National Post (National Edition)
Will COVID-19 claim Bay Street's Cambridge Club?
Clive Caldwell had a moment as a teenager when he realized with the utmost wisdom of his years what he had to do, since what he was doing as a student at Ridley College, a prestigious boarding school in St. Catharines, Ont., was getting miserable grades and, academically speaking, going nowhere.
“I was a terrible student,” he said of those floundering times with Latin, math and the rest in the late `60s and early `70s. Befuddled as he was in class, outside of it, on a squash court, he was a genius, and a future world champion in the making, who, much to his proper and crisp British immigrant parents' chagrin, concluded that the best way for him to make it in life would be to become a squash pro at a private club.
“My parents were both British, and so the idea of their son working at a club where they would be a member — and having their son serving members — probably wasn't their hope,” Caldwell said, chuckling as he describes his unbecoming career choice as “his only option.”
Every so often, the impulse of adolescence turns out marvellously. The squash player — and Caldwell still plays including, up until a few years ago, with his now 99-year-old father — would grow up to be the owner of the Cambridge Group of Clubs, a trio of boutique private gyms (Cambridge Club, Adelaide Club and Toronto Athletic Club) where Bay Street elites, up-and-comers and the odd celebrity or two gather to sweat, eat and drink.
Lately, however, all three clubs have been shuttered due to the pandemic, and are potentially facing extinction should the bank towers stay barren.
These are not more sandwich joints dying in the food court, tragic as that is, but integral parts of the Bay Street ecosystem, where corporate, and personal, relationships get built that help drive the economy.
“Until these towers start to refill, it will be very difficult for us to reopen successfully,” Caldwell said.
His landlords haven't called him on the rent yet, but they haven't forgiven it either. It is a dire situation, one he sketched for 6,500 members in an October email.
“I have been in this business for 50 years,” Caldwell wrote. “And now, we face the possibility of losing it all.”
The three clubs are not your local GoodLife, but a symbol of having achieved one. Perhaps this is nowhere more so than the Cambridge Club, situated on the 11th floor of the Sheraton Hotel overlooking Nathan Phillips Square.
The Cambridge, founded in 1973, is a men-only space, save for the dining room where women can be guests. Older gentlemen wander around in towels. Young guns can try to impress their mentors. Political correctness is not a prerequisite. (The other two clubs are co-ed.)
“The Cambridge is probably the most non-woke environment of any gym environment in the city,” an unnamed member told Financial Post. “It is a good mix of the old world and the
PEOPLE ARE GOING TO COME BACK. “THE CURRENCY OF BUSINESS IS
HUMAN INTERACTION. IT IS HARDWIRED INTO US. — GRANT HUMES,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE TORONTO FINANCIAL DISTRICT BIA
Private clubs, frivolous as they may seem to the average working stiff, actually serve a purpose beyond keeping their members fit. If walls could talk, the whispers around the Oak Room, the Cambridge Club's woodpanel dining room with leather banquette seating, would speak of premium Scotch being consumed and deals being struck, in principle, among Bay Street power brokers.
Homeyness, collegiality, such is the Cambridge vibe, a sense, cultivated by its owner, that the men's health club is of its time, but also a time capsule hearkening back to another time. Nobody is smoking cigars, but it is not hard to imagine them being smoked.
Caldwell, a lover of old clubs, decorated the Cambridge with a carefully curated collection of framed photographs featuring a tapestry of Canadiana-themed images. The photos depict everything from Queen Elizabeth II, with her eyes closed, to an Andy Donato cartoon of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking a crack pipe. There are shots of the Sudbury Big Nickel, The Band, the Toronto subway being built and, of course, Pamela Anderson in a bathing suit.
The messaging: history and tradition, with some mischief stirred in — boys will be boys, after all — matter. Of course, Caldwell isn't one to divulge state secrets, discretion being paramount in clubland. Members themselves aren't quite so retiring, but those who agreed to talk requested anonymity.
The consensus take was the Cambridge is a “jewel.” A conveniently located semi-throwback of a joint where young Bay Street bucks can get their reps in and where Gordon Lightfoot, a club fixture, could be the guy next to you on a treadmill.
Servers at the bar know members by name, and often know their preferred beverage. When a member dies, Caldwell circulates an obituary. When a staff member suffers some form of hardship, the paying members pass the hat.
And when COVID-19 hit, about 20 per cent of members kept paying, despite the club's closure — and despite not having to — a rolling example of generosity that has totalled $735,000 to date, critical funds to keep about 50 full-time workers employed. People pay $195 a month to enjoy the Cambridge, after paying an initiation fee of $1,500.
“In a lot of ways, I feel as though this has been our finest hour,” Caldwell said.
But the Cambridge may not have many hours left. Eight months into the pandemic, the financial district remains empty. The Strategic Regional Research Alliance (SRRA), a non-partisan organization providing the private sector and governments with hard data, has been surveying office tenants and building managers every two weeks since May.
Pre-COVID-19, on a given weekday, the towers housed some 326,000 souls, on average. As of mid-October, the towers were only nine-percent full, even down from the 10-per-cent occupancy rate achieved in September, before the second wave of the virus washed over the Greater Toronto Area.
Grant Humes, executive director of the Toronto Financial District BIA, isn't giving up on the idea of the office just yet. He returned to his desk in First Canadian Place in August.
“People are going to come back,” he said, although he can't say when. “The currency of business is human interaction. It is hardwired into us.”
Cambridge members interviewed for this story agreed. Bankers, dealmakers, law partners, traders, junior executives looking to foster relationships, older bosses looking to mentor protégés, it is about making connections — and not just via Zoom. And, if you are a member of the Cambridge, it is also about grabbing a beer after a game of squash.
“Clive has done a great job of creating a community,” a member said.
Not everybody is impressed by the community. During the 2015 federal election campaign, then-rookie Liberal candidate and current Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland stormed the proverbial club gates after word got out that Joe Oliver, Conservative finance minister and a Cambridge member, would be speaking at the men-only facility.
Freeland cried foul, alleging sexism. The social media mob howled for Oliver's head. An unidentified club member in a bathrobe was caught on camera, eyeing the ensuing brouhaha, as the Liberal hopeful appeared at the club's entrance, journalists in tow.
Oliver cancelled his speech, while the great Christie Blatchford, now deceased, ultimately scored the most points, scolding Oliver for bailing in a National Post column.
“How about a little quid pro quo?” Blatchford railed. “How about act like a normal person who believes in something, even if it's just guys in towels?”
It was all perfectly ridiculous. About the Oliver affair, Caldwell shrugged. The world moved on. Five years later, it slammed into a pandemic.