Spadina Gardens from Charlotte's Castle

 

HV: I want to start with how you came to fall in love with the building. From the documentary, you didn’t seem to be the sort of person that was a “heritage” person. You just kind of lived in this building and then you fell in love with it. Is that true? 

 

C: It’s a bit more complicated than that. I grew up in Montreal. My mom moved to Montreal right after the Second World War in order to work as an occupational therapist because there were jobs available there. But she comes from an old Toronto family from Weston, which is in Etobicoke. There are some very, very old houses there still that are associated with her family. She was always interested in old houses,  old buildings. When she moved to Montreal as a young woman, she lived downtown and initially she lived in boarding houses and rooming houses like a lot of young people did, then she moved on to Edwardian apartment buildings. Finally when my dad retired, my parents sold our home in the burbs and moved into an Edwardian apartment building, very similar to Spadina Gardens but  in downtown Montreal,  so it was probably that influence. I’ve always loved old buildings, but particularly monumental old buildings like old train stations, old cinemas, old factory buildings, and old apartment buildings. The first apartment building I lived in in Montreal was an Edwardian my mom helped me to find. I went to Peterborough briefly to go to Trent briefly and even there we found an Edwardian apartment building. 

 

As you know, from the movie, I lived in the Marlborough in Montreal, which is an extraordinary building. Just before moving there I had gone through a fire in another apartment and it was awful- I was just a kid, but even then I had stuff:family things, antiques, art.  Nothing great, but you know what i’m like from the movie, those things were precious to me.  Then, when I’m still pretty fragile, I get a chance to move to the Marlborough–a dream come true–and dammit, they  renovict me.  That renoviction in the 1980s  was a really galvanizing and traumatizing incident for me. 

 

Also, it’s not in the film, but for four years, I worked in a store called Architectural Antiques in Montreal. And what that store sold were architectural remnants from buildings that had been either renovated to death or demolished. That experience reinforced my interest. So I have a real attachment to Edwardian apartment buildings and an ongoing interest in heritage without being a heritage professional or anything like that. 

 

I’m obviously not an architect or designer.  It’s just a very visceral thing for me. One of the things that irritates me about the movie, although I love the movie, is that repeated comment from me: “You could hear the floors crying out!” I sound so silly and emotional, anthropomorphizing the building. But I think that there’s an interesting philosophical underpinning to all of that which we could get into with your question about the window.

 

HV: Yes, why don’t you go ahead and talk about the window and the window scene in the film?

 

C: First of all, aesthetics are always a matter of taste, I guess, but I think they’re beautiful.

But I think perhaps what’s more important is that they have that sort of Walter Benjamin aura, right? They are original to the building. They were done with intention. That’s become clearer and clearer to me the more I’ve thought about the building. So, I’m in the dining room right now and I can look right into the living room.  In the living room  are my bay windows that are right on Spadina. And then directly across from those West windows on Spadina is the famous East window from the movie.. So, the idea was to have cross ventilation through the two rooms and light coming from both sides. I think the architect thought about that. And I think he also thought that sort of cozy corner of the dining room window was very important.

 

He built this apartment building to appeal to women and women with families. I think he wanted it to be beautiful and still sort of cozy and domestic. So he wanted that little area to be a kind of hospitable, warm place. A place maybe where you could sit and read in the sun, and where you would entertain people, and where people would have this lovely window to look at during dinner.. There’s parking below currently, but there are trees now too and at one time there might have been a garden. So you would look through the window and the beautiful leaded glass and the multi panes and you see all of this gorgeous greenery. Then when you go out and look at the back wall, which is not tremendously decorative, those windows…sort of elevate the whole thing, which is why I make the comment in the movie that, once one was  replaced, it looked like a Glaswegian Correctional Institute, or whatever I said. It became very industrial and basic, which I don’t object to per se, but that wasn’t the concept of the original architect. He specified a style that’s consistent with the rest of the building: it’s a little bit fussy, it’s decorative. But it’s still fairly restrained. It’s not stained glass. It’s just leaded glass. But it did involve additional workmanship and effort. Those are a lot of little panes. They’re not in spectacular shape right now, but they’ve withstood 120 years of weather and they’re still there. All of that is deeply affecting for me. I can feel the hand of the architect.

 

HV: I think this is a really difficult question. Because some people don’t have a lot of experience with, or maybe they’ve not been in very many older buildings or have never touched or used an older window. Some people might think, “What’s the big deal? You’re  just changing a window. A window’s a window.”

 

C: That’s what I’m saying. When you lose that, you lose that link with the past and the intentionality around the building. It actually resonates with the hand of the person who conceived of the building. And he conceived it for women and with an eye to a warm, domestic life. Once that’s gone, you have something very different. You have something possibly more utilitarian, more sensible, perhaps. But that wasn’t the concept. So that is, you know, the link to the past and that’s the aura of the object. It’s a little bit like taking irreplaceable archival material and destroying it. With that window, you have a very tangible artifact of the intention, which I think is a laudable intention, around the building.

 

You could also just say that I find it beautiful and others might not. But it’s more than that and that’s why it was so distressing to lose one. Like, every time I look at it, I’m touched that they thought of it. I’m touched that somebody spent the hours working on it, that they went to the trouble to install it. I mean, it’s meant to send a signal that the light coming from the two sides of the building, the East and the West, was important; that the cross ventilation was important; and that creating a beautiful home atmosphere was important.

 

That’s a big contrast with a lot of the condos that you see now, where it looks like cost  and trying to get as many units into the building as possible is the biggest issue. Where people are asked to privilege external life over domestic life, which is a perfectly acceptable choice, but it’s simply worth noting. This is a place where I think you were meant to enjoy an inside domestic life. A priority for Edwardians, I think. 

 

HV: How much time and energy did you spend organizing the tenants and fighting the developer and what was happening? 

 

C: We had a lot of meetings. The City did amazing research when they wrote their report. But we presented a pre-report to show how serious we were and hoping to help them out.  We spent a lot of time working with a heritage architect and the Sunnyside Historical Society on that report.  I think the whole thing took maybe 18 months to two years from the beginning to the end I guess. 

 

HV: So why did you feel so compelled to be the person to…. Did you feel like ‘I had to lead this’ or you just naturally fell into that role? 

 

C: Well, I really, really love the building. And I guess I was the tenant who had been here the longest HV the time this happened. I’ve been here for about 31 years. I also knew something about heritage from having that job and having that ongoing interest. I just sort of thought, ‘I can’t wait for somebody else to do this.’ I would have been happy if somebody had taken the lead and I could have assisted them. But I just thought I’d better get this started. And I did.

 

HV: So what was your fight? It’s probably a combination of things. You said you’ve been here 31 years. That’s probably related to it. But also you mentioned different things in the film about how this is related to the housing crisis or renovictions. 

 

C: It is complicated. You’re right to have noticed that the film sort of glosses over that issue.

 

HV: The housing issue? 

 

C: The issue being is this about housing or is this about preservation? I think you’re right; I think the film never really grapples with that directly. I think we didn’t either, because it sort of evolved over time. So we confronted some of those issues, but I think we never fully worked them out. The situation with Rachel does put that into relief.

 

We were aware of the owner’s intention to renovate and the owners told us they would go unit HV unit based on attrition, no evictions. But we didn’t know whether to rely on that or not. And certainly I was doubtful because I had already been renovicted from a similar place. There had been many stories of renovictions in Toronto and we were really concerned. And we were also really concerned about what the renovations would entail and how much they would alter the character of the apartments and the building.

 

The truth was that we were never presented with eviction notices; we were never told we had to move for the renovations. We waited for notices; they never came. So there wasn’t an eviction notice to fight. We were able to stay in the building and we’re still in the building. 

 

So then the other possibility that worried us was: what’s going to happen? Are they going to gut the units? Are they going to be respectful? What’s going to happen to the windows? All of that stuff. We received advice that it might be a good idea to check in with the heritage people. And we did that, even before it had been entirely thought through. 

 

In the course of talking to people involved in heritage preservation, including the City, I came to realize that we couldn’t pursue the designation of the building in a cynical way. We couldn’t use the preservation of the building as a means to preserve our tenancies. It wouldn’t be right. That would be self-seeking. Moreover, it wasn’t even a way of preserving our tenancies because, in fact, we ran the risk that the owner would be so annoyed with us, once he figured out that we had pursued the heritage designation, that he would actually try to find excuses to evict us. So we were actually endangering our tenancies. I think in the end, it helped preserve them, but there was a real risk that it would not. So I had to think through in my head: ‘even if it means I lose, I end up being evicted, if I lose my tenancy, am I still going to fight for the building? Let’s say I had to move for a completely different reason: would I still fight for this building?’ And I realized that I would fight for the building. 

 

HV: Right. BobHV said something similar in the film.

 

C: And that put us at odds with some of the tenants. It wasn’t just Rachel, who was understandably very concerned about a place to live, affordability, not saving the building. The renovations were so upsetting. They felt so scary and really dangerous, actually, that there were people who just felt that they were being harassed to leave. I don’t think was the case actually, but it’s hard to renovate. It was particularly hard then. It was hard for the owners to get decent crews I think. And bad stuff happened: my downstairs neighbour’s ceiling caved in. Rachel had terrible things happen to her unit. For many tenants, that was the really important thing. It was a miserable, miserable, and threatening experience.

 

Now from my perspective,  I feel like I didn’t pay enough attention to those tenants, including Rachel. Rachel and I have become fast friends. But I now feel at the time that I should have paid more attention to her concerns. But, in my mind, and this was partly related to my house fire experience and the renoviction at the Marlborough, where at the time, I thought, ‘I’m gonna lose all my stuff. The stuff that I managed to salvage from the fire I went through: it’s all going to get destroyed.’ And my then landlord told me as much. I said, “Am I in danger? If I stay during the renovations, is my stuff in danger?” And he said, “Well, you know, things get broken.” And I said, “What you’re doing is terrible.” And he said, “Well, you know, we want to accomplish something here and to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs,” So I became an egg and caved and I left without fighting to the end for myself and for that building. This time around I thought: “They’re not going to do this to me. I love this building. I’m committed to it. It will have to get actually genuinely dangerous before I leave. I’ll put up with noise. I’ll put up with dust. I’ll put up with anything but I am not leaving. I’m not going to be driven out by the renovation being threatening.” But for other people, this was a new experience for them and it was a lot scarier.

 

The other thing, I guess, a difference between Rachel and myself is…it’s the opposite, right? For her, this was an affordable apartment in a really desirable neighbourhood partly because it’s so convenient. For me, the apartment was always expensive. I had to sacrifice to live here. So it wasn’t an affordable option for me at all. It was a commitment out of passion because I just love the building so much. I sacrificed other things in order to be able to afford the rent.

 

I wasn’t thinking ‘Oh, I won’t find a place for this level of rent.’ I mean, I could absolutely do that. But I was thinking: ‘I will never find a place this beautiful again in Toronto. Never.’ And that is actually the case. There’s nothing like this.

 

HV: So when you say this word beautiful, I feel that you mean it more than in a beautifully aesthetic sense.

 

C: It is beautifully designed. It’s so smart. I mean everything flows beautifully. If you have people over, there’s a beautiful flow of traffic. Almost musical. I would say the way the light works is, frankly, magical. All the rooms segue gorgeously. 

 

There’s more than enough cupboard space. Even the shelves in the cupboards are remarkable. They are absolutely plumb. They must be 120 years old, but there’s no warping or anything, even in my pantry, where I have heavy, heavy stuff on them. Where there’s been damage or decay, like chipped baseboards or moldings, it’s all reparable because it’s real wood, etc. The little bits of decay actually look sort of lovely, as opposed to more ersatz materials which wouldn’t be as attractive.  It wouldn’t be everybody’s taste, I completely acknowledge that. But to me, it is beautiful, it’s resonant. I am very attached.  

 

HV: Have you heard any criticisms of the documentary? Or at least any criticisms that you feel, ‘yeah, that’s a fair criticism’? 

 

C: I haven’t heard them directly. I’ve received a lot of really lovely compliments about the movie, I’ve heard some negative comments second hand. My impression is that, to the extent that there is criticism, it’s that the tenants are old and white and privileged. And in the movie, that’s mostly the case with the exception of Rachel and Magda. 

 

In recent years the building has had periods of more visible diversity than what appears in the movie. But yes, in the specific period the film was made it was a pretty white building.

 

On the income side, the above grade apartments in this  building were always geared towards affluent people. That  was the target market in 1904, during the housing crisis of that period because then, like now, even upper middle class people can have trouble finding homes. I have a great period newspaper cartoon to that effect.  But the building at least had well-to-do people living in density vs single family detached homes and that’s huge:  Maida Vale in London, a neighbourhood of Spadina Gardens-like buildings, is the densest square kilometer in the UK.  If Toronto had developed along those lines we would have had a different city.  

 

Initially, when I moved here, I think right up until when the building was sold four or five years ago, the rents of the unrenovated above grade apartments reflected market value. We were paying the top end of what you can pay for a three bedroom apartment. Now because real estate’s become so expensive in Toronto, we’re paying  less than that  and it partly reflects the fact that it’s an old building and people are hesitant about that. The building doesn’t reflect  mass current tastes, sadly, in my view.  It’s true that there are not a lot of modern amenities here in the unrenovated units and even for tenants living in the much more expensive renovated units.  I do my laundry in the basement. There’s no front desk; there’s no exterior space; there’s no gym room; none of that. So you have to like older buildings to live here.  That used to mean affluent, probably older, often arty people with particular tastes.  Now, the upside of that situation  is starting to mean affordability and we’re seeing some really interesting changes in the current tenant body with younger people coming inIn any case it remains a mix–I’m happy if affluent people give up their houses to live here in density, happy if young people come.  

 

But I suppose the most important point is, if even affluent people can feel threatened with renoviction, I don’t know what to tell you. It says a lot  about how tough it’s becoming in Toronto. And I know Vancouver is very tough as well. 

 

Anyway, there’s not much I can do about our demographics in the movie…the building is what it is and the film was shot when it was shot . What are your thoughts?