Reel Beach: Filming frenzy in the Beach as Boston Blue and Memory of a Killer shoot scenes locally

By BERNIE FLETCHER

What were police vehicles from Boston and Hudson Springs doing on the not-so-mean streets of Beach neighbourhoods? No worries, they were just prop cars for two new television shows starring Donnie Wahlberg and Patrick Dempsey.

While Hollywood stars walked TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) red carpets last month, local crews were busy setting up orange cones in the Beach Triangle for Boston Blue and in the Upper Beach for Memory of a Killer.

Toronto is the great pretender playing everything from small towns to big cities.

The beautiful, old homes in the area around Malvern Collegiate can pass for a sleepy village in upstate New York in Memory of a Killer, a new Fox TV show about a hitman who is dealing with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Dempsey, (“McDreamy” on Grey’s Anatomy), plays a family man with a double life who is losing his memory but gaining a conscience. Now his worlds are colliding. Can he outsmart his enemies and save his family before he forgets his past? Watch for filming on Pickering Street, Balsam Avenue and the leafy, heritage street of Lyall Avenue.

Toronto is a go-to place for filming sequels and spin-offs. Boston Blue follows Wahlberg’s detective character from Blue Bloods as he moves from the N.Y.P.D. to Boston Police, but it’s really Toronto streets we see, including Brookmount Road and Gerrard Street East. The new CBS show premieres at 10 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 17.

Wahlberg plays a fish out of water, the new kid on the block so to speak. He has said that “you can’t fake what Boston looks like,” but similar to Good Will Hunting only a few scenes were filmed in his hometown. Iconic Fenway Park gives way to St. Lawrence Market in the season opener.

The show is also a homecoming for co-star Gloria Reuben who grew up in Scarborough.When Wahlberg goes to the Boston Blue studio, he has to walk through the set of Sheriff Country, a CBS/Global spin-off from Fire Country which debuts the same night of Oct. 17.

Once again Toronto is a chameleon, playing the small town of Edgewater, California where everybody knows each other.

While Fire Country is filmed in Vancouver, the new show shoots in Toronto and Milton because lead actor Morena Baccharin has three young children in New York City and wasn’t willing to make all the long treks to the west coast. There’s “no way that would work”.

If you prefer medical shows, there’s season two of Brilliant Minds (Mondays) and Doc (Tuesdays) which just filmed scenes at Dawes Road Cemetery. These are only a few of the many television series which call Toronto home.

Note: Some might argue that the Beach Triangle and the Upper Beach(es) are not really “the Beach”, but I like to think of the whole area as part of our community. We do have the feel of a small town.

While we’re not really Sheriff Country, we might be called “Dog Country”.

My friend Linda Edwards, a longtime Beach Metro Community News carrier, was kind enough to loan me the book Fifteen Dogs after reading my article on the Glen Stewart Ravine which appeared in the Sept. 9 edition of the paper.

The 2015 Giller Prize-winning novel by Andre Alexis imagines what it would be like if dogs were granted language and human consciousness.

A mutt named Prince writes poetry (no doggerel) and his favourite places are the ravine and lakefront, preferring “the stretch of Toronto bounded by Woodbine, Kingston Road, Victoria Park and Lake Ontario. Dividing his time amongst a number of houses and masters, he had come to think of the Beach as home. He knew it intimately and loved some of its pleasures; for instance going down from Kingston Road into the vegetal secret that was Glen Stewart Park.”

How does a dog see our world? “Prince knew any number of safe paths through his territory: escape routes, shortcuts, diversions. He could—if he had to—sniff his way from Kingston and Main all the way to the bottom of Neville Park, from Kew Beach east and north to where Willow and Balsam meet.”

Dogs are all about the sniffing, OK, mostly urine.

So next time you walk through the ravine or stroll along our streets, sand and shore, stop and smell the roses. Breathe in and appreciate the aromas of nature all around us. Maybe not the pee. Woof, woof.

Thank you to Sheila Dunn of the Protect Our Ravines Initiative for her nice letter to the editor in the Sept. 23 paper. It’s uncanny (un-canine-y) that my better half and I walk a Golden Retriever who loves the same route as Prince through the ravine down to the lake.