RETRO STYLE
Spadina House combines Toronto’s history with CBC show Frankie Drake Mysteries,
If Frankie Drake had been a real person, she likely would have known about Spadina House, the stately home just across the road from Casa Loma.
Frankie is a TV detective who solves mysteries in 1920s Toronto; Spadina House is now a museum that showcases the period of 1900 to 1930 through the lives of the well-to-do Austin family. The two have come together for a free exhibit that will continue through 2018 called Making History: The Women of Frankie Drake Mysteries and 1920s Toronto.
“It ties in the fact and the fiction,” said Christina Jennings, CEO of Shaftesbury, which produces Frankie Drake Myster
ies as well as Murdoch Mysteries, another period show set in Toronto.
The point of the exhibit is to teach people something about the city’s history and stoke interest in the TV series.
“This is one of the great houses left,” Jennings added. “I’m very pleased with how it came together.”
She toured the exhibit during its opening last weekend at the Spadina Museum’s annual 1920s-themed Gatsby Garden Party. In the basement of the house, built in1866 for Consumers Gas founder James Austin and his family, the exhibit mixes props and photos from the TV series with real 1920s artifacts.
So, for instance, a display about Frankie (played by Lauren Lee Smith) includes photos of the character — an independent single woman who served as a dispatch rider during the First World War and founded her own all-female detective agency back home — alongside photos of real female war veterans, as well as women boxing and riding a motorcycle, both things Frankie does in the show.
The exhibit also highlights other characters from the show: Trudy Clarke (Chantel Riley), who was working as a maid when she met Frankie and joined her agency; Mary Shaw (Rebecca Liddiard), a police morality officer, the only policing job open to women in the ’20s; Flo Chakowitz (Sharron Matthews), a morgue attendant who’s studying to be a doctor; and Frankie’s con-artist mother Nora (Wendy Crewson) and Chinese restaurant owner Wendy (Grace Lynn Kung).
Jennings and her sister Ali went on a hunt to find items for the exhibit at the behest of its designer, Sandra Kybartas.
Among the artifacts they turned up: a lacquered Art Deco divider screen from the former Eatons College St. store; a 1920s radio lent by an Innisfil man who specializes in repairing antique radios; a blue 1920s Corona typewriter (typewriters were black up until the ’20s); a police truncheon and a cigarette lighter, both found in London’s Covent Garden market; two vintage mah-jong sets; periodappropriate mortuary instruments; and a locket with a photo of a woman holding a revolver.
“It is extraordinary how you can find these things,” Jennings said. “What I love is it really brings it all to life.”
The Spadina Museum will be featured in an upcoming episode of Frankie Drake, which is now in production on Season 2, debuting Sept. 24 on CBC.
The museum, at 285 Spadina Rd., is open for guided tours Tuesdays to Sundays (and holiday Mondays). See toronto.ca for information.