WHERE THE MUSIC WAS
But once 18 John St. N. was a place of joy. Now it needs a winning concept
Paul Wilson takes us back to the day when Waddington’s made John Street North rock //
For years and years, anyone walking past 18 John St. N. has seen an abandoned restaurant. The Golden Fortune has been dead longer than it lived.
The letters that spell out its name look to be made of old sponge toffee. The “u” has fallen; the rest look ready to follow.
But before the restaurant arrived, that address was a place of joy. Magic was made there, the musical kind.
The people of Hamilton did not yet have television — and thus made their own entertainment — when Waddington’s opened its music store in 1949.
Percy Waddington started a music school around the corner on the Gore 20 years earlier. After a fire, the music school and new store relocated on John North.
Percy conducted the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra for three years. Music became life’s passion, too, for his son Ronald, too, who was an accomplished conductor, composer and teacher. He organized sold-out musical revues at Delta and Westdale schools over the decades.
Waddington’s was tops in music in this town — six sales people in the store, and 20 music teachers upstairs where clarinet, flute, sax, drums, banjo, Hawaiian guitar, accordion, or-
gan and piano were all on parade.
But everything changes. And 30 years ago, the summer of 1988, I went down to talk to Ronald Waddington. The store was closing.
He was 77 then. On the second floor, in one of eight practice rooms that each had a big half note on the door, he played a tune. It was a sad day. He said the building had been sold to Toronto interests who were going to open a restaurant.
Which brings us back to the future. I never ate at the Golden Fortune, don’t know anyone who did. It opened just after Waddington’s was gone. It may now be some 20 years since it served its last meal.
Right across the street, Sean Burak runs Downtown Bike Hounds. The remains of Golden Fortune fill the view from his front window.
“But I know very little about it,” he says. “There aren’t even any windows to look in ... the graffiti’s a little newer, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same as when I arrived.”
That was seven years ago. Anthony B. Nunoo is general manager of the McWalter & Associates accounting office, one door north of the Golden Fortune. Nunoo has been there since 1994 and recalls the restaurant wasn’t open too many years after that.
He’s never been inside the old building, but it’s his understanding that owner David Huang sometime stays there when not in Toronto.
It would be a dark place to live. City records show Huang got approval for a $10,600 store front improvement grant 10 years ago, but those bleak aluminum shutters are always pulled down. The second floor windows are papered over, front and back. Maybe there’s life on the third floor.
Nunoo says sometimes people knock on his door, wondering about the restaurant and if the space might be for rent. He passes along Huang’s number, and sometimes people get a tour.
Apparently the restaurant equipment is outdated, and the rental price is high. No deals have been done.
I would have liked a tour. I called Huang, texted, banged on the door. No response.
This stretch of John, just north of King, is doing better these days. Two doors away, the magnificent 1879 Treble Hall is now being marketed for condo-style living. The slogan: Make History Yours. And a two-minute walk away, two 30-storey residential towers are set to go up now on the Kresge property.
On the restaurant front, MyThai and the Capri continue to flourish across the street. And just around the corner, there is King William’s cool new restaurant row.
May the Golden Fortune soon be put out of its misery. Some smart restaurateur out there is A Yellow Pages ad from the 1950s, when it took six salespeople on the floor to handle people looking to buy instruments of every kind.
bound to have a winning concept. Maybe a place with a music theme. Maybe they could call it Waddington’s.