Loblaws | Queensbury Arms | Townhouses

Beverly Pearson

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Ken Humphreys

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Jeffrey Jones Michael A Cappa Sr. Judy Isobel Culham-Morris
I spent quite a bit of time here listening to the Ian Thomas Band!!!

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Wayne Steele
My dad used to stop there on way home from Eaton's have a few beers and stagger home, drove home a stripper once and she gave me a joint ,sat in my car for a year before I smoked it. First and last time I ever smoked it, was rough smoking it and started hallucinating one time only ,but anyways good memories at the queensbury.

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Larry Pealow

When I got out of the Ontario Reformatory in the summer of 75, I went to work at the Queensbury Arms. Believe it or not I was treated like a Rock Star when I worked behind that bar. If people didn’t tip, you’d put a bubble gum down beside their drink, they could get real thirsty before they got another beer. Vern worked the opposite shift of me, if I was on days, he worked nights. We had been buddies ten years earlier at the Sunvalley Bowling and Billiards. His dad, old Charlie Mersereau would come to the bar in the mid afternoon, he didn’t live far. There were times when he had had a few drinks before hand and he was almost salivating from the sides of his mouth when he let his barrage of cuss words out to the owner Hughey MacClellan who we gave the job to, to ask Charlie to leave. There were a lot of other ‘old timers’ that I recall frequenting the newly located Queensbury. That bar had been located on Scarlett Road forever, it may have been what they refer to as a coach stop. I suppose the property sold for condos and the license was purchased by the Eaton group who subsequently bought the old Loblaws store and the big adjoining parking lot on Weston Road, a few blocks north of Eglinton Avenue. Thinking back on the new place, I felt it had an American look to it, like a cowboy and western bar as there was a lot of dark wood used in the design, the bar area was partitioned off by a half wall where some tables were placed, the main room would have sat a few hundred, the waiters grabbed their drinks from a tap room at the back of the building, liquor was purchased at the bar, as well as orange juices and pops. At the front of the building they had build a mezzanine with entrances at either end, it was only opened on buys nights. Right in the middle of the main floor along the north wall they build a good sized stage for the bands to play with a small dance floor. When I first started they were having a new juke box installed, one of the popular tunes of the day was I Shot the Sheriff by Eric Clapton. With high end speakers installed from above the place could really hummmm.It was the old guys who made me laugh. Digger was the size of a jockey, he was called that because he worked at a cemetery digging holes. Art Johnson an uncle to my friends Kenny and George Johnson looked like a penquin due to the short arms he had, he was about fifty or so, the kind of male who may have never been laid in his life, Art was very quiet, he’d order a Canadian and watch the show. Frank Bailey was the grandfather of some slick card playing guy named Cec and father of Glenda who had Lori whom my brother Al was shacked up with. You would get Frank a beer and then realize he was stoned, he couldn’t even lift his beer to pour it in a glass. He looked at me when I’d say, “you’re cut off and he’d say, “Don’t Mind if I Do”. We didn’t serve him anymore that night. Another Charlie, Charlie Morisson was a regular on Friday nights after his shift at the rubber factory. He drank Bradings Ale that we had to stock for him only. When Chuck Morrisson got going the place would liven up. The hard core people all had one thing in common, when they were over the limit you could count on their eyes looking weird, as if they were on a different planet.

The Queensbury was a place where some rich people, Eatons and so on must have been laundering some money. Hughey was the front man, he drove a black four door Cadillac Seville with power everything and gold velour upholstery. One night he decided to bar my brother Big Al. Well that was a bad mistake. Al was a bit off his rocker at the best of times in a Jack Nicholson The Shining kind of way. He could be nice as pie to you but if you crossed him, look out. It happened to be smelt season down at Lake Ontario. Several of us headed down to the lake, we took some smelting gear, which amounted to a few nets, We didn’t have to catch a ton of smelts as there were millions of them washed up on shore, rotting. I recall they were there because they had dark spots on them and had been discarded. We scooped them up, then put them in several cardboard boxes and drove back to the Queensbury Arms. There was Hugheys brand new leased shiny black four door Cadillac at the back side delivery door of the former Loblaws store. We parked our cars behind the building in the two car wide laneway off of Glenvalley Drive. I’m not sure who was driving, it could have been one of the Morissons as Teddy was recently barred as well. All he did to get barred was disquise himself as an immigrant from India by wearing a headdress and gluing a ruby coloured marble to his forehead and teased the manager, Verma Paraghatti a bit by putting on a fake accent and pretending to be an immigrant looking for work. For that he got a life time ban! Back to the fish. I mean we had six boxes of these rotting smelt. We parked our cars behind the building, someone kept watch up front where the customers went in, The Cadillac’s car doors were unlocked. I can still see the crazy grin on Alex’s face as he flipped each box of smelt onto the upholstery. He tipped the boxes upside down, and slimy contents flooded all over the car seats, the floors, the dash everywhere. It was better than any scene from a movie. Some of us, stuck around until 11PM hiding a bit away behind cars in the parking lot to watch when Hughey would traditionally leave the club to go to his home in the Annex part of town. All I can say, is that it was a priceless moment. Not long after the load of fish was discovered we saw Two Pump the bar manager and his brother Three Pump cleaning the car out. The next day they were still cleaning it. For myself it was a bit awkward as I had the early shift. I don’t know that even up to this time in life that the perpetrators of that prank have been identified. I’m not to worried for Al, as he has been dead for a half dozen years or more.When Hughey closed the Arms, nobody ever heard from him again. Vern and I were on short notice. There was lots of carrying on at the place. When the bar would close, it was easy to talk Hughey into opening the taps and springing for free drinks for us including numerous clients. Hughey would write these expenses off provided we kept accurate records of what was consumed. That was no problem as all the hard liquor was on a meter system, beers had already been counted and the fridges were refilled at the end of each shift. In this way Hughey was sure to have some company. I got the impression that he was a lonely person with few friends. It was obvious by how he dressed and carried himself that he came from a different background than us commoners from Mt.Dennis.

At times we would wonder if he wasn’t a plant by the cops to infiltrate the local biker gangs. He would let them come and go as they pleased. One night after closing there was a party, all these biker types were on the stage playing the bands instruments, quite poorly, hammering on the drums and making weird sounds on the electric guitars. One of the guys, now dead, red haired Cosmo drove in the front doors on a Harley motorcycle and scooted around the floor. John Paul was there, as were these guys from a club we called The No Name Bikers, Smiley, Bob Jevons and Ward. The next day, the band was pissed that their stuff had been touched. Things were getting out of hand. Nightly there would be a police presence to keep the different heavies from fighting each other. Vern and I would just stand back and watch we knew better than to interfere with the clubs meting out of punishment. Things went from bad to worse when Alex went amok in the mezzanine one Friday night, he was holding one of his minions over the railing threatening to drop him if he didn’t come up with the money he was owed. The police came, arrests were made, Al was barred for life.In order to secure a more peaceful establishment, Hughey came up with the idea to have all men entering the premises after 8PM adhere to a strict dress code. They would have to wear sports jackets with shirt and ties. The end was near. On the first Friday night of the new rules implication, Vern and I headed to the local St. Vincent de Paul store and purchased nice jackets and shirts and ties. We were half in the bag when we got to the bar a bit after 8PM. There literally was nobody in the place. People in Mt. Dennis, if they owned a shirt tie and jacket had them on reserve to attend weddings and funerals, it was a working class area, period. I was supposed to be behind the bar working. Gerry Two Pump the manager said to me, “Charlie, you are supposed to be working”. I said, “I know, I quit”. Then he turned to Vern and said, “Vern you will have to work Charlie’s shift”. Vern looked at him and said, “I quit too”. We stayed the night, as I recall drinking these strong tequila sunrises out of salt rimmed glasses. I’m not sure but that bar did not make it much longer after that crazy rule. Like I said, nobody saw Hughey afterwards, he must have slinked back into his hole. I never missed the place, I missed the money and some of the people, but we would soon have bigger fish to fry. For a month Vern and I helped out the odd day at Able the Movers located on Weston Road a bit south of Eglinton Avenue. These east coast lads ran a funky shop. They owned a bunch of five ton trucks and placed ads in the local papers advertising their moving rates. That gig was a lot of fun as well but the hours were not steady, still when we got a chance to work and make fifty bucks we could get up and do the lifting. Out of town gigs were the best as you got paid for travel time same as if you were lifting furniture. Al was our boss, so to speak, he got us the work, at the time he lived in the back of a broken down truck parked at the office. Patty one of the owners claimed Al was night security so the cops never bothered him when he would be coming in late from beers at the Branch 61 Legion which was a few doors down from Able the Movers on Weston Road. Then one day the phone rang, someone had referred us to Al Korman at the Seaway Beverly Hills on Wilson Avenue not far from Jane street my old stompin grounds from greasier days.

Parbo Gregory
I think the 'biggest popular band' I saw there was Triumph! That was a great show.

Jack Clarke

Mike Mattos
Did Bachman Turner play the Queensbury about '74?

Darren Bedford