Emotional Crowds Say Goodbye To Ed Mirvish With Tears And Cheers
Posted July 13, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s something you’ll probably never see again in your lifetime – a large crowd standing on a Toronto street corner applauding a hearse as it leaves for the cemetery. But then you’ll probably never see a man like Ed Mirvish again. More than 3,000 people, from the famous and the wealthy to the common Joe, turned out in force to bid a bittersweet farewell to a man many regard as the face of Toronto. For the 92 years of his celebrated existence, Ed Mirvish honoured the City of Toronto. On Friday, the City of Toronto honoured him for the last time at his funeral.
The area around the Beth Tzedec Synagogue at 1700 Bathurst St. near Eglinton was jammed at 11am. Former Lt.-Gov. Lincoln Alexander, NDP leader Jack Layton, Mayor David Miller, ex-Mayor Barbara Hall, Premier Dalton McGuinty and actress Shirley Douglas were just a few of the dignitaries who entered the solemn service. There were hundreds more, nearly all of them unknown, but who all felt a kinship with this special man. Some came in limos, others by taxis or cars. Many arrived on bikes. And some even walked just to be there in time.
The founder of Honest Ed’s died Wednesday at St. Michael’s Hospital, after a lifetime of offering bargains, giving away free Christmas turkeys, throwing his own birthday party for the city, creating Toronto’s famed theatre district, donating to charity and even receiving a knighthood from the Queen.
Funerals are a mostly solemn affair and the Jewish religion rarely allows for pomp and circumstance. But an exception was made outside for Mirvish, with a piper, a police honour guard and even a Mounted Unit horse named after the famous retailer brought in to pay tribute to his enormous contributions. ” Just to be here is very dignified for me in support of him and his family,” emotes a clearly moved Michael O’Halloran with Toronto EMS.
CityNews respected the family’s wishes and didn’t send cameras inside the synagogue during the ceremony. But those who did attended were moved to both laughter and tears. “It was very touching and uplifting, very, very emotional thing, and it was beautiful, really beautiful in there,” recalls a man named Bobby, who worked for Mirvish for 33 years. “There was a lot of tears and stories, mostly stories from his son and his family … but it was very, very heartbreaking to hear all the stories. But very comical, of things that he’s done and the way he’s treated us employees.” He calls Mirvish more of a “stepfather” than a boss, adding, “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have the good life that I have today.”
Even those who are used to the public eye and the spotlight were moved beyond words by the touching thoughts of Ed’s closest companion, his wife Anne. “Mrs. Mirvish’s eulogy was one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard,” agrees Councillor Adam Vaughan. “It underscores the private passions that were part of the public man.”
” There was a lot of love and tears and a lot of laughter,” adds Hall. “All things that he draws out of us.”
Most who worked closely with him felt divided by his passing, mourning his tragic absence while remembering his wonderful life. “It’s a great loss for all of us, but when I see people already waiting to get in, I mean I feel so good,” reflects longtime Honest’s Ed G.M. Russell Lazar. “It’s a wonderful tribute to Ed, and I’m happy about that. I think Ed would be very pleased, his being a humble man saying that people gave up their time to be here today. That would be his words.”
Franca Longobardi also toiled for Mirvish for more than 30 years and is finding it hard to say goodbye to her beloved employer. “He walked through the store every day to greet employees, greet customers alike, and everyone was special,” she reflects. But no one was more special than the man himself.
Mirvish was humble to the end as Lazar recalls after the theatrical and business legend was given a C.B.E. or Commander of the British Empire by the Queen. “He came back and everybody used to ask him: What does C.B.E. stand for? And he would say Commander of Bargains Everywhere.”
Flags at Toronto City Hall were lowered all day Friday in his memory. And his Bathurst and Bloor store was closed until 2pm so his longtime employees could attend the ceremony. The famed beacon outside that bears his name, once touted as the largest electric sign in the world, went dark in a silent tribute to the man who changed the face of the city with some low prices – and a big heart.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to:
The Ed Mirvish Educational Memorial Fund
c/o The Benjamin Foundation
3429 Bathurst Street,
Toronto
M6A 2C3
Or call (416) 780-0324.
The fund supports up and coming entrepreneurs.
David Mirvish’s Eulogy
I would like to thank all of you for being here today. Over the last four years many people have stopped me on the street to ask “how is your father?” and it’s made me aware that he gave a great deal of himself to the people of Toronto.
But all of you gave back to him, in return. It was a meaningful bond between all of us in this city. We’re all here to remember a remarkable man that you all knew as Honest Ed, but to me, he was “Dad”. My father always said, “Do the hardest task first”, but this time I intend to save that for the last.
It’s my privilege to be able to eulogize some of his public life and then tell you a bit more personally about my father. In recent days the papers have spoken of how he came to this country as an immigrant, lost his father at the age of 15, found the light of his life in my mother and went on to achieve many of his goals.
My father very seldom spoke of goals and he was skeptical of long-term planning – he couldn’t foretell the future. But I do know that his first goal was to be able to take care of his family and not be a burden on anyone. Looking back, he once said to me that he thought that if he could earn $100 a week he would be happy.
When he opened Honest Ed’s in 1949, he was able to do that being open one day a week. But then ambition took over, and the truth is my father couldn’t help but work all the time – the reason being he felt that work was a privilege and a pleasure.
He was born in Colonial Beach, Virginia, moved to Washington at the age of 2, came to Canada at the age of 9, lost his father at the age of 15, married at the age of 26 and went from Dundas Street to Buckingham Palace in the course of a lifetime.
From 1941 until 1963 my mother and he built a business at Bloor and Bathurst that is today called Honest Ed’s. It was one of the first discount department stores in the world and it came into being shortly after the Second World War. It made goods available to generations of Canadians, new and old, at great prices.
My father did outrageous promotions to focus attention on the store, but ultimately the reason people kept coming back was because he delivered value. In 1963 he purchased the Royal Alexandra Theatre because he believed that it was a beautiful building that should not be destroyed. Over the years he came to love it in the same manner as he did Honest Ed’s. He said that theatre wasn’t a business, it was a disease.
In order to make theatre-going easy for people in the early years when there were no places to eat nearby, he opened a restaurant next door to the theatre and only served one dish, roast beef. What all these enterprises had in common is that he tried to make them as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. He believed theatre-going was a habit and therefore he tried to keep the theatre open 52 weeks a year.
Over the years he shared what he could with other people and obviously enjoyed people. He received recognition and honourary degrees. Amongst the overwhelming outpouring of good wishes that my family has received in these past two days one gentleman wrote to say “make sure you get his honours right”.
There’s the CBE (Commander of the British Empire), the OC (Order of Canada), the O.Ont (Order of Ontario) and LLD (Honorary Doctorates). My father was very proud to have that recognition, but he always said “I’m a storekeeper”.
He enjoyed going to Buckingham Palace and was honoured to receive the CBE. But I think he thought that it not only meant Commander of the British Empire, but also, “Commander of Bargains Everywhere”. He cared about people and they cared about him. That’s why we’re here today.
But what was it like, living at home, with Honest Ed? My father was a creature of habit and yet somehow he was able to combine that with great creativity. You could set your watch by him. Every morning at 8 a.m. he was at work. For The first hour he would sit at a diner called “Peter’s Lunch”, at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor and have a coffee. Throughout my childhood I remember him there – and whether you worked with him at Honest Ed’s or if you just lived in the neighbourhood, he was always available to talk to you over breakfast.
Through most of my youth my mother had food on the table at 6 p.m. and my father sat down at that time to eat dinner with us everyday. Sometimes after dinner he would sit at the table with a piece of paper and write Edlines for his ads “Honest Ed is for the birds! Cheap, Cheap, Cheap!” For many years the marks from the Edlines were scratched into the top of the dining room table. It didn’t always please my mother.
He loved to look in Eaton’s windows at Christmas and whenever he travelled he would look at store windows to get ideas. He thought window-shopping was the best form of entertainment and it was free. In later years when I was working with him, I knew that he would be at Honest Ed’s in the morning and that he would be at lunch in Ed’s Warehouse at noon, sharp.
After lunch he would visit the theatre and finish his workday at the store. He didn’t give advice unless you asked for it and I wish I had asked for it more often. He felt that experience was the best teacher. He made few demands and it made you want to exceed his expectations. He did his work and as another friend of mine said, he then celebrated.
That celebration was a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. Because he worked so hard as most new business owners do, my mother sometimes felt that he should pay more attention to me and I remember when I was 12 or so, she insisted that he play handball with me against the wall of the local high school. I think we both did it to please her. Once.
My father did not like exercise in the traditional sense and I think this came from the fact that he spent a large part of his youth delivering groceries on the handlebars of his bike. He had very strong legs. He took great pride in his ability to ride a bike and in his 60s he won a bike race. The winner had to be the last person across the finish line.
When I was 12 years old he had to learn how to dance for my bar mitzvah and that became his form of exercise for the rest of his life. He danced every Tuesday and Thursday, two hours each night until he was 86. His teacher was a Scottish quickstep champion. When he stopped I asked him why and he explained to me that he had worn out his teacher. He also said people asked him “Ed, after all these years, you’re still taking lessons?” and he said “If I was learning how to play the stradivarius they wouldn’t ask me that question!”
In the 1950s he took me to AAA baseball games at the CNE and we went to the occasional hockey game. As he got older, it was hard on him if Toronto did not win and he wouldn’t want to stay to the end if it was going badly. I know he greatly appreciated being invited by the Blue Jays to throw out the first pitch on his birthday.
There was a period in our lives when my mother was studying sculpture in New York and I was finishing high school. My father always had a twinkle in his eye and shortly before my mother came home from New York, he decided to repaint the living room and the dining room, partly at my urging. He chose a ketchup colour on the dining room ceiling and a mustard colour on the walls and since this room ran into the living room, he simply reversed the colours there. I believe this is a warning to all wives to not leave their husbands alone too long.
My mother introduced my father to a whole world of the arts and in the last years of his life, he even enjoyed accompanying her to the opera. My father’s biggest gift to me was that he always made me feel secure growing up. I felt as if I lived under a protective umbrella and that I could venture out and try anything without too much trepidation because he would always be there for me. So today has a very difficult and strange feeling because although 20 years ago I know that I was in charge, I never felt the need to feel that I was in charge as we were always able to share responsibilities.
We worked together but we worked in different areas and probably, that was part of the secret to our success. My father wanted to keep things very simple and he didn’t stay on the phone very long, nor were his conversations lengthy. He was direct and to the point, but he had that twinkle in his eye, humour in what he had to say and he was a great listener.
People realized that he was interested in what they were saying. He loved to use a quip, but never in a hurtful way. He used it in a self-deprecating manner, but never to the point of losing personal dignity. For the past four years my father’s life was not easy. All his life he had wanted to be of service, he was trying hard. He tried hard to please and to not be a burden on his caregivers. He took up piano lessons and he hated to exercise but he did it to please my mother and me. In his illness, after always being independent and free, always making his own choices, he was now dependant on other people.
He would say “getting old is not for sissies”. He had a memory for people and incredible loyalty. He had friendships for life and there were a number of people who were in his life for 40 or 50 years. A few weeks ago, our son Jacob, who has been away, called his grandfather while we were visiting with my father at his house. My father mustered all his strength and lowered his voice to say “how are you doing?” and when Jacob said “great!” it brought an enormous smile to my father’s face…
My father hated drinking Ensure.he hated it as a fruit shake and he hated it with extra protein. But he put up with it and he lived to see Jacob come home. In recent days Jacob was able to visit with my father and my father’s eyes lit up to see him. Jacob said, “Papo is my role model, he is my hero.”
I believe that was very much a part of my growing up – he was my role model and my hero and now I realize that perhaps he was a role model and a hero to the whole city. He had a great love for all three of his grandchildren, Jacob, Hannah and Rachael. This has been a particularly difficult time for our family because his brother, my Uncle Bob passed away only 2 weeks ago. He was a great help to my father in the early days of our owning the Royal Alexandra Theatre when he helped book the shows. And while it has been a difficult time, we also feel fortunate that all of my father’s close family was able to visit with him before he died.
My father thought that Canada was a land of opportunity and that he was a symbol of what other people could achieve. To put it in theatrical terms, my father’s life was one long run, extended many times and recouped many times over by countless standing ovations.
And what kind of production was his life? It was anything but a tragedy; it was somewhat of a comedy, but one with lots of music and dancing, because everyone knows how much he enjoyed music and how much he loved to dance. So his life was the biggest, most joyful musical comedy, spiced with romance where he got the girl, my mother Anne, and they lived happily ever after. To borrow a phrase from George and Ira Gershwin, “Who could ask for anything more?”
Related stories:
Common Folk Remember Common Touch
Honest Ed A Friend To Immigrants
Rich and Famous React to Mirvish’s Death
Emotional And Touching: Your Memories Of Honest Ed
