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Toronto ON

The old building of famed Toronto music venue The Matador Ballroom will be torn down.

The City has approved the application that will replace the property at 466 Dovercourt Rd. — which housed The Matador during a 43-year run that included live acts from Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and Stompin' Tom Connors — with a six-storey condo.


The property at 466 Dovercourt was first constructed in 1915 with residential units and an original dance hall, which was the dance academy of building owner Charles Freeman Davis (of the Davis clan, an established family of ballroom teachers in Toronto).


The building housed a hodgepodge of businesses over the years, including a chiropractor business, a hairdresser, a garage, and a judo school.

A bowling alley was added to the dance hall at some point in the 1920s. By 1953, there was another bowling alley on the second floor as well as part of the Elite Bowling business.

In 1964, the first-floor alley was removed to accommodate a live country music venue opened by Ann Chopik Dunn called The Matador Ballroom.


The after-hours dance venue was a hot spot among Torontonians and tourists alike, and was said to be frequented by country notables like Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, as well as local celebrities like Leonard Cohen and Catherine O'Hara. While originally a country music venue, by the 1980s the Matador featured a wider variety of music including rock 'n' roll, blues, and rockabilly. During this time the Matador was a busy and popular venue where local and itinerant headliners would regularly drop in to jam after their gigs, treating live music lovers with impromptu performances.

k.d. lang's official music video for "Turn Me Round" (1987) features the Matador sign and street frontage as well as long shots of the stage with its uniquely odd background array of dusty cowboy boots and dozens of signatures.

Big Sugar (band)'s official music video for "Ride Like Hell" (1995) was filmed here by director Eric Yealland and DP Douglas Koch and was nominated for a Much Music Video Award.

The space was a dance hall with an 18-foot ceiling, hardwood floors, a stage, and numerous items of country music memorabilia, such as antlers, cowboy boots, and records. An unlicensed establishment, the Matador Club provided live music every Friday and Saturday night from 1:30am to 5:30am.

The club was inaccurately described as a "booze can" by the time of its closure on March 1, 2010, when the dance hall was sold.