed Gord’s burgeoning career.

The last time I talked with Gord, he told me he had been thankfully off the booze for a number of years. I can’t help wondering if the near death stomach trouble he had in Hamilton wasn’t the result of his life’s major problem. Gord came to the aid of the Mariposa Folk Foundation, when it was decided to return its festival activities to its original location namely Orillia, Ontario. It also happened to be Gordie’s home town.
The return was triumphant. Something very magical happened at that concert.

Some years prior to Mariposa’s return to Orillia, when Roy Wordsworth and I were Artistic co-directors of the Leacock Festival of Humour our Board of Directors asked us to approach Gord about doing a fun raiser for the Festival. Barry Harvey, Gord’s manager told me that he had to turn down all requests for Gord to do fund raisers. “He gets more requests than there are days in the year.” That in itself is a tribute to this talented man but the word ‘NO’ has to become a general rule.

Ruth Jones who with her husband Casey had founded the Mariposa Festival came in from Vancouver to catch Gord’s performance. She had included a young Gordon Lightfoot in the festival lineup forty years earlier. Ruth and her friend Estelle Klein received special and well deserved tributes the evening Gord and his group headlined the return of Mariposa to Orillia.

Estelle and Jack Klein were regulars at the Bohemian Embassy. Jack was a well known architect and Estelle would eventually become Artistic Director of the Mariposa Folk Festival in its salad days at the Toronto Islands. Estelle’s formal involvement with folk music began when she headed up the Toronto Folk Guild. It was a fraternal organization to promote interest in folk music and to protect the interests of its members. Estelle came to me one day with the suggestion that we stage a Hootenanny every Sunday evening and share the proceeds with the Guild. The series of evenings commenced.

Each performer at our Hootenannies got a maximum of three songs, no more. We jammed as many as three hundred patrons into a space which could only comfortably seat a hundred and fifty. A thoroughly delightful teen-aged girl who had been faithfully attending folk evenings brought her guitar to one of the Hoots. Her voice was crystalline. Apart from initial nervousness her delivery was heartfelt. I followed her every Sunday until I was sure she had a sufficient repertoire to handle a whole evening by herself. I booked her but because of her reluctance I had a standby in the form of Chick Roberts. She didn’t show up but I persisted and she finally did her first paid performance. Sharon Trostin, the girl in question, eventually became the Sharon part of Sharon, Lois and Bram.

For his part Bram Morrison was interested in an almost classical approach to folk material. This was right down my alley. I had been a Bach, Mahler and Sibelius freak for years and found Bram’s interest in folk material from the reign of Charles II to be intriguing. An itinerant folkie from England became an influential pal of Bram’s. His name was Adrian Harmon and the last I heard of him was that he had become chief musician with the Royal Shakespearean Company in his native land. Bram’s mastery of folk songs for children along with Sharon and Lois Lilienstein resulted in lots of recordings, concerts and a couple of TV series, richly deserved.

A kid named Mitch became a regular attendee at folk events. He was about fourteen at the time but looked sixteen. He had limited resources, so he collected cups, washed them and served coffee. He was such a likeable lad that I started to call Mitch Podolak my Jewish kid and he called me his Goy old man. We shared a lot of Chinese meals together. The painter Dennis Burton had recommended Henry’s Chinese Restaurant and it became a regular spot partly because it didn’t close until three in the morning.

Because I joined the Broadway replacement cast of the British Revue “Beyond the Fringe” Mitch took over the booking of folk music. By this time he must have really been sixteen. Before I left for New York, Estelle Klein told me about a new arrival on the Toronto folk scene called Joni Mitchell. Podolak knew about this phenomenal talent from Saskatchewan and after I left for New York he booked her. I finally heard her in a friend’s coffee house in Montreal. The friend was Gary Eisencraft. The coffee House was the New Penelope. The performance was devastatingly good. I was getting echoes of Debussy in the music and poetry was of a very high order indeed. Magical!

Young Mitch Podolak really knew what he was doing. After some work at CBC with Peter Gzowski, he went to Winnipeg and with a centennial grant from the Manitoba Government started the first Winnipeg Folk Festival. In a few short years it had become the largest festival of its kind on the continent. Mitch also organized the first Vancouver and Edmonton Festivals and several other similar cultural events. If I contributed anything to Mitch’s entrepreneurial skills, then I will admit to some pride in the matter. He has provided so much employment and encouragement to so many creative people that he deserves the Order of Canada at least.

Bob Dylan came to the Bohemian Embassy, through the good offices of Ed Cowan who later became a major mover and shaker in Canadian advertising and show business. I believe Dylan was about seventeen at the time and looked as if he had stuck his finger in a light socket and his hair hadn’t settled down. He wanted to attend a poetry reading and ours was the only game in town. The host of the evening announced that next week would be a poetry contest between a literary group from the Ryerson Institute and a selection of Bohemian Embassy regulars. The adjudicator would be Ron Evans of the Toronto Telegram newspaper. Dylan leaned over to me and quietly said, “Hey man, you can’t do that.” “Can’t do what?” was my questioning reply. “You can’t have a poetry contest Man, Poetry is life…Life is poetry,” he said. A retort that was quite unworthy of the later Dylan. I was sorely tempted to suggest that he must have just gotten that line fresh off the cob. I told him that all we were trying to do was to stir up a little apathy, because folks were staying away from poetry readings in droves. Besides the ancient Greeks had poetry contests and it worked out quite well for them.

Generously Dylan volunteered to sing. It would be his only chance. I told the organizer of the evening that a very promising young talent from New York City was willing to contribute a song or two. I was told that the events of the evening had been planned and the organizer seemed to resent the incursion on his authority, that I had indeed given him. Bob never sang at the Bohemian Embassy. Neither did Peter, Paul and Mary but they did drop by and enjoyed several evenings. Paul Stucky dated our own Carol Robinson for a while.

In all of the incarnations of the Bohemian Embassy I never once made a phone call or wrote a letter to anyone in the United States. It was not that I had any prejudice against US talent. It was because so many people in Canada were prejudiced against home grown talent even well into the 1980’s. Tom Paxton came to town for a large venue performance, heard about the Bohemian Embassy and dropped by. I was pleased and honoured to hire him. The same was true of a phenomenal guitarist named Eric Hord.

By way of pertinent diversion I should mention Happy and Barbara Bonnell, a mother and daughter combination who had a farm near Newmarket, north of Toronto. It was a modest place with an outdoor biffy. They had a llama, the only domesticated Barbary sheep in captivity, a monkey, a parrot, a large slobbery Saint Bernard and an assortment of other refugee fauna. Ian Tyson and a friend one day decided to cut the llama’s toenails. While being subdued the beast dug deep into one or more of its stomachs and did some projectile vomiting in the general direction of his persecutors. Thereafter every time Tyson appeared the animal would smack its lips, puff out its cheeks in a noisy preparation for an encore.

The Bonnells decided to sell the farm and move to Lakefield, just north of Peterborough. They needed to sink a well at the new location. They didn’t have the money. Ian Tyson, who thought of Happy Bonnell as a second mother, suggested that we use the Bohemian Embassy as a fund raising venue and stage an extravaganza. A tall very healthy looking gentleman showed up at the door. He could have been a basketball player or possibly football. He had been performing at a new club on Church Street called the Fifth Peg. He had heard about the fund raiser and wanted to help out. He put his name on the list of performers, Bill Cosby. I had a much better understanding of that great Old Testament Patriarch Noah when Bill ended his act.

Pierre Berton was doing an interview TV show at the time. It was produced by his manager Elsa Franklin. They had obviously been impressed with Bill’s talent and that of two other comics namely Stanley Myron Handleman and the Bohemian Embassy’s own Barrie Baldaro.

Some months after, an actor/writer friend named Roy Wordsworth and I went to New York for folk music and assorted other reasons. Roy and I were walking down Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village when we heard a blood curdling yell a foot and a half behind us. We turned and were instantly enveloped by Bill’s big hug. Not much time later we read in the newspaper that Bill had signed a contract with CBS to do a TV series with Robert Culp called “I Spy”. I seem to remember eighteen million bucks, a good start for Bill.

I knew that Bill had passed into the stratosphere. If I had been offered that kind of money, I would have been asking if they wanted me to be available at six in the morning or five. Could I have twenty minutes off for lunch or would they prefer fifteen. With large figure contracts like that you have to become a company. You need a manager and an accountant to keep an eye on him, secretaries to handle your mail and an office. I would never encounter this delightful and wonderfully talented man again. The death of his son was like a kick in the heart for those of us who knew Bill and the millions who intuited his warmth and kindness.

Most of the acts in the folk world were solo but one group came to us from Halifax, namely The Halifax Three, Richard Byrne, Pat Lacroix and Denny Doherty. They had a very well produced album on Columbia Records. Word had it that Columbia was trying to capture some of the audience devoted to the Kingston Trio on another label, hence the similarity in name. They added a local guitarist to their act. He was the crazy but loveable Zalman Yanovsky. Zally was far from being certifiable. He just had more energy than any three other guys had a right to. Zal and Denny Doherty went to New York together, where Zal joined with John Sebastian to form The Lovin’ Spoonful and Denny ended up as a founding member of The Mamas and the Papas.

There was a very gifted folk singer from England by the name of David Wiffen. He had a baritone voice that weakened the knees of lots of young women. Ian and Sylvia had great hopes that David might become a star performer. He did join Three’s a Crowd but their success was limited.

Amos Garret, who would later do that great guitar arrangement on Maria Muldaur’s Mid-night at the Oasis, joined with Jim McCarthy, Carol Robinson and Chick Roberts to form The Dirty Shames and played the Embassy before heading south. Carol and Amos lived for a while in Woodstock, New York, right next door to Bob Dylan’s The Band. I stayed with Carol and Amos when I directed a Revue in town.

The famous Woodstock Festival was a very recent memory at that time and the town was full of Folk, Blues and Rock musicians bent on participating in the back to the land movement. It amused me to see all these young and talented people with their lumberjack shirts, jeans and high cut boots trooping into the Joyous Lake restaurant for their macrobiotic lunch. Later, after sundown they filed in with equal enthusiasm to Deanie’s Bar for an evening of heavy drinking and heavy smoking. There was a hunk of city living these people just couldn’t leave behind. Besides it was after dark.

Albert Grossman the great talent manager and entrepreneur lived a Bearsville just a ten minute walk from Woodstock. You could tell he was the unofficial mayor of the area by the deference he received. Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, Ian and Sylvia and Gordon Lightfoot were all at one time members to his stable of talent. He came to Toronto when Ian and Sylvia got married. That was when I met Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. Jack and I got along swimmingly. Some time later when I was performing at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in Beyond the Fringe I went down to Greenwich Village and found Jack playing at one of the folk clubs. I was a non person until I mentioned Fringe and my involvement. He went through a remarkable change. I instantly became a somebody and by the way would it be possible to get him some complimentary tickets? “And by the way could you get five tickets? I have a couple of friends.”

Who have I forgotten? Bonnie Dobson, the Toronto folk singer, who would get a cover and article in Time Magazine, Noreen St. Pierre, who joined temporarily with Bob Wowk to form a very promising duo, Peter Kastner, the loveable actor, vocalist, song writer and banjo picker. Nancy White will have to wait for when I deal with a later edition of the Bohemian Embassy. There was Peter Wybourne, Jerry Goodfriend, Doug Brown, Ellen Lankin, Marg. Milligan, Klaas Van Graft, Gillian Mahafy, Larry Dyken, Dee Higgins, Chick Roberts and Eddie Sokolof, Larry Diashen and Alan McCrae. Old timer’s disease seems to have gotten to me, because I can conjure up dozens of faces but I can’t retrieve the names.

It is particularly frustrating, because I wish my readers had the privilege of hearing some of the also-rans, those some might call “The Beautiful Losers.” It is not that they themselves were losers. Folks who never heard them are the losers. They were beautiful performers, who because of lack of ambition or fear of abandoning themselves to a very shaky lifestyle or a host of other reasons, never really entered the highly competitive upper echelons of show business. On talent alone, they should have been household names.

Shortly after we opened The Bohemian Embassy my friend Dave Harriman asked me to join a group of actors to do a reading of a play called Oganvoy by Joe Maher. I could do a couple of Irish regional accents. It was an evening of literary stuff being put on at the First Floor Club by a group calling themselves Vocal Magazine. It was all new to me so my antennae were out for a learning experience. One man impressed me hugely, John Robert Colombo, then a post graduate student at the University of Toronto. His quiet responsiveness seemed to keep the event going. Other members of the Vocal Magazine hierarchy seemed primarily interested in chatting up the girls who had attended. John was constantly testing the mood of the audience, the crowd getting coffee and if the performers were in place and ready.

I invited him for coffee and a chat a couple of days later at the Bohemian Embassy. I believed it was time for a regular reading series, a weekly literary event for creative writers in the city’s subculture. John agreed. Avrom Isaacs, of the Isaacs Art Gallery had staged some readings but there was nothing regularly reliable. The Bohemian Embassy would change all that. John Robert Colombo had the know how and the vision.
He also knew personally just about everyone who could be considered a member of the literary subculture of Toronto.

I remember as the first of John’s reading series approached he asked me if I had access to sixteen millimeter film projector and as it happened I had. He said, “Can you have it here by eight o’clock.” I said that it would be possible and at the same time thinking that he was being overly cautious. Events normally started at nine in the evening. On the evening in question John arrived just before eight. “Where is the projector?” He queried. “I’ll get it shortly”, was my reply. “But you indicated that it would be here at eight.” My mental reaction was jurisdictional. Who’s the boss here? But I had made a commitment. I turned to John and said, “You’re right and I’m wrong. I’ll get it immediately.

On one occasion John decided to do a promotional mailing to all the people who signed the guest book at the door wishing just such a mailing. In those days and circumstances the envelopes were addressed by hand and licked before sealing. John needed volunteers. He asked me, George Miller and Milton Acorn. One o’clock was the time to assemble. George came in about two and mumbles something like, “I got held up man.” Milton arrived about four long after the job was done and told us he had just had a great swim at the Jewish Y. I could see that John was at a slow rolling boil. Sometimes the most talented of us lack the organizational ability or the personal responsibility needed for his or her own success.

John brought in a young Margaret Atwood or Peggy as everyone knew her. A sly smile
and amusement around her eyes made you believe that she knew more about you than made you totally comfortable. Her poems were intelligent, thought provoking. For my money her delivery enhanced the irony in what she was reading. Years later I was in London reading those delicious British newspapers, The Times, The Guardian or was it The Observer? The literary critic started by saying rather snobbishly he wouldn’t normally review a first novel but in the case of The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood of Canada he would. It was such a good read. Yeah Peg.

Traveling in Peru I found myself on a train next to an American woman crossing from Puno on the banks of Lake Titicaca to the old Inca capital of Cuzco. She seemed very intent on telling me how she managed to get grants for literary activities in New Jersey. “Have you ever heard of a writer named Margaret Atwood?” I queried. She exploded into ecstasies about Peggy’s writing. Yeah Peg!

When Peggy was doing post graduate work in Cambridge, Massachusetts I found myself in nearby Boston. I had her dormitory address and went by hoping for a visit but missed her. She got my note and called when she returned to Toronto. We had lunch and repeated it about once a year for the next three or four years, a Canadian and very antiseptic version of the play, Same Time Next Year. Years later Margaret Atwood benefited the Queen Street version of the Bohemian Embassy by launching her book Wilderness Tips there. Afterward she did a reading for the general public. We managed to squeeze about five hundred into the space.

A young High School student with doe eyes and the demeanor of an insecure faun kept coming regularly to the reading series. One day at Colombo’s bidding she mounted the stage and read as though she had been born to it. Gwendolyn McEwan had found her vocation. A CBC researcher came to one of Ray Souster’s workshops at the B.E. She heard Gwen read and booked her for one of Ross McLean’s network arts programs. I was very pleased when Gwen’s biographer, Rosemary Sullivan questioned me about the poet’s sadly triumphant life. She had me go over what she had written for the sake of accuracy as I saw it. Gwen left us a legacy, her considerable talent on the page.

A television Special on Gwen’s life was produced with a mockup of the Bohemian Embassy at the start. I donned the old turtle necked sweater I wore incessantly in those years and gave some introductory comments.

One day bombast burst in on the Bohemian Embassy in the person of Milton Acorn all full of eagerness and sweat. “I shout love!” he yelled and we heard him. His rough genius would rub off on a whole bunch of aspiring writers, George Miller (my personal favourite), Shaunt Basmagian, Ted Plantos and Sean O’Huigin. Milt was a hugely intense man given to rants about a lot of causes because he cared. Only rarely did I disagree. He could be intimidating. One bitterly cold evening Milt was on the warpath about some troubling situation. We were at the Wellesley Hospital corner on a bitterly cold night and I was beginning to think that I might not make it home. Every time I turned to go Milt cut off my avenue of escape. He was impervious to the elements. I was starting to ask myself if I could make it to the Hospital emergency department to have my extremities professionally thawed.

Question: Why did the Torontonian cross the road? Answer: To avoid meeting an acquaintance.

In Milton’s last years in Toronto I occasionally took the coward’s way out pretending not to see him on the other side of the street. You needed a healthy dose of psychic energy and no time commitments just to deal with the intensity of his presence. When he and Gwen McEwan broke up he stayed at my 590 Yonge Street flat. I was sincerely afraid he might attempt suicide or worse. Good old Al Purdy turned out to be the best antidote. He took Milt to his home in Ameliasburg. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Al’s wife putting up with Milt in that condition.

We lost Milton to Vancouver for a while and he sent me a letter in which he suggested it was my time to burst on the Canadian political scene triumphing leftist causes. He didn’t realize that as the ambassador of Bohemia, diplomacy was my game, not confrontation.
Reports from the west coast were positive. Milt had been welcomed into Vancouver’s literary subculture and was one of the people who started a newspaper called The Georgia Straight. Yeah Milt.

In 1968 after the first edition of the Embassy had closed, I was in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island working as an actor and in charge of the late night cabaret. It was Milt’s
home town. He was there. We had a huggy reunion and I booked him for a reading in the Cabaret Club. He showed up smelling like a distillery and disgraced himself and me into the bargain. I was sharing a house with Roy Wordsworth, Barrie Baldaro and Stuart Hamilton, of opera fame. We were doing Beyond the Fringe at the Confederation Centre. Milton in a state of high remorse entered the house, got confused and without knocking walked into Stuart Hamilton’s bedroom by mistake. Stuart must have been awakened by the apparition of Milton Acorn at the foot of his bed. His shocked and horrified voice filled the house. “Milton Acorn,” he shrieked, “You get out of this room, right now!”

Milt was mortified by what he had done the previous evening and begged for a chance to redeem himself. At his next appearance, he spent the first twenty minutes of the reading pouring out invective on the Tamarak Review. I believe I was the only other person in the place who knew what the Tamarak Review was. Tourists who had come to see Anne of Green Gables and the pleasant scenery looked quizzically at one another and did a lot of shrugging. Once he got into performing his own poems all was forgotten. He was like a heard of eloquence.

A certain tribute should be made to poet Jim Deale who accommodated Milton during a particularly trying time in Milt’s life in Toronto. I see Jim as a bit of a hero.

At the other end of the spectrum John Colombo introduced George Jonas to the Bohemian Embassy and vice versa. George at that time had developed a strong interest in motorcycles. He had his own muscle machine large and impressive. But George was a European sophisticate in manner, style and intellect. He gave the impression of being suspended somewhere between Gucci and Hell’s Angels. I had met Barbara Amiel when she was working at CBC for Ross McLean. George Jonas would introduce Barbara to the Bohemian Embassy and vice versa. That was of course before she would marry Conrad Black and become Lady Black of Cross Harbour.

After Milton died there was two day celebration of his life. It seemed that the entire literary subculture of Toronto showed up to pay tribute to the People’s Poet. There were readings at such placed as Grossman’s Tavern. Milt’s work and poems in his honour were read. The well known actor and founding member to the Perth County Conspiracy folk group led us through a thoroughly theatrical presentation of Milton Acorn life and work.

There was a heavy summer downpour in 1960, not many customers, when George Miller came up the Bohemian Embassy stairs, soaked and dripping. His poems were safely wrapped in plastic. “I just hitchhiked in from Vancouver and would like to read and could you spare five bucks?” I was knocked sideways by his creativity and his delivery. I have never heard anyone read better. After Milton Acorn moved on, George Miller became a kind of Poet Laureate at the Bohemian Embassy. In a later version of the B.E., I watched George enthrall an audience of at least five hundred. He was the greatest influence in any poetry writing I have ever done.

John Colombo brought us Sid Corman from the US and we did a fund raiser for Kenneth Patchen who was in dire straights. Michael Ondaatje, who later wrote The English Patient, Dennis Lee, the Alligator Pieman and Toronto’s first poet Lauriate, wooly and confrontational Al Purdy, the striking Louella Booth, Eli Mandell, Phyllis Gottlieb, David Humphrey, Dorothy Rath, Miriam Waddington. John even talked Jay McPherson out of her natural shyness for a reading. Raymond Souster not only participated but established a weekly workshop for aspiring poets on Monday nights for a while. I feel particularly honoured when I think of Ray. In addition to being a fine wordsmith, Ray is a particularly kind and sensitive man.

Eventually John Colombo had to relinquish the organizing of the reading series and was replaced by Dave Donnell and later by Victor Coleman. Vic also organized a film series with some interesting experimental material. I remember something about a Canadian premier of a Warhol film and some concern about censorship. When the first edition of the Bohemian Embassy closed, Victor was instrumental in getting “A Space” off and running.

For anyone who has aspirations to start a coffee House similar to the Bohemian Embassy, let me suggest curators for the individual subsections of the entertainment policy. If someone had issue with John Colombo as a for instance he or she could let off steam with me. If somebody found me to be particularly unattractive they might feel a loyalty to John and the reading series. The Bohemian Embassy as an institution would remain in tact. As long as the curator sees his function as rewarding and useful all will be well. Unfortunately it can be a depleting function because value judgements must be made and egos can be easily wounded. I remember that John wanted a percentage agreement to which I readily agreed. I saw John being what I considered to be over generous to the talent because I knew that snow, rain or a Stanley Cup hockey game could play hell with our income.

It would be remiss of me not to give special mention to Padraig O’Broin. He and his sweetheart Hazel Yake, both probably in their sixties faithfully attended the readings. Padraig was like a father to John Higgins who had lost his folks at a young age. Probably, because he thought it would please Padraig, John changed his name to Sean O’Huigin from which Higgins had been derived. In spite of his Irish Nationalist sentiments with which I disagreed, it was impossible not to love this quiet, generous man. For a considerable length of time he was sending out a mailing at his own expense. It reported on the upcoming literary events and encouraged attendance. It was a while before I knew he was doing it. Padraig looking formal in his greenish business suit with shirt and green tie seemed curiously out of place in a small sea of dark turtle necked sweaters but he was close to the heart of it all.

Padraig had spent a sizeable portion of his life looking after an ageing mother and Hazel was a Protestant so marriage was out. I just hope he and Hazel took some liberties. I know they loved each other. Not long after his mother’s death Padraig died, a great loss to all who knew him.

My High School career had been continually close to disaster but the educational system never killed my curiosity. The Beat Generation was tailor made for such as me. It was a time when it was OK to be a non-academic artist and/or intellectual. Academic credentials didn’t seem to matter. To be sure there was a lot of pretension. There were writers whose poetry or prose never appeared. There were painters whose canvases never showed. There were lots of European expatriots who were only too glad to inform us of what a cultural wasteland Canada was. A host of creative Quebecers plus Glenn Gould, Maureen Forrester, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Ian and Sylvia, Gord Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and a great company of equally talented Canadians have slowed such criticisms to a trickle.

On Stage

From time to time at the Bohemian Embassy we would set aside the folk and literary concerns for a theatrical turn of events. Early in our history a chap of British persuasion would come up the stairs and chat up Vivien Sternberg, the lady who took the one dollar admission which we tried to extract from everybody. Barrie Baldaro was all charm and would invest as much as twenty minutes to get past Viv’s amused and totally charmed countenance. I observed this over several weeks with some consternation because in addition to getting in free Barrie would criticize some of the performances. I had a choice, tell him to get lost or book him and see if he could do better. Something in me told me to let him prove himself as part of the next Tuesday’s events. Barrie was brilliant.

His education in England was in estates management at a time when estates couldn’t afford managers. Barrie had done army time in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. He was in charge of the tracker dogs who sniffed terrorists (or patriots) out of the bushes. In Toronto he was in charge of laboratory animals at the Princess Margaret Cancer Hospital and trying to support his wife, several kids, an ageing mother and a sister suffering from depression. It was a lot for such a “Merry Andrew” to deal with.

Barrie from time to time would say, “Why don’t you stage a Revue?” My cousin had taken me to a production of Spring Thaw, anglophone Canada’s annual collection of satirical sketches, monologues, blackouts and songs. I had a vague idea what Barrie was getting at. Finally when Barrie posed the well worn question I said, “Why don’t you stage a Revue right here?’ He did. After collecting and creating some material The Village Revue, volume one hit our humble stages.

By this time I had pretty well given up any idea of being an actor. Years before I had gotten some extra and stunt work on The Last of the Mohicans and Tug Boat Annie, two American TV productions making use of Canada’s cheaper costs. I hated what I laughingly called the Show Biz establishment because of my gross ignorance and suspicion of its workings. Barrie needed an actor who could do a Russian accent. Somewhat reluctantly I was performing in my own establishment. I felt that it was bad form. Little did I know it would be a stepping stone to a Broadway debut within less than three years and a twenty five year stint with Wayne and Shuster.

In regular literary attendance was a young lawyer named Larry Stone. He published a gestetnered magazine called The Sheet. I believe Atwood, McEwen and certainly many Bohemian Embassy writers got their first published works printed in Larry’s publication. Larry was amazingly prolific as a playwright himself. We would meet at the Coach House restaurant and he would read me his material, which for first drafts really impressed me. In a number of cases I wished he would do a bit of a rewrite or some editing and I believe he did because some scripts were produced on CBC radio.

The Law

Early in the Bohemian Embassy’s history a couple of plain clothed police officers came around. They enjoyed the activities and we were all on a first name basis. They would insist on paying for their coffee. We were friends. Unfortunately they were moved to another precinct and replaced by two officers named Garrity and Belcher. They had been involved with closing the Minc Club downtown. It was a jazz outlet and supposedly entertained some illegal or nefarious activities. Had the officers arrived at the Embassy during a poetry reading, chamber music, a play or some gentle folk music, things might have been different. But alas their first encounter with the Bohemian Embassy was after mid-night Saturday, near one o’clock Sunday morning. Brian Westwood’s Jazz group was holding forth. We were charged…running a public hall without a license. That was how they got rid of the Minc Club. Perhaps they could do the same with the Bohemian Embassy.

Were we a public hall? I had been to city hall before we opened and asked what licensing we needed. We were told a food purveyors license was all. But the public was there. Not really, we had a citizenship (membership) card and it cost 25 cents. We ended up in court four different times over the next six years. It would be thrown out and then we would be recharged. The last time we went before a magistrate it was Robert Dnieper. He started by saying, “I think it only fair to inform the prosecuting attorney that I consider myself a personal friend of these two guys (Peter Oomen and myself). I am a member of their club and attend it quite regularly.” The Crown replied, “In the light of what you said, your Worship, I think it advisable to take a remand until next week when another magistrate will be sitting.” Dnieper said, “What’s the matter; don’t you trust me?”

The following week the sitting magistrate fumbled about when he started our case. I don’t know if he had received a note or not. Before we had hardly gotten started, he called a recess. Out in the hallway Bob Dnieper showed up with his arm around the new magistrates shoulder. They were deep in conversation. I thought it inappropriate to say, Hello.” Back in session and within a remarkably short amount of time the magistrate said, “Case dismissed!”

I have to thank Pierre Berton for his journalistic support when we were being beset by elements of the Toronto constabulary. He knew the Bohemian Embassy and me pretty well and put out a couple of key articles in the Toronto Star newspaper. Ron Haggart, another great Canadian journalist was particularly effective when he covered the fourth and last of our concerns with the police. He mocked preparations for the raid as though the Bohemian Embassy was a threat to world peace. He had a great description reminiscent of a bad cloak and dagger novel with clever disguises, synchronized watches etc.

Larry Stone had acted as our lawyer on three of the four occasions we had to go to court and he refused any recompense. Some years later when I had a little money for the first time in my life, I gave it to Larry to invest in construction loans which were supposed to pay a very decent return. There were some problems and I was contacted by a guy who was suing Larry and got called to appear before the Law Society of Ontario. I hated the whole procedure. Larry was obviously in great distress. We lost contact after that. Apart from the legality of those events, I am still in a quandary as to the morality of what happened. I liked Larry immensely.

Larry occasionally did theatrical Reviews for the Globe and Mail newspaper. Because we were in the middle of a Village Revue, and because a highly publicized British Revue had been booked into the O’Keefe Centre by Alexander Cohen, Larry arranged for our cast to see Beyond the Fringe and to be photographed with Peter Cook, Alan Bennet, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller. As the introductions had been made and as the camera was being set up. Alex Cohen showed up and stopped everything. “No photograph.”

Some time after I appeared in a couple of the Village Revues Warren McLane, the casting director for the Alexander H. Cohen Broadway production office was taking auditions for Fringe at the O’Keefe Centre. In reviewing the third Village Revue, the well known critic Herbert Whittaker had suggest that Carol Robinson and I would not be out of place in that very successful British revue Beyond the Fringe. In my case Herb was prophetic. When the audition notice was posted by Sid Adilman in the Toronto Star, I wandered down to try my luck. Later someone told me that there had been a phone call at the Embassy from New York. Sometime later Warren McLane got through to me and said I had missed the first National Touring Company because I hadn’t returned his call. Ugh! He then asked if I would be interested in the Second Touring Company. Three years after reigniting my interest in acting, I found myself on Broadway in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre doing my all time favourite theatre piece. Alex Cohen pulled us off tour to reopen on the Great White Way. The reviewers were kind, “Every bit as convincing as their cisatlantic counterparts”, said the Times. Before we opened the Times put my picture on the front page of the entertainment section. Under it my name read, Dan Cullen. I didn’t call the Times for a correction. That’s how my name is pronounced when I am in Buffalo.

I didn’t see Mr. Cohen until we were playing in New Haven, Connecticut. “You’re the guy who owns that strange coffee house in Toronto.” “Guilty,” was my reply. Next morning I received a phone call from Mr. Cohen who was back in New York. He heaped praise on my performance and told me how much his wife Hildy Parks had enjoyed my work. I never divulged the phone call to my fellow performers in case they had not received similar kudos.

This aside regarding Fringe indicates what in a sense I owe to Barrie and his muscling The Village Revue into existence. Barrie is arguably the best improviser I have ever seen and I have seen the best in places like a Second City Company in New York, a couple of them in home town Chicago and all of the early amalgam shows which played at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. Warren Wilson and Dave Harriman, heavy weight writers on their own would often follow Barrie when he was on a roll and copy the matrix of a new sketch.

David Harriman deserves a whole book. His original name was John Harasti. His father was a barber with a Hungarian background. His mother had Irish antecedents and the family came down to Toronto from Northern Ontario. If anyone could out charm Barrie it was Dave. He became a legend at CBC and just about universally adored. One time in the 1980’s I was assembling a script for a possible Revue. I hadn’t seen Dave for the better part of a year. He had gained about seventy five pounds. When he delivered the script to my door, I tried to stifle my surprise at the added bulk. “Oh Don,” he said, ”I’ve put on so much weight lately that I’m thinking of having my shower curtains let out.”

One day Dave and I were descending a dark and narrow staircase. Dave was ahead of me when his head came into sharp contact with beam. I heard the sickening thud and before I could offer a single word of concern, he turned to me and said, “I’ll bet that hurt.”

While we were both working in the TV News Department, Dave scheduled himself to marry his Jewish girl friend. He went to the Doctor’s Hospital, shouted something in Hebrew before he went under the anesthetic and got circumcised. When he returned to the newsroom some days later, he was often heard muttering, “What a way to lose weight” and “That’s a sore point with me.” Unfortunately for his good lady the marriage never took place. They remained a couple until Dave’s death, just not in the legal sense.

One day I was following Dave down a dark stairway. His head came into sharp contact with a low beam with a shattering sound. Before I could utter a syllable of commiseration he turned and said to me, “I’ll bet that hurt.” He instantly turned pain into laughter. There are certain rejoinders which comical folk keep at the ready for quick insertion into conversation for general merriment. “As the actress said to the Bishop” or vice versa is one of the more popular rejoinders. Harriman was particularly fond of saying at the appropriate moment, “That makes me homesick.” I have used it to great effect on several occasions. I humbly add my own suggestion for the waggish reader. “Do you have any other symptoms?”

Warren Wilson was perhaps Harriman’s closest buddy in the years I knew them. I encountered Warren when he was in High School, a pale intense youngster at the Rendezvous Book and Record Store buying an entire Wagner opera and looking as if he really couldn’t afford it. I believe he was about thirteen years of age. Some time later I saw the same kid winning the Best Actor Award at the Simpson’s Drama Festival. It was heavy stuff for a kid. In my estimation Warren’s writing would not have been out of place with the Fringe or Monty Python people. As Director of The Village Revues he managed to turn the physical limitations of the Bohemian Embassy space into assets.

In case it is of any value to any who might find themselves under similar situations, I have a bit of a confession to make. When I was in the company of writers whose work I truly admired, I tended to dry up. I felt that they knew so much more than I did. I felt that they were quicker. I wanted to sit back and be entertained by them. My own productivity suffered. I had to do some serious creativity on my own to gain a better sense of self worth. One should try not to be dazzled and I’m afraid I was by people like Harriman, Baldaro and most particularly Warren Wilson.

I have three all time favourite actresses. They are Dame Edith Evans, Giulietta Massina and Carol Robinson. Carol came to Toronto from her native Birkenhead, England with her close friend Dodie Smith. She was working as a secretary when she came to the Bohemian Embassy but soon she and Dodie were performing in the Village Revue. Wayne McLaren, an advertising copy writer had submitted a controversial monologue for Carol to do. The rest of us were just about unanimous it wishing to keep the item out of the show. Boy, were we wrong. Wayne knew exactly what he was doing and Carol knew the character instinctively. It was undoubtedly the best piece in the show.

Wayne was a very successful advertising copy writer who had great respect for language. He brought Geoffrey and Anne Hine into our circle. Geof and Anne had a double apartment at The Colonade on Bloor Street. Geof was creative director in succession at two of the largest advertising agencies in Toronto. He would become a major contributor our Village Revue series. Anne came up with a slogan for the Red Cross blood drive, “Give the gift of life.” Wayne was very active in the environmental movement. When the Ontario Government allowed non returnable bottles for soft drinks etc he promoted the idea of sending these bottles directly to the home address of the provinces premier. The ploy worked remarkably well in rescinding the law.

Wayne lived for a while at 590 Yonge Street where I was ensconsed. One Saturday afternoon I returned from doing my two hour radio show on the old Dominion Network of the CBC. The kitchen was a wreck. Broken dishes littered the floor. A window was broken. It looked as if it had been hit by tornado. I hurried to the Bohemian Embassy just two doors away for some sort of an explanation. A small knot of friends sat gloomily. Wayne McLaren’s sister had been murdered in Vancouver. She was a gorgeous seventeen year old who had had a lot of growing up problems and had come to Toronto at one time to stay with her brother but had been unhappy and a handful for Wayne. My partner Peter Oomen and Wayne would drive to Vancouver in Wayne’s sports car. His sister’s body was never found. She had been thrown off one of Vancouver’s major bridges late at night by the young man who raped and killed her. Wayne wrote about the terrible experience in a McLean’s Magazine article making a heavy statement against capital punishment in spite of the enormous anger that he obviously felt.

Geof Hine had a towering intellect as indeed did his wife Anne. They had tasted great success in the creative side of advertising. Geof seemed terribly impressed that I had done Beyond the Fringe on Broadway having never been to Britain. Old British movies were my basic source. But Geof and Anne had a problem which carried them from the luxury of a double flat at the Colonnade to the city welfare centre in one move. Alcohol. I have been acquainted with too many tragedies among writers in particular

When I joined the cast of Wayne and Shuster in 1965, it had been the results of curious events. The Fringe tour had ended in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I returned to the solid brick houses and the solid brick people of Toronto, a pleasant release from Johnson, Goldwater and Viet Nam. Barrie had returned to Toronto from a revue with Tom Kneebone and Dinah Christie at the Victorian Inn in Stratford. It had not done well. Robin Grove White a Brit who had done a very successful revue with his mate Whispering Paul McDowell at the B.E., was still in town and he had material. We started to plan a three man revue with a decidedly British twist. Then Robin got a call to work for a newspaper in San Francisco. Barrie and I picked up a rather good classical guitarist from Ottawa, Jim Cameron by name. He would do a short set in the middle of the first and second acts, giving Barrie and me a chance to reposition ourselves for the next series of two handed sketches and monologues. Robin and Paul would receive monthly cheques for the rental of the material.

Out of the blue and into the Bohemian Embassy came a young lad recently graduated from The University of Toronto. His name was Lorne Lipowitz. I had actually met Lorne when I wrote my second TV show. It was a dance party and Lorne was a member of the student council at the predominantly Jewish Forest Hill Collegiate. Everything was handled by the President Arnold Shoichet and his council. I never talked to a teacher. It was in stark contrast to my first TV writing experience at DeLasalle Catholic High School. There the principal Brother So and So introduced me to Brother Such and Such. I was told that it wouldn’t be necessary to talk to any students. I was tempted to ask, “Why, what are you hiding?”

Lorne had heard we were doing a revue at the Bohemian Embassy and asked if we needed any material. He had been the director of The U.C. Follies, an annual satirical show presented by University College at the University of Toronto. At his home his mother provided us with some nice cakes from the Patisserie Francaise and we listened to an audio tape of the Follies show. Thanks but no thanks. We will use what we can of our own stuff. Lorne then tried to sell himself as a director. I said no, believing that with just two of us Barrie and I would work it out ourselves. After all we were scheduled to perform on coffee house stages which were scarcely larger than a postage stamp Later Barrie demurred. We hired Lorne. Barrie gave him a rough time because Lorne was a bit naïve at the time. I ended up protecting the director I had been reluctant to higher. We had a limited run at the Embassy but the show had legs. We played the Village Corner Club, the Pennyfarthing and finally Lorne, his girlfriend Roz Shuster and I co-produced the show at the Colonnade Theatre.

Rozalind or Rosie as she is better known brought her Dad, Frank to see the show. The result for me was twenty-five years of Wayne and Shuster Television Specials. Lorne soon changed his last name to Michaels and joined with Hart Pommerance to Give the CBC The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour. Lorne created and still produces Saturday Nite Live for NBC in New York.

I soon learned that timing a suggestion to Johnny Wayne was almost as important as the suggestion itself. By carefully introducing Roy Wordsworth and Carol Robinson, I managed to get them on the show. Their talents did the rest and they became permanent members of the cast. On one occasion I heard Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster talking about needing a woman who could talk at about three hundred words a minute for a special sketch. As I had been close to all the cast members of the first several Second City shows, I had seen Catherine O’Hara do a wonderful television advertisement take off. It was the Evelyn Wood Speed Talking Course which she did at breakneck speed. I told Johnny and I believe it was Catherine’s first TV experience. It led to a couple of more shows with us.

My good friend Dr. Nicholas Bruchovsky was working on his PhD when the first edition of the Bohemian Embassy was alive and cooking. Nick’s field was oncology and the Princess Margaret Hospital was the centre of his activities. It was within easy walking distance of the Bohemian Embassy. While at university Nick had spent a summer or two at the Blue Mountain Camp for handicapped kids. He met an unusual lad named David Freeman who had cerebral palsy. David wrote an article which was accepted by Ken Lefoli the editor of McLeans Magazine. Ken had worked in CBC TV news when I did. Dr. Nick decided to have a party to celebrate the publishing of David Freeman’s article. I was invited along with Bill Glassco and Jane Gordon Glassco. Nick thought The Bohemian Embassy would be just the place where David could hang out and possibly benefit from the literary sub-culture.

David Freeman’s first encounter with a poetry reading resulted in a somewhat conservative reaction. He had shown me some stuff he had written and I suggested that it suffered from the straight jacket of rhyme. I would like to think that the readings freed David up a little. As well as the recurrent Village Revues, other dramatic presentations were produced. Ernie Schwartz did an amazing Production of Jack or the Submission by Ionesco. David Humphries directed the North American premier of The Maids by Jean Genet.

Humphries had a girlfriend named Mary who lived in a posh neighbourhood called Rosedale. One day when Mary’s mother was in her back garden the lady next door approached for a little conversation. “What’s your daughter Mary up to this summer,” the lady asked. Mary’s mother replied that Mary was working at the Bohemian Embassy. “Oh?” said the lady, “I know the Ambassador.”

Eve Law wrote and performed a short one act play on the same bill with the first effort of a very young and tentative David French. He told me years later that he had been devastated by the review that Nathan Cohen had printed in the Toronto Star. David French along with David Freeman were among the earliest Canadian playwrights to give us anglophones seriously good theatrical material.

How many of these productions Freeman encountered at the Bohemian Embassy, I don’t know. But David presented me with the script of Creeps a play about the inmates of a sheltered workshop where the handicapped did mind numbing work. They revolted by refusing to leave the washroom. I had visions of producing the work at the Bohemian Embassy with a cerebral palsy cast. I’m glad I never got to it. Bill Glassco directed the first production brilliantly at the Factory Lab Theatre. Because of scheduling problems the show closed in spite of full houses. Six months later Bill’s own Tarragon Theatre opened with Creeps with the same seasoned cast and a long healthy run. In a minor role John Candy was quietly making his debut. A few months before John died, his office in Los Angeles tried to get to David through me. Perhaps he wanted to make Creeps into a film.

I was a little hurt that John had a secretary call instead of calling me personally. When I was married to Janet Inksetter we socialized with John and his lady. Oddly David Freeman did not wish to avail himself of whatever Candy had to offer. He didn’t even take John’s office number when I volunteered it.

Orin Lehman the New York producer of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in- the-moon Marigolds, had gotten in touch with David about producing Creeps Off Broadway. David asked me to go with him to New York to help with the negotiations. I objected, because what he really needed was a good show business lawyer. But then on the other hand a friend and buddy would a help. I was honoured to do that. David and I had a business dinner with Orin at Sardi’s Restaurant. I suggested that Bill Glassco had done such a stunning job of directing that Orin should consider him. His response was baffling. He said that he had had a bad experience with a Canadian Director. I was tempted to ask if his name was Norman Jewison. I could see no generic reason why Canadians should be worse or better. I’m sorry I let it pass.

We went to New York for the opening. When the curtain opened I was instantly disappointed. To be sure the play takes place in a men’s washroom but not one located in the Black Hole of Calcutta. There were great brown stains on the walls that were continually disconcerting. One of the characters is wheel chair bound but the director had either allowed or had instructed the actor to make his left leg move continuously throughout the show. It became hugely distracting. When the focus should be on an actor speaking from a different part of the stage, the audience should not be distracted. I came to the conclusion that the very young hot shot director was trying to make too much of a social statement. Bill by using some of the halted speech patterns brought out the humourous elements which abounded in David’s play. Despite the problems David received the most promising new playwright award. Yeah David!

David went on to write Battering Ram and You’re Going to be All Right Jamie Boy both of which did extraordinarily well. It was at a production of Creeps in Montreal that David met Francine Marleau, gorgeous and talented and with cerebral palsy problems to contend with. They really understood each other. It was love and a move to Montreal. David did have a production of another play at the Saidye Bronfman Centre and again proved David’s talent. Montreal’s gain was Toronto’s loss. David has been writing continuously since but has not been favoured that much with productions.

Living above a store not far from the Bohemian Embassy was a lad named Don Black. He was a philosophy graduate from the University of Toronto. He and I discussed the possibility of a series of weekly discussions with guest speakers or panelists to focus on. Unfortunately this took place when I absented myself because of having joined the cast of Beyond the Fringe in the USA. I was never able to attend a single event. Having no direct personal memories I feel hampered in writing, however reports were very positive. Over the years I have remained a fan of Don Black’s. At one time he placed himself in some jeopardy in a fight for free speech in Toronto’s Alan Gardens. Yeah Don!

Classical

Don DiNovo lived with his wife Sharon for a while over a store on Wellesley Street. Don had had a classical music program on CHUM. He was an authority in this area. He played for a while in the viola section of the Hamilton Philharmonic and later played electric viola in the rock band Lighthouse which included such other stalwarts as Paul Hoffert and Rick Danko. While he was living close to the Bohemian Embassy, Don bought a large harpsichord with two manuals (two sets of keys) on it. He stored it at the Bohemian Embassy. With Don to organize it we presented forty consecutive Sunday evenings of Chamber Music. The harpsichord rested sans legs against a wall out of the way. On Sunday we would screw the legs on, place it upright and Don would tune it. His fellow musicians would arrive, sometimes with shorts and bare feet, tune their instruments and play Bach, Vivaldi, Hayden and John Cage.

On one particular evening a cellist named Nelson Dempster came in. He was a strongly built man with a blond beard, a bit like my impression of a first mate on a British trawler. Wearing sandals, shorts and a thin shirt, because it was warm, he sat and played some of Bach’s unaccompanied cello pieces. His eyes tightly shut, with perspiration dripping he seemed to pour his soul into the music. His occasional technical shortcomings did not matter, I was in tears that such beauty and grace was happening in The Bohemian Embassy. Can life possibly get richer?