Bohemian Embassy

The venue hosted performances by artists such as Milton Acorn, Margaret Atwood, sean o huigan, Sylvia Tyson, Gwendolyn MacEwen, David Essig, Martin Bronstein, Michael Boncoeur and Paul K. Willis.

The name, the Bohemian Embassy, had previously been given a flat that three young writers, Harriman, Warren Wilson, and Michael John Nimchuk, occupied nearby, at 590 Yonge.

The venue walls were whitewashed, and the floor painted dark red, and the club was first equipped with two large coffee percolators, later leasing a Gaggia espresso machine, reputedly one of the first in Toronto.

[7][8][9] The Bohemian Embassy opened on June 1, 1960, the performers including folk singers Karen James[10] and Bob Wowk, and a jazz duo, drummer Paul Neary, and reed player Brian Westwood.

[21] As well, the venue attracted poets of earlier generations, including James Reaney, Phyllis Webb, Margaret Avison, Al Purdy, and Jay Macpherson, and Raymond Souster ran poetry workshops at the club.

[27] While still a student, Amos Garrett accompanied Embassy regular, folk singer Chick Roberts, and they soon joined with Carol Robinson, who appeared in revues at the club, and Jim McCarthy to form a band, the Dirty Shames.

[25] In addition to burgeoning, homegrown Canadian talent, the Bohemian Embassy was a Toronto venue for higher-profile performers, often booked to play Wednesdays through Sundays, among them, from the United States, the Rev.

[44][26] Earlier that year, in May 1963, it had been the venue for an ill-attended chamber opera, Balloon, by composer Henry Papale and librettist and featured tenor Daniel Pociernicki, about which critic John Kraglund judged "there was much to admire".

[46] A stage production to emerge from the Bohemian Embassy that had a sustained history was the Village Revue, a satirical program originated by Barrie Baldaro and Ralph Hicklin.

[40][49][50][51] A second edition opened September 1, 1961, with many of the same cast members, though now including Carol Robinson and without Ralph Hicklin's participation, and was presented at Centre Stage, a proper theatrical venue, not at the coffeehouse.

[52][53] The Revue returned to St. Nicholas Street for its third edition, in April 1962, with a smaller cast, playing four weeks, and earning positive notices from top-rung critics Cohen and Herbert Whittaker of the Globe and Mail.

[61] It was conceived in the Kingston Trio era; it began to fade with the dawning of the Beatles", and the growing hippie subculture supplanted the Beat ethos of the club, which closed at the St. Nicholas Street location in June 1966, six years to the day from its opening.

Don Cullen had been invited to revive the Bohemian Embassy, accepting the offer on condition that it include Roy Wordsworth, a fellow performer in Beyond the Fringe, for his management skills.

Because of other commitments, Colombo decided to step back, and Greg Gatenby was hired as a replacement, later to expand his portfolio by starting the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Discussions about alternative funding included paid admissions and sponsorships by tobacco or beer companies, but the Harbourfront board ruled out the former, and Cullen resisted the latter, seeing the ironies in that type of support for a coffeehouse.

Saturday, March 27, 1976, on the venue's final weekend, featured a twelve-hour concert of folk, country, and bluegrass music, to benefit the radio station CJRT-FM, that attracted a total audience of about 1,000.

The network advertised it as "free-spirited entertainment",[81] and the Toronto Star found it "low-key with spots of dry humor from Cullen as host", adding, "The players are all clean and neat and professionally good, and except for poet Irving Layton's preoccupation with fornication in his readings near the end, they're all conventional, too.

[83] The one-hour program was recorded on Mondays, with an audience, at the CBC's Cabbagetown studio, 509 Parliament Street, and broadcast on CBL, the Toronto AM station, Saturdays at 8:00 pm.

[84][85] Guests including familiar voices, such as writers John Robert Colombo, George Miller, and Margaret Atwood, as well as an array of musicians over the weeks, but also an eclectic selection of other entertainment, announcing itself at one point as a program of "folk music, comedy and magicians",[86] and, on the November 17 edition, featuring the National Tap Dance Company's rendition of a Bach Brandenburg Concerto.

[87][85] A regular notice in the Toronto Star calling for audience members to attend tapings appeared as late as February 1980,[88] but according to published radio listings, the last broadcast was December 29, 1979, and the time slot was ceded to Jazz After Eight.

Cullen collaborated with Embassy habitué George Miller, singer-songwriter Michal Hasek, classical musician Eun-Jung Yoo, and stage manager Dan O'Reilly to start the new enterprise.

"[91] When John Robert Colombo declined to participate due to other commitments, Cullen engaged librarian Anita Keller as literary curator of Thursday readings, which usually featured a known author and a set with unpublished writers.

[93][94] Other veteran writers read there, including an evening in August 1991, when Margaret Atwood launched her book Wilderness Tips, that turned away about 150, but programming overall stressed younger and newer talent.

Keller moved the reading series to the Spadina Hotel, and, optimistically, Cullen claimed that he was seeking a new location, but this turned out to be the final edition of the Bohemian Embassy as a coffeehouse and site of cultural production.

[3] The project attracted controversy for its appropriation of the name, which the developers used to market properties to what they described as "first-time buyers and well established people who work in the financial district",[99] but which was also branded as "a condominium so stylish and cool, it promises to redefine the way this city's hipsters live".

[3][102] Don Cullen, claiming the Bohemian Embassy brand, offered the developers the use of the name in return for $1,400 per month for five years, with $1,000 to go toward musical and literary events, which he would organize, keeping "$100 a week for my troubles".

The earlier events had presented younger talent, but this was more of an actual reunion, with George Miller, John Robert Colombo, Sharon Hampson and Bram Morrison, and Peter Kastner joining Cullen on stage.