Queen West Sucks

We actually mean “Queen Street West Sucks Between Spadina and Peter Where We’ve Had Our Office and Store for the Past Decade” but that’s too big for a header and probably wouldn’t have caught your attention like this one has. It’s an outdoor Eaton’s Center and getting worse every day. Our stoic employees held out as long as they could but we decided to put an end to the madness and move our offices to the other end of Queen, the part that we actually like and the part where most of the bars and restaurants in this guide are located. Sure it’s becoming a bit trendy down there but we’re setting up shop with the crackheads in Parkdale way past Dufferin, which is still a bit of a barrier for the uncommitted. Plus we found the perfect corner spot with tons of Toronto history.

1349 Queen Street West was built in 1897 by Robert Ross, a Scottish immigrant from Edinburgh. Back then Toronto was all Scot, especially the west end. The land cost $1,600 and it cost $7,000 to build the premises. Once it was finished Robert Ross and his nephew Andrew Ross operated a gas fitting and plumbing company out of it called the Robert Ross Gas Fitting and Plumbing Company. They installed this new thing called “indoor plumbing” in every home in Parkdale and sold a wide range of bathtubs, sinks, and fancy frilly lampshades. On Christmas Eve 1901, Andrew married Margaret Madden on the second floor of this building and they had a son, also named Robert Ross. This Robert Ross, like his grandfather Robert Ross before him, also married a woman named Margaret (how weird is that?) and they had a daughter named Daria who grew up to become our new landlady. She is quite possibly one of the nicest people you will ever meet in the world and she has a treasure trove of family memorabilia. In true Scottish style she has every single receipt that her family ever issued from this premises. That’s 108 years of receipts, just in case someone ever wants to return an old can of whale oil. She has the camera that took these photos and lots of shots of her family and turn-of-the-last-century Toronto and she claims that there used to be white picket fences throughout Parkdale. Can some wannabe historians at U of T or York please get off their lazy asses and do something on the Ross family? They basically are Toronto.