Reel Beach: Remembering Norman Jewison and his ‘good old days’ in the Beach

By BERNIE FLETCHER

“I have very fond memories of growing up in the Beach.”
– This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me

Norman Jewison died last month after a long life worth celebrating.

Queen Street East has many reminders of the acclaimed director’s time here.

Jewison was born in his grandparents’ home on Lee Avenue across from Kew Gardens.

He grew up in “a tiny apartment” above his parents’ Dry Goods and Post Office at Queen and Kippendavie Avenue.

It’s a good thing tobogganing was allowed in Toronto the Good because Percy and Dorothy Jewison met on the slopes of Riverdale Park.

When he was six, little Norman went with a Jewish friend to the Beach Hebrew Institute on Kenilworth Avenue. He thought he was Jewish because of his family name.

Being bullied by other kids at Kew Beach Public School gave Norman empathy for those deemed “the other.”

When his friend’s mother asked why Norman’s parents “never bring him to shul”, the little boy replied, “They do, too. They take him to Bellefair United Church every Sunday!”

Norman played shinny hockey at Kew and worked part-time at the family store and at Devon Meats on the north-east corner of Kenilworth Avenue. He had a knack for selling and performing. Death scenes were his specialty.

Norman discovered the magic of movies in the dark. On Saturday afternoons he would attend 10-cent matinees at the Beach Theatre on Queen Street East then act out the whole film for his friends.

It was the Depression and times were tough, but Norman bought a canoe and loved being out on Lake Ontario: “We kids regarded the lake as our own. All summer we canoed, swam, played ball on the beach, and fished.”

Jewison enjoyed performing at Malvern Collegiate and the University of Toronto’s Victoria College.

After a stint in the Navy and hitchhiking through the segregated American South, he landed as a producer in the early days of the CBC. The rest is movie history.

In 1952, Jewison met Margaret Ann “Dixie” Dixon who lived on Beaufort Road a stone’s throw from Glenn Gould’s home on Southwood Drive.

Norman saw himself as working class: “A stockbroker’s daughter and a shopkeeper’s son. It didn’t look promising.”

He wanted to impress the Dixons and invited them to a live broadcast at the CBC since “her parents would have preferred she not get involved with someone who wore sandals and sold Christmas trees on Queen St. to supplement his meager show business income”.

Just before the show began, Jewison was cleaning up the stage when he heard his future mother-in-law exclaim, “So that’s what he does at the CBC—he sweeps the floors.”

You could say Norman swept Dixie off her feet. They were married in 1953 and bought a house on Bingham Avenue near Kingston Road.

Norman Jewison made wonderful films all over the world, but always found his way back to Canada in support of Canadian filmmaking.
His movies were shaped by the values of hard work and social justice he learned in the Beach, always with a sense of humour.

There are touches of the Beach even in his later films. His dad, Percy, had a friend, William Sherrin, who was an undertaker at his funeral home on Kingston Road at Beech Avenue.
Percy would sometimes ride along in the hearse with his pal to keep him company when he went to pick up bodies. Jewison writes in his 2004 autobiography: “Maybe everybody is fascinated with death. Next day, he’d tell me about it. Dad didn’t find this interest in the serious business of tending to the dead morbid. Neither did I. Maybe it’s a genetic thing.

“Most of my movies have a cemetery in them or a funeral or at least a body…In ‘Moonstruck’ my directing credit appears over a shot of an old man laid out in his coffin—an inside joke appreciated by all.”

The Sherrin Funeral Home is gone, replaced by the YMCA and condos. One of Toronto’s oldest schools, the first Kew Beach Public School was torn down in 1963 and replaced with a new building. The Beach Theatre (1919-1969) is now Beach Mall.

The Jewison store has become a child care centre. Bellefair United? Devon Meats? Condo, condo, condo. All these places had their moments to remember.

“The world is in dire need of angels.”

Norman Jewison spoke to our better angels: “So just tell stories that move us to laughter and tears and perhaps reveal a little truth about ourselves.”

“Goodnight, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
– Hamlet