The South Etobicoke News

Serving Humber * Mimico * Lakeshore Village * Long Branch * Alderwood

Alicia’s world as a successful coach and bodybuilder

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Local bodybuilder Alicia Bell is a certified personal trainer and high-level coach who spends a lot of time in area gyms working out.

A busy Bell fell in love with South Etobicoke and moved here about three years ago from her native Plaster Rock, New Brunswick.

“I chose Etobicoke because I love how beautiful the area is,” Bell says. “One of my favourite gyms is here and I love how close it is to the city.”

The former track and field athlete and online coach is an International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB) Figure Pro, which means she has earned a Pro Card from winning a regional contest weight class.

She is an accredited kinesiologist and works as a strength coach, fitness model and competitive figure athlete, who coaches sprint, hurdles and track and field.

“Alicia has devoted her life to helping people reach their goals in fitness and sport,” her biography explains. “She is a well-known Canadian health and fitness Influencer and blogger.”

Bell writes for numerous fitness websites and publications and has been featured in three commercials; which includes endorsing products for New Balance Canada and Fuel Foods.

“I always tell young people never give up on their dreams,” she stresses. “You never know which lap will be your victory lap so keep going.

The athlete is a recognized track and field coach, who is well-known for coaching Team Canada at the Maccabi games in Israel in July of 2013. She led the team to 13 medals.

Now a head Track and Field Coach at Ryerson University, she also runs her own firm, Train It Right, a personal training and track and field club. She is also a content creator for Fitness Republic and Corus Entertainment.

“Who would have thought that someone like me from Plaster Rock could be a leader in health and fitness, shoot commercials and be in magazine,” she asks.

Bell has worked with National Basketball Association (NBA) clients as Dwight Howard and Rashad McCants; Olympic 800-metre runner Geoff Harris; U.S. rapper Lil Jon; author, actor Hill Harper and even rapper Drake’s mom, Sandi Graham.

She can be reached at her website www.trainitright.com

 

Hall of Famer Walls was a Canadian boxing champ

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Earl Walls was a top Etobicoke boxer who was dubbed the “Hooded Terror” as the fought his way to become Canada’s Heavyweight Boxing Champion in the early 1950s.

Walls, who went on to become a successful realtor in the Kingsway area, is one of a few Blacks in the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame, at the Ford Performance Centre, which lists hundreds of hockey, lacrosse, football players, jockeys, golfers, some politicians and media personalities.

Dubbed the “Hooded Terror” in the ring, Walls began boxing at age 19 and quickly won the Ontario Amateur Heavyweight Championship. The native of Puce, near Windsor, started his professional career with a knockout victory in a fight in New York City.

After losing his next three bouts, he set up training in Alberta and by June of 1952 had won the Canadian Heavyweight title. In his pro career, Walls knocked out 27 opponents, including 14 in the first round.

“His boxing career was brief but extremely successful,” sports writers said of Walls.

By 1955, he was on his way to becoming the second Canadian, behind Tommy Burns, to take the  World Heavyweight Championship.

Walls was a contender then ranked fifth in the world and a title shot against the champ Rocky Marciano was in the works.

But in June of that year, at the age of 27, Walls stunned the boxing world by announcing his retirement.

Then married and with a young family, Walls no longer wanted to step into the ring.

“Boxing is a business. Strictly a career with me,” he explained in a newspaper article. “I don’t go for violence. And I don’t like the wrong impression people get of fighters – that we’re all gorillas, social bums.”

He gained enormous success in real estate while raising his family in Etobicoke, where he was involved with a number of charities, including Variety Village’s Sunshine Games. He is also a member of the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame and the Afro-American Sports Hall of Fame in Detroit. He died in 1996.

 

Steaming Pickin’ Chicken still sorely missed by many residents

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Many area residents are still licking their fingers with delight as they recall from yesteryear a busy fleet of VW Beetles that shuttled steaming barbequed chicken to mouth-watering households.

The popular Pickin’ Chicken BBQ restaurant opened in 1953 and had developed quite a poulet-loving following in its 17-years of operation in a time before take-out food would become as widespread as it is today with Uber Eats, DoorDash and other apps.

The company, aside its chicken, is best remembered for its fleet of colourful Volkswagen Beetles that delivered thousands of chicken legs and breasts dinners and assortments to awaiting Etobicoke and Toronto residents.

The cars were painted in bright colours with the Pickin’ Chicken name, phone number and address.

The beloved restaurant, which would later be copied by eateries as Swiss Chalet and others, stood at the site of Marina del Ray Condominiums, at 2261 Lake Shore Blvd. W., in Mimico.

The business was owned by Saul and Jerry Goldberg, who copied the success and soon opened two other thriving locations on Queen Street W., at Roncesvalles, and on Kingston Road.

Before long there were seven takeout franchise locations and Pickin’ Chicken was one of the favourite order-in meals at the time.

Hungry residents could have their choice of barbecued chicken as eat in, takeout, or delivered to their front door while the meal was still steaming hot.

Many in the community still remember licking their fingers after ordering Pickin’ Chicken on a Friday night.

“It was a great place,” agrees one long-time resident. “The chicken was always good and it was well-ahead of its time.”

But like many fast food outlets over the years, the business went bankrupt in 1970.

The property was sold to a developer who was planning to build a large world class hotel, but due to political pressure those plans were dropped. The property would change ownership more than once before it was finally purchased by corporation.

The 46-floor Palace Pier North Tower was completed in 1978 and the South Tower was finished in 1991. They were at one time the tallest, and one of the most expensive, residential complexes in Canada.

 

Local author talks about latest Penny Brannigan mystery

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The Mimico home of award-winning novelist Elizabeth J. Duncan backs on to a beautiful view of Lake Ontario and there’s no place that the writer loves more than being here.

“This is a great area to live and walk around,” Duncan says. “My family live here and I have a home here. The people are like family.”

Duncan, who lives near Royal York Rd. and Lake Shore Blvd. W., is the author of 13 mystery novels; which includes 10 brisk-selling Penny Brannigan thrillers and three Shakespeare in the Catskills mysteries.

The so-called “comfy mystery” series follows expat Canadian Penny Brannigan, who lives in North Wales running the village spa by day and solving murders by night.

This month she is releasing in North Wales her tenth Penny Brannigan who-done-it called “Remembering the Dead.”

“I now live in North Wales five months out of the year working on the series,” she admits. “I am always glad when I come back home.”

The former Humber College professor has won a Bloody Words Best Light Mystery Award and was a finalist for the Agatha and Arthur Ellis Awards. She has a U.S. publisher and most of her novels are sold south of the border “where there is quite a Penny Brannigan following.”

“People always tell me that they want to go to North Wales after they read one of my books,” she says. “That is what all writers want to hear.”

The former journalist has worked for the Ottawa Citizen, Hamilton Spectator and the CBC before she began writing books. She lived in London, England, for five years, while covering stories for the CBC.
Duncan also worked in public relations and is a faculty member of the Humber School for Writers.

She is first Canadian writer to win the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. The Cold Light of Mourning, her first novel, is also the winner of the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant and was shortlisted for an Agatha and an Arthur Ellis Award.

In her latest, Brannigan attends a dinner party at a posh country house where a historic chair disappears and a waiter is murdered.

The book is “for those who love comfy mysteries,” says Alan Bradley, a New York Times bestselling author of the Flavia de Luce mysteries.

Duncan is available for talks on books and her titles can be obtained at elizabethjduncan.com

 

Public memorial on hold for runaway U.S. slave Glover

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Runaway U.S. slave Joshua Glover may soon have a permanent home in Etobicoke.

A competition for a permanent public art memorial for Glover, a runaway slave who settled in Etobicoke 166-years-ago, has been put on hold due to COVID-19.

The City of Toronto this year approved more than $50,000 for a memorial to be located at a new Joshua Glover Park, at 4208 Dundas St. W., close to where he lived.

Proposals for the memorial are being sought from members of the community to come up with a design, which like Glover, can stand the test of time.

The proposals sought by City’s Arts and Culture Services, working with the Etobicoke Historical Society (EHS), had a deadline of April 30, which has been put on hold due to the pandemic.

Area Councillor Stephen Holyday has visited the site and expects work on the memorial will continue after the City gives a green light.

Glover, who escaped from his owner in St. Louis, Mo., in 1852, arrived in Canada in 1854 via the Underground Railroad after travelling 400-miles by night, dodging slave and bounty hunters.

Before making it across the border, he was released from a jail in Milwaukee by up to 5,000 irate citizens after his owner tracked him down in Racine, Wisconsin, according to reports.

Anti-slavery citizens in both Racine and Milwaukee assembled outside the courthouse and battered down the jail house door and rescued Glover, an event that highlighted the concern of many people about the injustice of slavery at that time.
Glover was guided along the Underground Railroad, a series of safe houses around Wisconsin, until he was able to board a ship to Canada.
He landed in either Owen Sound or Collingwood, and made his way to Etobicoke where he found work with Thomas Montgomery, owner of Montgomery’s Inn. Glover became one of 39 Blacks living in Etobicoke, which at the time had a population of 2,900.

He survived two wives, who were both Irish, and spent his last days at the York County Home for the Aged in Newmarket, where he died in 1888 at the age of 74.

City officials say a successful proposal will be selected by a panel and the artist will work closely with partners to develop the art, confirm siting, and install and complete the project.

For further info contact the Public Art Officer at 416-392-4173 or email publicartcompetitions@toronto.ca.

With files by Joel Winters

Ex-Argos Zeke still active with charity work

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Former Toronto Argos tight end and long-time South Etobicoke resident William “Zeke” O’Connor is 94-years-old and is more fit than many people half his age.

Zeke will always be remembered for catching the winning touchdown pass for the underdog Argos in the 1952 Grey Cup, beating the Edmonton Eskimos 21-11 at Varsity Stadium. It would be the last championship the Argos would win until 1983.

“That catch changed my life,” he recalls from the Delmanor Retirement Home.  “It led to many other opportunities for me.”

The son of a New York City cop, Zeke worked at Sears for 31 years after football and was a Grey Cup radio broadcaster, doing colour commentary on the CBC from 1956 to 1981.

While at Sears he met famous explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, who became the first man to summit Mount Everest in 1953. From Hillary he gained a passion for philanthropy, particularly in Nepal.

He formed and ran the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation of Canada more than 30 years to help improve the lives of the Sherpas in the remote high-altitude villages of Mount Everest.

Zeke has since made about 45 trips to Nepal to help the Sherpas and is one of a few people who’ve have had a hospital and healing garden named him by thankful Nepalese.

He has helped to raise more than $5 million to build schools, hospitals, medical clinics, provide medical scholarships, train village health workers, build water pipelines, bridges, and to fund the Kunde Hospital and Sagarmatha National Park reforestation programs.

He was honoured on October 21 by the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame with a dinner gala and presented with a Governor-general ribbon of distinction.

“I have been given many awards and medals over the years,” Zeke says. “This one means a lot to me.”

The foundation is now run by his daughter, Karen, aided by Operations Manager Jeanne Cornacchia.

Zeke published a memoir in 2012 called Journey with the Sherpas: The Story of Zeke O’Connor and the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation.

Before moving to Canada, he played pro football in the U.S. with the Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns and New York Yanks before joining the Argonauts, which he says was a jumping-off point for many experiences, including a 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rotary Club of Toronto West.

Visit thesiredmundhillaryfoundation.ca for more info or to donate.

Mimico’s open double deck streetcars once ruled the lines

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Toronto residents travelling to South Etobicoke more than 120-years ago had to bundle up for the trek west on open-air double decker streetcars operated by the Toronto and Mimico Electric Railway and Light Company.

The ‘open truck double deck car’ was introduced in 1891 to ferry holidaying passengers to Humber River. Two single truck open cars were brought into service in 1896 to serve the popular Sunnyside area, according to City of Toronto records.

The cars carried about 96 passengers each and were busy shuttling visitors to holiday resorts at Sunnyside and Humber River. The electrified line operated on a single track with only open cars, two which were double-deck.

This run proved popular with visitors to the beaches along Humber Bay, but with the line not extended to Mimico and New Toronto, revenues dried up in the fall and winter months as passengers did not want to travel in open streetcars without heat.

The service was bailed out by William MacKenzie’s Toronto Railway Company in 1893. He extended service to Mimico Creek in July and then to Kipling Ave. by October. Ridership increased as the line pushed further west into Long Branch, with service to Etobicoke Creek in 1895.

The line, which ran on the north side of Lake Shore Blvd, provided regular summer service to Long Branch Park, which had evolved into a popular amusement park.

The service was soon turning a profit as the villages along the route profited from the increased benefits of development and commerce.

Well-dressed city residents could now board the open cars and for 18-cents enjoy the more than two-hour ride from Yonge St. to Long Branch. Service was later extended to Port Credit and a plan to serve Hamilton failed.

The streetcars became so popular that Sunday service was introduced by 1897 as people travelled here for holiday excursions and day trips. However, a lack of travel during the wintertime killed the business.

In 1904, the railway was acquired by the Toronto and York Radial Railway (T&YRR) and became the T&YRR Mimico Division. In 1922, the City of Toronto acquired the T&YRR and contracted Ontario Hydro to manage the four T&YRR lines including the Mimico line.

In 1927, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) took over the operation of the Mimico line, which was double-tracked from Humber to Long Branch and made up a section of the Lake Shore streetcar line.

 

Businesses pitching in to feed frontline workers

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Long Branch cake guru Monja Chiara was searching for ways to help in these trying times when she came across an initiative called Sustain the Line, which helps feed frontline workers battling COVID-19.

The owner of Cake Star, at 3431 Lake Shore Blvd. W., is one of a number of Etobicoke businesses which have volunteered for the program that fed more than 1,200 meals to hard-working medical and emergency workers in their first two weeks.

“This is a great program,” Chiara says. “We have fed many frontline workers and they truly appreciate the meals.”

A fixture on a number of TV baking shows, she says many restaurants want to help feed healthcare workers, but don’t have the support they need to do so.

The entire purpose, according to their website, is to connect local food businesses able and willing to deliver meals to frontline healthcare workers to supporters willing to fund these meals.

Anyone who wants to donate funds or deliver meals can get in touch using a Sustain the Line website. The donor pays the food provider a lump sum to make the meals, and then the provider gets in touch with local healthcare workers.

The concept started with Toronto’s Mission Watch Company and Old Road BBQ in Nova Scotia committing to feed frontline workers for a month in Nova Scotia. NextLevel (New Jersey), Conduit Law (Toronto) and Aron Brand (Montreal) joined them within days to expand the idea to North America.

The non-profit organization aims to connect more small food businesses to those who want to fund meals for frontline healthcare workers.

To donate or volunteer visit www.sustaintheline.com/

 

Gilbey’s distilled world-class booze in New Toronto

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Raising a glass for Gilbey’s.

New Toronto was at one time Canada’s top producer of some of the world’s best-selling gins, whiskies and other fine brands of liquor and spirits.

The aroma of fomenting whiskey, exotic rums and liquors filled the air over the area some 86-years ago originating from what was the sprawling plant of W.A. Gilbey (Canada) Ltd., which for almost 50-years stood where the Ford Performance Centre is today.

The three-acre site where the arena stands at Kipling Ave. and New Toronto St., back in 1933 was famous for producing the wildly popular Gilbey’s London Dry Gin and Gilbey’s Spey Royal Scotch.

The alcoholic spirits from the British-based Gilbey’s was first sold in Canada in 1905 and the plant was opened in 1933. At the time it employed about 50 area residents, records show.

Within three years an addition was built to the building to cater to rising booze sales. The plant at the time was very busy with trucks arriving with raw products and then taking the finished spirits to market.

The company would produce and market more than 50 brands for the Canadian market, including best-seller Smirnoff Vodka, which outsold their other products; including Harvey’s fine line of imported Spanish Sherry.

Gilbey’s Black Velvet was the most famous of five Canadian whiskies made at the New Toronto plant. The others produced here included: Very Best, Golden Velvet, Old Gold, Special Old and Governor General Rums.

“Gilbey products vary from Italian Vermouth to excellent French table wines and champagnes.” according to the firm’s promotional materials. “The Gilbey line of domestic liqueur gins are unequalled in sales anywhere.”

The company started in England in 1857 and is still managed by descendants of the original partners.

The initials “W & A” in the Gilbey Company name stand for the brothers Walter and Alfred Gilbey, who upon returning from the Crimean War in 1856, decided to open a retail wine business.

Gilbey’s later became part of International Distillers & Vintners, a beer, wine and spirits distribution company. In 1998 IDV merged with United Distillers to create United Distillers & Vintners, the spirits division of Diageo.

The plant was shut in the early 1980s and sold to the Board of Education and later became the Ford Performance Centre.

Alderwood author Babcock launches first novel

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By TOM GODFREY

Author Heather Babcock grew up in Alderwood and got hooked on words at the local library where her mom once left her as a child during ‘story time’ as she ran an errand.

“When my mom came back to pick me up, the librarian told her that I had been ‘absolutely mesmerized’ by the story-telling,” Heather explains. “She can come back anytime,’ she told my mom.”

She spent all her spare time at the Alderwood Library studying novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Betty Smith, Toni Morrison and Hubert Selby Jr.

Now her debut novel Filthy Sugar is being launched by Inanna Publications in two “virtual Speakeasy” sessions in Toronto on June 4 and 18.

“I am very excited and proud of my debut novel Filthy Sugar,” says the author. ”It took a lot of hard work and I totally loved the writing process.”

Set in the mid-1930s, Filthy Sugar tells the story of Wanda Whittle, a 19-year-old dreamer who models fur coats in a department store, but lives in a rooming house with her family in the “slums” behind the city’s marketplace.

“Bored with the daily grind, Wanda finds inspiration in the celluloid fantasies of the Busby Berkeley musicals, Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow movies,” she says, adding the work was inspired by women of the Pre-Code era of Hollywood film.

“After a chance encounter with the mysterious Mr. Manchester, proprietor of the Apple Bottom burlesque theatre, Wanda is thrust into a world of glitter and grit, where the guys talk tough and the dames are tough.”

“On her journey from rags to riches and back again,” the story unfolds. “Wanda experiences an awakening and achieves personal independence as she discovers that a girl doesn’t need a lot of sugar to be sensational!”

The book has been getting good reviews and is described as “a time travelled, tantalizing and tumultuous tale,” by Valentino Assenza, the co-host-producer of HOWL and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Lisa de Nikolits, author of No Fury Like That and Rotten Peaches, says: “Wanda will take you to another time and place, but a place where love, lust, greed sex and power are just as heartbreaking and complex as they are today.”

Heather loves writing and has had her works published in Descant Magazine, Front & Centre Magazine, The Toronto Quarterly and in the collection GULCH: An assemblage of Poetry and Prose.

Copies of Filthy Sugar are available at Inanna Publications at www.inanna.ca and other book sellers.

The virtual speakeasy will take place on June 4 at 7:30 p.m. via Zoom. Those interested can RSVP at https://mailchi.mp/248144d4ab21/speakeasy. The book will officially launch via live-streaming on June 18 as part of Inanna Publication’s partnership with Toronto Lit Up.