The mystery of the Glosters’ usher jacket
And the solved mystery of the steel palm tree that was swiped from a Mountain home
Every so often over the last 34 years, Neil and Denise Gloster have had occasion to dwell more than they normally would on the happenstance that their food store occupies a space once used as a cinema.
And when they do have pause to reflect, a certain relic of their store’s theatrical antecedent comes to the fore and nags with its mystery.
Who wore that usher’s jacket, the still attractive, well-preserved one, navy blue with red lapels and cuffs and gold striping? (Is it just me or does it have a whimsically military effect, perhaps deliberate in order to imbue the wearer with an air of authority as might be required?) In its previous existence, the building that has housed the Horn of Plenty since 1984, a fixture of the streetscape on King West in Dundas, was both the Roxy cinema, and the Majestic before that. Same cinema, actually, but the name got changed with ownership over the years. Its days as a movie house ended in March 1961 after about 32 years in operation.
The Glosters have been thinking very pointedly about these roots of their beautiful old structure over these last many months as the back and upper part of it get turned into a coffee house (the back) and apartments (the upstairs, they hope). The project involves a massive renovation, inasmuch as the new uses will be taking advantage of the remainder of the vast theatrical square footage that Neil and Denise inherited when they bought the building. At that time, they needed a building with more room because of the unexpectedly meteoric early growth in their bulk food store business in Dundas, which they opened in 1980, in a rental space.
But they didn’t need the enormous upper area that the cinema’s balcony once occupied. Until now. As colleague Paul Wilson so colourfully told us in a column in 2017, the Glosters always thought about the potential of that space, with always a glimmer that maybe one day they would somehow use it.
That day has come, he wrote. The renovations are proceeding apace. But the usher’s jacket is no closer to giving up its history than it was when they found it in 1984.
“We didn’t find much (of cinematic character),” says Neil. “A take-up reel, wooden pulleys (probably used to lift a curtain), the theatre seats, 600 of them,” which the Port Dover Lighthouse Festival Theatre took.
And the usher’s jacket. Or perhaps we should say, more accurately, usherette’s jacket.
“We think it was worn by a woman or girl, because of the way it buttons,” says Denise. “We made Jason (their son) wear it at the grand opening in 1984.” She shows me a picture of a boy in said jacket. Jason is 45 now and owns the business.
What say you, readers? Did you or anyone you know wear the fetching garment back in the day? Let me or the Horn of Plenty know.
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You might remember my columns of June 8 and 15, chronicling the theft of a tall stainless steel palm tree from the lawn of a Mountain home and its subsequent recovery by the Hamilton police, in a raid on a home in Grimsby which also uncovered a cache of firearms and drugs.
I never thought we’d see that steel palm again. But I was wrong. I don’t know if the Hamilton police have a special “stainless steel palm tree” SWAT unit; if they do, they might be underworked, but they sure are good because they’re batting a thousand. In any case, congratulations are in order.
Moreover, the police very graciously took the recovered tree up to the owner’s house and, with the help of Shawn Porter of Steel City Palms Inc., who built it, reinstalled it on her property. See picture.
So thanks are in order as well. Nice to have a happy ending.