Toronto is a city in a hurry. The pace—visitors always remark on it—is more quick than fast, the people hurry and everyone is wheeling and dealing. “It used to be so sleepy, I hardly recognize WASPy old Hogtown anymore” Ardie said at lunch while Miss Cousins agreed that “allowing stores to open on Sundays” would draw people into the city, “and get rid of the stale air downtown.”
Queen Street was already well into a transformation that would see it evolve from fabric shops, furniture stores and light industry to artists, designers, galleries, restaurants and nightclubs. In time it would become give birth to a media conglomerate, a club district and trendy living spaces. People were now smugly announcing that they lived in a warehouse, or above a store, or behind a factory downtown.
Ardie observed that the Westbury Hotel on Yonge Street, once a fashionable address with a good dining room, was now nothing more than a trick-pad for the sex trade. “Friday night the dining room of the Westbury was always packed,” he said, “and men would be wearing black tie.” The office crew around the table was amused; “You’re dating yourself, Ardie, be careful,” Miss Cousins said, safely from behind her sunglasses.
She had been working well into the nights on various pieces, so she was feeling—and probably looking—a little worse for wear. Over the years I’ve been asked a lot of questions about Miss Cousins from curious people who know her work or her story. Generic responses usually suffice, and private knowledge remains just that: private. “I heard she worked on at least 10 or 15 paintings at one time,” one cocktail party guest once said. She was satisfied with the knowledge that Miss Cousins did, in fact, often work on more than one painting at a time. It was never necessary to be specific as most people are happy with vague.
No confidences are betrayed by revealing that her usual modus operandi was to work on a theme. The current theme—the one that caused her to work until 3:00AM and appear at lunch in sunglasses, slightly hung over—was food. Eggs and toast, sandwiches, fish, breakfast specials, hamburgers, bananas and other fruit, meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. Side of peas. That kind of food.
Miss Cousins worked in her studio, sometimes with music and sometimes in silence, on any number of canvases over the same period of time. It wasn’t unusual for her to have perhaps four canvases in some stage of work, but not more than six. The sizes would be different, due to the studio layout more than anything else, and she would occasionally leave one to work on another, or “abandon” one for a few days, weeks or longer while her muse took her elsewhere.
The output from the food series was tremendous and the suggestion of another catalogue was eagerly accepted by the Boss. The last catalogue had resulted in a record-number of commissions and sales, and Miss Cousins wasn’t one to lollygag where business was concerned.
Ardie, too, had been spending industrious days and nights of late, exploring new business opportunities during the day and exciting new nightclub destinations every evening. Suddenly, formerly staid Toronto was hip. There were people, places and things that could only be described as avant garde. Trendsetters were being discovered and followed and Our Ardie Beebe was one of the popular in-crowd.
Zena Cherry, the long-serving social columnist (“dreadful gossip columnist” according to Beebe) who chronicled the activities of what passed for society in Toronto, regularly noted where Ardie had dined, visited, danced or been. Fundraising lunches for reputable—and often useless—worthy efforts were prime opportunities for meeting potential clients and for Ardie’s now flourishing antiques shoppe. He supported hospitals, of course, plus endowments to fight diseases that plague children, the homeless, shelters of every description, food banks, museums, heritage destinations, parks, animals (domestic; livestock; wild) and the Monarchist League of Canada. (“After all, we Queens have to stick together,” said Ardie.)
Miss Cousins put her chopsticks down and reached for a newspaper (not the Canadian Record, tsk tsk) and pointed out that Ardie had been spotted “at Toronto’s chicest new club” surrounded by “gorgeous models and some of Toronto’s best-known names.” She looked down the table, crowded with more people than usual today, and her eyebrows rose up above her sunglasses. “It seems you are becoming a social flutterby, Ardie, in danger of becoming the burned-toast of the town” she said.
Ardie took a long drag on his torch (right at the table; after a while it didn’t even seem unusual) and leaned his head back before exhaling a long powerful cloud of smoke up, up toward the ceiling and beyond.
“I don’t know about the gorgeous models, but the best names in Toronto must be George Edward Trick, realtor-about-town,” laughed Ardie. George Edward Trick was Ardie’s oldest and best friend. He was a well-known realtor and Ardie—and soon everyone—called him Tricky.
Ardie and Tricky had been in boarding school together, and after being expelled together had travelled to Europe—“no where near a backpack, Kid”—before returning to Toronto and settling in, but not down. Tricky exploited his family and social connections and was soon a trusted name for old-families to call on when they needed a real estate agent who understood their particular sensibilities.
“Tricky asked me to help him celebrate his new condominium launch, and things got carried away,” Ardie explained. He looked at the column again quickly before admitting that there may have been “two or three gorgeous young men present, some of whom could have been models. I never ask what people do for a living because Mother said it was rude.”
Miss Cousins laughed over that one. “I am quite sure, Ardie, that you find out what their particular skills are soon enough.”
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