A Life in the City

By

Henry Argasinski

Copyright 2011-2012, Henry Argasinski

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To My Friends and the City I Left Behind.

CHAPTER 1

Life in the City Starts at the Centre, The Eaton Centre.

Anyone who listened to the radio during the late seventies in Toronto knew that jingle, the introduction to an all too familiar commercial frequently played to advertise what was then the largest shopping center in Canada. Everyone in the city knew the jingle with its catchy phrase.

Life in the City.

It would start with the unveiling from behind the curtain backdrop of a grand stage show style of extravaganza rarely seen in the city, the doors first opened to the general public with considerable fanfare and hoopla one winter afternoon in February 1977. The three storey retail Galleria signaled the rebirth of Toronto's main thoroughfare, taking back what was at that time a depressingly seedy street and igniting the battle to transform the urban landscape from one housing massage parlors, strip clubs and third rate movie houses with street corner collections of prostitutes and panhandlers to that of a shiny shopping Mecca complete with food courts and all the other amenities of modern city life. The world's first multi-screen Cineplex would be established here, bringing to life eighteen screens of magic and entertainment, at its inception the most movie screens under one roof in the world.