here's a weeeee bit of the story
Surreal estate
Only the raccoons call it home now. And it seems there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it
Ian Harvey
National Post
January 15, 2005
Morris Silver is long dead, but his ghost still haunts the Riverdale neighbourhood where he has become part of local folklore.
For more than 20 years, and still some four years after his death, Silver's antagonistic protests have loomed over Simpson Avenue in the Broadview-Gerrard district.
Locals call it the "crazy house." A once-majestic Victorian pile, one of six original homes on the street, today it sits abandoned, a dilapidated hovel damaged from arson a decade ago. And though the colours are fading with time, it still bears the bizarre paint scheme and slogans Silver plastered over it as a goad to his neighbours.
A mile or so east, Silver's widow is also haunted by his memory and unsettled estate.
Edith Silver holds mortgage-free titles to a half-dozen or more properties the couple acquired during their 48-year marriage -- including the double lot on Simpson -- which a conservative estimate puts at $2-million or more. Yet she is alone, her legs bandaged from toe to knee, with only her memories and a legacy that seems to hold her captive in a tiny semi-detached home piled high with junk.
"I'm going to sell them," she insists during an interview in her cluttered kitchen, which also serves as her living room. The table is heaped with newspapers, unopened catalogues and mail, while the countertops are overrun by bottles of pills and cans of Lysol spray. A 27-inch TV perches atop the fridge. The front room doubles as Edith's bedroom because she is unable to climb the stairs.
"I'm waiting for my health to recover. I don't need the bother. Please don't mention the properties, it will only cause me trouble."
It's the Simpson Avenue house that attracts the most ire.
"It's ghastly," sighs neighbour Eve Drobot. "At first we tried to fight him and then realized that's what he wanted: attention. Then we just learned to live with it."
Drobot calls it a "vengeance" house, Silver's way of taking out his anger on the rest of the community for whatever imagined slight. But Edith remembers it differently.
"He was an artist," she says. "He was a wonderful painter. A great sense of humour. He painted the houses to spread his message and to attract attention so people would always be looking at the houses and protect them from vandalism."
In fact, she says, Morris invented the "designated-driver" concept, articulating it on camera in a short documentary she says was aired repeatedly on Rogers Community Cable.
"We lost track after the show aired 52 times. Then we heard about the designated-driver program starting in California, so we knew where it came from. It went all around the world. He saved millions of lives."
Over the years, the paint scheme, the stuffed animals, the panda, the blood-spattered dolls, the wheelchairs, the signs with their invective targeting politicians and drunk drivers have attracted the curious from across the city.
Whispers have it Silver was a lawyer whose daughter's death at the wheels of a drunk driver sent him over the edge; or he was a rich landlord who hoarded properties the way other people collect ceramic kitsch. Indeed, the latter is partly true: Edith had her realtor's licence and brokered the transactions.
In fact, Morris Silver was born on April 16, 1921, in the west end. After working at his mother's store, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Services Corps and was stationed in Canada. His first trade was as a sign painter whose work was on display at the Royal Alex and other theatres during the heyday of vaudeville.
His next venture, founded around 1954, was Handy Andy's Cleaning, on Gerrard Street. The couple lived above the store until about 1972, when they bought the semi where Edith lives today, moving there in the summer to escape the oppressive heat of the apartment.
Title searches also show Morris's name on a commercial building on Broadview Avenue at Gerrard, where he operated another cleaners in the late 1980s, and a garage further west on Gerrard, as well as a property in Oshawa.
In the mid-1970s, newspapers began to report on the curious novelty of the Gerrard Street storefront, where Silver apparently initiated his campaign against drunk drivers. In the window was a bloodied mannequin and a gravestone along with a message, hand-painted and presumably directed at people stocking up at the Brewer's Retail across the street, urging them not to drink and drive.
Silver was quoted as saying: "I have nothing against drinking. It's the driving. I've seen three fatal accidents out here."
"There was a young woman of 18, killed by a drunk driver on Gerrard," Edith recalls. "That's what started it for him."
By 1980, other reports remarked on the storefront, whose entire window and front area were covered in signs, some commenting on national politics, others on other issues, and, always, a reference to drunk drivers and dead children.
Silver started getting what he seemed to crave most -- attention and controversy -- spurring him to do more.
In 1988, he and Edith, who had no children, acquired 13 Simpson Ave., for which they paid $475,000, the latest in a string of property purchases financed through gruelling 18-hour days and a frugal way of life.
According to Riverdale Historical Society secretary Gerald Whyte, the house was one of six homes built in 1890 that sat on double lots. Designed by the same architect, they were commissioned by a lawyer who planned to sell them to incoming officials of the Riverdale Isolation Hospital, which was under construction at the time. The double lot alone is valued at about $600,000, Drobot says.
But the Silvers never lived in the house, and it has sat vacant since 1988 -- save for the raccoons that are the sole tenants now.
"It's a real shame," Whyte says. "It's demolition by neglect. This property is just rotting away. It's such a bizarre story and the city seems powerless to do anything."
What angered Silver is unclear, but in 1991, under Morris's watchful eye, workers began to add a Third World-style facade to what had been a conservative, classically styled home. Then came the signs and, over the years, wheelchairs, dolls and, at one point, a giant panda, with the accompanying sign: "Kids Killed By Drunk Drivers ... Cant Hug Pandas!"
Silver would always hover nearby in his beat-up station wagon, which was also festooned with slogans.
The battles over Simpson Avenue continued, and at one point residents complained to bylaw enforcement that Silver had turned his driveway into a paid parking lot. The city ordered him to stop, which prompted more signs and more stuffed animals.
Then, on April 19, 1992, a fire broke out. The blaze, which caused $40,000 in damage, started in two places in the house and the Ontario Fire Marshal's office determined arson. Edith blames "the bums who used to sleep on the porch."
Whatever the cause, the sad fact, Drobot says, is that a beautiful example of Victorian middle-class architecture is rotting away.
"Inside there's cherrywood trim, English tiles -- all ruined now. It would cost about $250,000 to renovate," she says.
The efforts of a succession of city councillors have failed to mediate a solution, and in the meantime the place has become a dumping ground.
"[Then-councillor] Jack Layton worked on it after we suggested maybe it could be an AIDS hospice or a Ronald McDonald House," Drobot says. "We even suggested we could name it after Morris."
Meanwhile, Joe Luzi, south district manager of municipal licencing and standards, says a clean-up order was issued on Nov. 26.
"At some point, we may have to go in and clean it up and put the cost against the taxes," he says. "But there are issues, and right now we don't know if we're dealing with the owner of the property."
Edith says she's troubled by the order to clean up, but she has yet to settle the estate. The titles show Morris as the sole owner for all but Simpson Avenue.
"I'd like to take care of it," she says, "but I have no staff, no crew. Besides, it's nobody's business what I do. I have to get the estate settled, then find a way to do something."
Profile of Morris Silver.
|
