Toronto's one-of-a-kind downtown novelty shop Ontario Specialty Company is slated for closure at the end of the month and will be packing away hundreds of vintage sunglasses, mountains of eclectic knickknacks and rows of ancient toys, all reminiscent of a bygone era.
The creaking oak floorboards at 133 Church St., at Queen Street, will still welcome guests to the ancient shop until May 31, when the store closes after 73 years in business.
The faded door of Ontario Specialty Co. sits in a section of downtown Toronto that has also passed its heyday.
Sandwiched between two pawn shops, the store's dusty window display looks out at a small park, adjacent to a church, teeming with homeless people who are resting in the shade or proselytizing at passersby.
Store manager Anna Zejn says the iconic novelty shop was pushed to the brink of closure by massive toy stores and online shopping, as well as a new generation of youth lacking an emotional connection to vintage toys.
Zejn has been working at the independent store for 38 years, first stocking shelves at the age of nine. Today, she runs the store for Linda Geller-Schwartz, who lives in the U.S. and took over the store after her parents passed away.
"Lots of history here," Zejn told CTVToronto.ca this week. "It has run its course. It is getting hard. You get your good days, you get your bad days. The computers are in (fashion) and (toy store) warehouses are opening themselves up to the public.
"It was the vintage stuff that kept us going – the sunglasses and watch straps and pipes."
Sam Geller first opened Ontario Specialty Co. in 1939 as a wholesale location for his cross-country supply company.
Geller's salesmen would travel across Canada selling general goods such as combs, buttons and shoe laces to haberdasheries in towns such as St. Albert, Alta. and Sarnia, Ont.
His premier items were Ace headache tablets and Geller razor blades, which came in small, blue boxes adorned with his own well-shaven image.
The Church Street location acted as a clearinghouse for inventory at the time. Requests would come in by telegram and orders would be packaged there and shipped out across the country.
The storefront itself was stuffed with brass pot scrubbers in an attempt to deter visitors. It wasn't until the mid-1950s that Sam's wife Libby convinced the businessman to open the downtown location to customers, filling the storefront windows with a bright display of toys and games.
By the time Libby took over the business, when Sam passed away in 1984, Ontario Specialty Co. had transformed into a novelty shop specializing in vintage sunglasses, wind-up cars and toy tin robots.
Libby died of cancer on Dec. 26, 1999, one day after Christmas, leaving the store to her daughter, Linda. Through it all, Zejn manned the store, acting as curator to the Willy Wonka-worthy collection of old toys.
"I don't have a favourite toy," Zejn says with a chuckle when asked. "I guess it is like working in a chocolate factory. You kind of value them all the same after a while."
The shop has garnered its share of acclaim, often visited by production companies looking for props and celebrities looking to wind down.
In 1997, Matt Damon and Minne Driver shot a scene inside the store for "Good Will Hunting." Beck, Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin have also been spotted browsing the aisles during visits to Toronto. The cast of the Royal Canadian Air Farce used to buy their rubber chickens there.
Zejn swears Danny Masterson, the former star of "That 70s Show," once came in and bought 50 pairs of identical sunglasses.
Another time she thought she spotted Alice Cooper, but the store's cashier assured her the man was just a regular customer. Later that day Zejn saw Cooper on TV wearing the same outfit he had been wearing in the store.
"You get the young, young customers. You get the old ones, the great-great-grandmothers that have come in four generations back. It is nice to see them, you remember them from when they were younger," Zejn said this week as a trickle of customers came through the show to browse.
"We mostly get adults because they remember. We are mostly an adult store more than a kids' store. Kids between 13 and 17 couldn't care less. Once they are 19 or 20, they kind of come back to this stuff."
Lost somewhere between the wind-up monkeys, flipping end over end on sturdy tin arms, and the battery-powered Porsche race cars, time caught up to the little store.
Selling archaic toys to boys and girls who were raised in the digital age is not easy. The prevalence of portable video games is one factor, mass-produced action figures and dolls with ties to the latest Hollywood blockbuster is another.
Zejn says she plans on keeping the memory of the store alive once it closes, setting up pop-up locations around the holidays and building a website to sell the inventory online.
In a way, the transition to online retail seems fitting: A store that began filling orders by telegraph 70 years ago will be doing the same for orders issued with the click of a mouse.
Zejn admits she has no experience with the Internet and will have a lot to learn before Ontario Specialty Co. goes online.
It's a new world, Zejn begrudgingly admits.
And it's time to move on.
Matthew Coutts is on Twitter at @mrcoutts
