The Brightside Hotel

Hijinx

Each time the Hotel changed hands it got a new look, like when a façade was built onto its second floor. But many things stayed the same at this popular watering-hole, as the Brightside Reunion called the place, a moniker suggesting fun and hijinks. “This hotel is next to the Steel Co. of Canada... the patrons are very hard to manage at times...

there is very little call for food at this hotel,” noted the area’s LCBO Inspector in 1943. There workers could cash their pay check on a Thursday night, eluding both wives and LCBO authorities in a prohibited practice.

Tidy exterior photo of the Brightside Hotel. — LCBO regulators aimed for places like the Brightside House to have a clean, well-ordered, and well-maintained appearance, something that this photograph suggests with the Hotel’s impressive sign and tidy exterior complete with awnings. (Source: <em>Brightside Reunion</em>, pg.6)

Eleven men enjoying themselves inside the Brightside Hotel. — Inside the Brightside House LCBO regulators found it difficult to control men’s behaviours with each tray of beer consumed, cigarettes smoked, tales told, and hijinks carried out. Note the man in the center of this photograph has a shirt that is wide open, something that LCBO authorities no doubt would frown upon. (Source: <em>Brightside Reunion</em>, pg.22)

Listen: Fire at Brightside. Click the play circle below.

Speaker 1:

They had a fire in the washroom.

Speaker 2:

They had a blaze there.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Something happened in the washroom. Fire. There was me, Morris, Moe, Turk.

Us guys we used to drink in there.

So, we all had a table full of beer. So’s that the fire - someone phoned in the fire - and then we heard these fire trucks coming…

[laughter]

…and the guy goes - get out - not till we finish our beer!

[laughter]

The fire trucks are here, and the guys are coming with the hoses, so off we went…

[laughter]

… when I went outside, my wife is out in front in the car trying to stop the firemen from going in the hotel.

‘Don’t go in there let it burn!’ she says.

[laughter]

[chatter]

I come out and says, ‘I was in there!’

She says, ‘that’s your fault!’

[laughter]

Listen: Big John Running. Click the play circle below.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, one time around the Brightside Hotel, drinking eh, and we says, to Big John, my brother Arnold says, “I betcha I can run a round the bay faster than you.”

Oh, come on, no you can’t.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh yeah,

Speaker 1:

So, they went out on Burlington Street, and they got set to run. They got down. They started running.

And they started to run. And [..] had a car…

Speaker 2:

He jumped in his car.

[chatter]

Speaker 1:

And he passed him.

To catch Arnold.

He passed Arnold.

He’d do, it again and again. Right down to the canal. From Brightside.

Speaker 2:

Drunk he would run up to the canal.

Barefooted.

Listen: The Flophouse And The Polar Bear. Click the play circle below.

Speaker 1:

Trigger, speaking about borders.

You know, on Birmingham at Leeds, there was a shack there that a lot of old…

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

… guys; it was kind of a tarpaper shack…

Speaker2:

Yeah. The old man’s house.

Speaker 1:

…the old man’s house. Yeah.

What was the story?

Speaker 2:

That house, that house come from Burlington Street on the other side of the tracks.

[chatter]

They moved it…

Speaker 1:

How’d they move it?

Speaker 2:

… you can move any fool thing.

[chatter]

It was an office for National Grinders or, they made the grinding wheels.

So, they moved that house and they made it… put all the old guys in there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

We couldn’t figure out, when we were kids…

[chatter]

Speaker 2:

… all old beat-up guys.

I don’t think they probably drank a lot of moonshine - they drank a lot of alcohol.

Speaker 3:

Homeless men.

Homeless.

Yeah homeless.

Speaker 2:

A guy come in, he moved in there, eh.

And he come to the hotel and offered to sell something.

Okay.

He come in.

He went home.

He come back.

He had a polar bear hide.

[Laughter]

He wanted to sell it, you know.

[Laughter]

[clap]

I mean it was big!

With the head and everything yeah.

He was a Scotsman.

Speaker 3:

A Scotsman lived in that house?!

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

[chatter]

Yeah.

He had this bear but somebody bought it.

To get it in the car…

[clap]

… they had to push the thing in.

[laughter]

Yeah, oh yeah.

A polar bear?!

You know, for 20 bucks or 15 dollars.

Speaker 1:

Holy..

Speaker 2:

I mean it was big!

Listen: Monkey Business. Click the play circle below.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember when the Brightside hotel had a monkey?

Oh.

Speaker 2:

Yes!

Speaker 3:

I remember that!

Yes!

Speaker 4:

No.

Speaker 1:

They did.

Speaker 4:

Oh my gosh!

Speaker 1:

Martini, who owned the Brightside Hotel, had one.

Yeah. Yeah.

He did it as a promotional thing. And that’s where the peanut story all…

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Ahh!

Speaker 1:

…dad used to have a few beers go out and feed the peanuts to the monkey.

It was a fairly big cage.

Speaker 3:

I remember that.

Speaker 4:

It was before my time.

Speaker 5:

We had to walk past there to go to the store.

Listen: Bread Wagon Escapades. Click the play circle below.

Speaker 1:

Freddie had a horse and wagon with Superior Bread.

Speaker 2:

John.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I’m sorry, John…

Speaker 2:

It’s okay.

Speaker 1:

… and every Saturday morning, I was only about 10 years old. I’d have to walk up to Sherman and Burlington Street.

And that’s where Johnny would meet me because Superior Bread was on uptown.

Speaker 2:

McAuley Street.

[chatter]

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, he come down there and I’d waved there, and I’d help them…

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

…for five cents.

Yeah.

And one day I got Jackie Cowman, who worked for, uh, did the same thing for Canada Bread…

Speaker 2:

Oh.

Speaker 1:

…uh, we got talking, and he got 25 cents.

Oh!

[laughter]

Speaker 1:

I remember that. The guy that…

…actually, I played for this guy, Hammy McRae, who was a good ballplayer and a catcher, um, I played for him twenty-five …

[crash]

…of the Big Four. And Hammy was the bread man.

So anyway, I obviously didn’t like it, that don’t feel right… And I always told my mom, ‘Mom I don’t feel right.’

But I was working for a nickel, and he was getting .25 cents.

Speaker 3:

Should’ve gone on strike.

Speaker 1:

How we got back at this was Hammy, with his Canada Bread wagon, he always had, one stop he had was always on the Brightside Hotel on Birmingham Street.

And Jackie was, you know, still helping him sort of, so we would distract Jackie and go into the back door because it was like a big door and we would just unlatch it, you know, and take a cake and run away.

And that’s…

[laughter]

Speaker 4:

Grapes, cakes…

[laughter]

The Brightside Hotel

Hijinx

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