Old Kitchener Aud burned to the ground 70 years ago
KITCHENER — You may see only an asphalt intersection with modern light-rail tracks snaking through.
But Betty South, peering back through the sleepy lagoon of time to Jan. 10, 1948, sees much more on the spot where Charles and Queen Streets meet today. Her happy musical memories of the long-gone Summer Gardens, where she watched favourite trumpeter Harry James and his orchestra perform, still play like the craziest dream on this traffic-weary site.
It’s been a long, long time since those divine moments. There was no intersection here in the 1940s. It was just Queen Street. And the privatelyowned Summer Gardens concert and dance hall, also known as the Kitchener Auditorium, stood tall long before Charles Street foxtrotted on through.
“It was a Wow! place,” the 91-yearold South said from her Kitchener retirement home.
What was so Wow! about an old 8,000-capacity, arena-turned-dancehall, as the Second World War chased young men out of hockey and onto the front lines? The dancing. The visiting big bands — Glen Miller, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington — who took over the floor when the ice came out for good in 1940. The young lovers like Betty and Bob, her Air Force sergeant sweetheart, swooning and jitterbugging the night away on a first date, two years before their six-decade marriage led to three kids, six grandkids and seven greatgrandkids. That was the Wow! of the Summer Gardens.
“It was a good size,” South recalled. “You walk in and you wouldn’t say Palace Pier in Toronto. It wasn’t that type. It was so homey. Everyone, regardless of war, everyone was so happy to be together with this music.”
Homey? Chesterfields surrounded the dance floor. And that’s how the Summer Gardens burned to the ground 70 years ago this Wednesday, only a few hours after The Johnny Downs Orchestra left the stage in a sweet swirl of “Sentimental Swing.”
A smouldering cigarette, tucked into the cushions of a dance hall sofa, was blamed for the $135,000 blaze that left only the three-storey brick face of the building standing. Fire crews from Kitchener and Waterloo, which officially become a city a week before, fought the flames in one of the first Twin Cities collaborative efforts.
A few years later, the city purchased the property, which served as a parking lot, before Charles Street was extended through the site in the 1960s. And the last remnants of the Queen Street Auditorium, built for $55,000 in 1904, came tumbling down.
These days, even the memories are fading with time and a passing generation. Here in a city that knows mainly of the icy and musical exploits performed at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium on East Avenue, which the city built for $1.25 million in 1951.
Garry Mahn, a 67-year-old drummer, keeps a signed 78-inch Gene Krupa record hanging in his music room. His late father, Jack, got it after a Summer Gardens show by Krupa, who was Garry’s drumming hero since he was 13. Dad had it signed on the spot.
“Gene’s Boogie” is on one side of the vinyl disc. “Disc Jockey Jump” is on the other.
The funny thing was they didn’t realize his dad had a Krupa-signed record in his collection until a week or two before his father died in 1982.
“You can have it if you want it,” his dad told him.
Garry took it and still cherishes it. He keeps other Summer Gardens memories, passed down from his dad and his Grandpa Jack, close to his musical heart as well. Garry’s father once skipped school to see a Benny Goodman matinee at the Summer Gardens.
And his grandpa? He lived across the street in the apartments above Pearl Laundry, where he worked. When Louis Armstrong played the Summer Gardens, he’d take his laundry to Pearl to be cleaned. Grandpa Jack even pressed Armstrong’s famous monogrammed handkerchiefs, which Armstrong always held when playing.
“That was always a big deal with the Mahns,” Garry said. “That’s Grandpa Mahn had actually laundered Louis Armstrong’s hankies.”
And then there was Garry’s late motherin-law, Jean Berscht.
She loved to watch Lawrence Welk shows with Garry, until her passing a year ago. Once, she danced to Les Brown and His Band of Renown at the Summer Gardens, while Doris Day crooned “Sentimental Journey.”
But the old Queen Street Auditorium was about much more than big bands.
Carolyn Zister’s late father, Carl Rooke, managed the building for decades, leading up to the fire. Zister, who died just before Christmas, once told The Record she used to watch pro wrestlers play cards upstairs before grappling in the ring below.
In 1940, you could watch Whipper Billy Watson try to pin Joe Cox for 50 cents.
And on the ice, before it came out for good in 1940, you could watch the best of senior and junior hockey for miles around. Kitchener had its Greenshirts and Flying Dutchmen and pro-league Millionaires, who brought artificial ice to the building in 1927. Waterloo’s Siskins played games there, too.
One of the final hockey games at the old Queen Street ice shack saw the Guelph Biltmores beat the Toronto Marlboros 4-2 in a junior playoff game before 2,500.
The first game? That was Jan. 3, 1905. Berlin beat Brantford 7-3, before 2,000 hockey fans.
An in between, some of the greatest local players twirled on the 170-by-80 foot ice surface. They included the NHL’s famous Kraut Line of Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart.
When Schmidt was a boy, he sold peanuts at the Queen Street Aud. And believe it or not, his favourite player was Vic Ripley of the Millionaires. The talented Mr. Ripley was crafty and tenacious, just as Schmidt was on his way to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Schmidt, who died a year ago at age 98, grew up on Shanley Street, but Queen Street and Kitchener’s first ice hockey auditorium was his second address.
“It was home to me and it was a palace, as far as I was concerned,” Schmidt once said.
“The ice surface wasn’t all that big, but it was great for junior hockey. They had seats along the ice surface, two or three levels back. And they had a balcony above that on both sides. And then, on the end, they had something similar to what you would see on a football field. All the seats were together on both ends. I don’t think it held more than two or three-thousand people. We used to fill it right up.”
The Summer Gardens used to fill up too when the biggest of big bands played.
Crowds topped 7,000 for Tommy Dorsey, Rooke once told The Record. And, for the most part, their revelry was fuelled mainly by the music.
“There was no drinking,” said South, recalling those Saturday night dances with her late husband. “We were not of age, Bob and I. But there was always a little bottle under the table. … I’m not too familiar with that, but I’ve heard of it, being a total abstainer.”
Now, three quarters of a century later, no shinny or shindigs are held here.
Cars, and soon light rail transit, move up and down Charles, more-or-less on the spots where Ripley and Schmidt and Betty and Bob once twirled with grace and skill and splendour. And the music was heavenly, wasn’t it?
“To me, it was awesome,” South said. “It was a fantastic place.”