Simcoe House

History of Simcoe House

Charles Ayre built the Ayre Hotel here in 1887, a red-brick corner hotel with yellow-brick banding and bay windows serving the factories and rail yards of the east end. It later became the Hotel Simcoe.

In 1947 the family of the actor Al Waxman, later famous as CBC's King of Kensington, bought it and named it the Simcoe House. His mother, Tobie, ran it, and after her death in 1964 Al and his brother owned it. It was a rough working-class tavern; Waxman later recalled a mesh screen around the bar. The brothers sold it in 1984.

The buyers were Bob Saunders, Matt Shields and Jack Mackness, who moved their gay bar from 18 Eastern Avenue and opened The Toolbox, a leather bar far from the Church Street village. Early on there were fights and Molotov cocktails thrown at the windows, but the bar became a community centre of sorts, with pool and card nights and charity events. After hard years in the 1990s the owners retired and closed it in 2003.

By 2004 the empty building was almost hidden by vines. Frank Merigliano of Manorbrook Homes bought it for $950,000 and rebuilt it from the inside: new foundations, block walls between units, new joists and studs, keeping the double-brick outer walls. A mansard third storey went on top and a matching four-unit wing was added along Morse Street, with two semis built in the old yard on Eastern. The eight homes, 112A to 112H Morse, are freehold townhouses of about 1,764 to 2,758 square feet, four of them in the old hotel; 112A keeps the original corner entrance.

Stories you'll hear

The Hells Angels clubhouse was just a few doors east at 500 Eastern Avenue. It's said the bikers drank at the Toolbox and borrowed its parking lot, and that having them as regulars kept trouble away. No record confirms it.