Tuesday Treasures

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.


August 2025 - Toronto ON

I was reading BlogTO and thought, Matador Club, what's that? Click here for the article and image source.
This photo totally baffled me, so weird looking with its surroundings.

The Matador Club, a historic music venue at College and Dovercourt in Toronto, is slated to be replaced by a mixed-use development featuring a six-story condo building. The original building, constructed in 1914, has a rich history as a dance academy, bowling alley, and most notably, a live music venue that hosted iconic artists like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. The new development will include commercial space and residential units. While the Matador sign will be preserved and incorporated into the condo's design, the venue's legacy as a live music space will be replaced by the new development, according to blogTO. 

Then I looked closer, realized it is an artist rendering of the proposed condo, saw it was at College and Dovercourt and then recognized the vintage Matador sign and I figured it out!

However, there are also plans to keep the exterior marquee and wood paneling on the ground floor where commercial space is expected to be. To date it seems this is still in the planning approval stages.

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" (1993) was filmed here by director Eric Yealland and DP Douglas Koch and was nominated for a Much Music Video Award.

Signs

  Joining Tom at Signs2

Wordless Wednesday Wordless Be There 2day

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.

Tuesday Treasures - Yorkville

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

Toronto ON

In the 1960s, Yorkville was a sanctuary for the counterculture movement in Canada - an equivalent to New York's Greenwich Village.

The cheap cost of rent in Yorkville led many German and English immigrants to buy property in the area. The charming, but often neglected Victorian homes were converted into coffee houses.

At the time, the drinking age in Ontario was 21, and these venues provided an alternative gathering space for Toronto's young, hip crowd.


.

York University Archives

The cream-coloured building in the photo above (Yorkville Avenue just east of Hazelton Avenue) is the former home of the Penny Farthing coffee house.

In 1963, John and Marilyn McHugh, owners of one of Yorkville's first coffee houses, the Half Beat, opened the Penny Farthing in this Victorian house. For the next seven years, the venue hosted folk, blues, and jazz performances.

Inside, patrons heard such Canadian musicians as Malka & Joso, the Allen-Ward Trio, and The Dirty Shames, as well as international stars including José Feliciano, John Lee Hooker, and Josh White. Jazz artists Jim McHarg, Jim Galloway, and others recorded the album Stompin' at the Penny (1965) here with the legendary Lonnie Johnson. The coffee house also featured a backyard patio with a swimming pool.

The Penny Farthing gave two prominent Canadian artists their starts. A young Canadian folksinger-songwriter, Joan Anderson, who performed here in 1965, went on to international acclaim as Joni Mitchell. One year later, the Stormy Clovers debuted the songs of poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen.

The Penny Farthing now (July 2023) you can see the above plaque on the right side of the building just above the plant.

Opened in 1964 in the basement of a Victorian row house that once stood on this site, the Riverboat coffee house quickly became one of North America's premier intimate venues for singer-songwriters.

 

On the leading edge of the surging folk and blues music scene, the Riverboat featured performances on its small stage by such legends as John Lee Hooker and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, as well as by young performers like Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, and Arlo Guthrie. It also provided an early stage for musicians who would become some of the biggest names in Canadian music, including Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLauchlan, and Dan Hill. Neil Young immortalized the Riverboat in his song "Ambulance Blues."

A legendary music venue of the 1960s and one of the longest-running coffee houses of its era in Canada, the Riverboat outlived Yorkville's hippie scene but closed its doors in 1978.

In “Ambulance Blues”, singer-songwriter Neil Young reminisces about the "old folky days." In the song, he immortalizes the Riverboat Coffee House, one of the world's best intimate venues for singer-songwriters during the hippie heydays of the 1960s. It was the longest-operating coffee house of several dozen venues that lined Yorkville's cobblestone streets, north of Toronto's Bloor Street.

Ambulance Blues

Canadian Artist of the Day

Peacock 

Joni Mitchell 1967

Canadian Artist of the Day

  Joni Mitchell. "Self Portrait". 1997

Canadian Artist of the Day

 "40 Below 0" painting by artist and musician Joni Mitchell

Foto Tunes

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme. 

September 2017 - Canada

A Case of You - Joni Mitchell

Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star and I said,
Constantly in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada

With your face sketched on it twice

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter
And so sweet oh
I could drink a case of you darling and I would
Still be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints

I'm frightened by the devil

And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
"Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine 'cause
Part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you…