There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace is about the corner of Bloor and Bathurst in Toronto as well as the surrounding neighbourhood. You can think of this as an individual story and/or a story about gentrification.
Honest Ed's was a transformative place for immigrants coming to Toronto. A place to get a good bargain on household items when you may have come to Canada to very little. Ed Mirvish ran the place with humour in the signs and giving away turkeys at Christmas time.
The Mirvish family sold the property after Ed Mirvish passed away. The land included the Mirvish Village, a section of creative businesses who took advantage of reasonable rent (by Toronto standards).
All of that is up for grabs with the sale of the property to Canadian real estate developer Westbank Corp.
Director Lulu Wei has a personal stake in this story since her and her partner, Kathleen Conway, live in one of the buildings on the Mirvish land. They are forced to move as a result. Wei smartly has little physical presence in the film. In fact, Conway has much more screen time.
The documentary is more about the artistic businesses having to rethink their status in light of the land sale. Itah Sadu, owner of a Black Canadian specialty bookstore A Different Booklist, wants a space in the new development. Her perspective is interesting since Sadu gets a temporary spot on Bathurst across from the Mirvish land.
A gallery owner chooses to retire rather than go through the process of finding a different space.
Wei also explores the idea of "low-cost housing" with Toronto city councillor Mike Layton. The money that pours into Westbank from provincial and federal grants and loans leads to a very small percentage of low-cost housing. We learn about the difference between low-cost housing based on area incomes versus determining the rates based on the average cost of a 1-bedroom apartment in the whole city. Factor in that this documentary was in 2020, knowing housing is much worse in Toronto now.
The intersection is served by the subway at the Bathurst stop on the Bloor Street line as well as the Bathurst streetcar.
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There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace tells an incomplete story about the area since the area is still in transformation. The documentary does read as a good guidebook about the responsibilities and issues involved in such a dramatic change in urban planning. Ideally, you would want a Mirvish Village type setup when building something new, not tearing down something old. Same could be said for Honest Ed's.
The Toronto store was briefly noted in the 2016 Canadian film Unless with American actor Catherine Keener and Hannah Gross.
The film is very short at 76 minutes with a good pace. The people and topics are interesting enough to keep your attention.
There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace is available on the Documentary Channel and CBC Gem in Canada.
video credit: DOK.fest München
photo credit: There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace
map credit: Google
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