What We Do In The Shadows

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address: 65 Heward Avenue
Date: March 2025

  What We Do In The Shadows is a TV show that follows four vampires living together in a mansion on Staten Island, New York. They are Nandor The Relentless, Nadja, Laszlo and Colin Robinson. They also share the house with Nandor's human servant Gizmo, sorry Guillermo, and a doll with the spirit of deceased human Nadja inhabiting it.  Through the six season run of the show, the mansion exterior has been played by three different locations.

  A house in South Pasadena, California was used in the pilot episode and for various establishing shots in the seasons that followed. After the pilot episode, production moved to Toronto, Ontario. The Cranfield House (photo at top of post) is featured in a few episodes. In Season One Episode Three, the vampires feud with werewolves in Laszlo's topiary garden. In Season One Episode Ten, Gregor loses his head, yet again, in a motorcycle accident on the lawn.

   Cranfield House soon became no longer available for use as a filming location. In Season Two, the show set up a facade of the mansion on Eastern Avenue near the studios. For a few years the mansion stood in the parking lot (above) at the corner of Eastern Ave. and Heward Ave.

   In Season Two Episode Six, Mark Hamill appeared on the show as Jim the Vampire. He confronts Laszlo. Laszlo runs away and goes into hiding as regular human bartender Jackie Dakota. For unknown reasons, the house across the street has stars on its side wall. There is no mistaking it when it appears on screen behind characters in the front yard.

 Nick Kroll guest stars in Season Two Episode Seven. He plays Simon the Devious.  Simon and Laszlo fight over a witch's hat which may be cursed.  Laszlo stands in the street in front of the wooden fence above and gets struck by several cars before turning into a bat and flying into the sewer after Simon.

  There are many locations around Toronto that get used in the show.  Another favourite is the Vampiric Council building. Where would the Vampiric Council meet? Scarborough, of course. 300 Consilium Place is the exterior of the building where the vampires go on trial and ultimately in Season Four Episode Three, Nadja opens her night club. At the beginning of this episode, Nadja flies down and greets her guests outside.  That is all for now as we have to end this blog.  Bat!!!

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Map of Our World
Cranfield House,  65 Heward Ave,  300 Consilium Place

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Post # 352

This That & The Other Streets

Location: Porters Lake, Nova Scotia, Canada 
Address: 9 This Street
Date: July 2025
Website:  porterslake.ca

  Porters Lake is a small community located about a 30 minute drive from Halifax, Nova Scotia. We diverted through there in our travels in order to see an unusual cluster of street names. We said to ourselves, "We've got to see This!". And of course That and The Other.

    Okay, so follow along carefully as we are only going to say this once (actually a few times). Take Highway 7 through Porters Lake and turn on This Street. First you will come to That Street. Don't turn on that street. Stay on This Street and you will reach The Other Street. If you take The Other Street it will take you back to That Street and eventually you will end up on This Street again. If you had turned on That Street you could still get to The Other Street by following it to the end. The Other Street will take you back to This Street. If you then turn right on This Street you can get back to the highway.  Don't worry about getting lost as This Street dead ends at the lake and That Street always takes you to The Other Street and vice versa. Basically every street in this little cluster touches The Other Street. If you are on a street just take that street until you get to This Street. Stay on this street until you get to the highway. Easier done than said.

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Map of Our World
This That & The Other Streets

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Post # 351

Canary Restaurant

 Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  425 Cherry Street
Date:  July 2016

  From the Palace Street School, to the Cherry Street Hotel, to the Canary Restaurant. The corner of  Front & Cherry in Toronto has a long history.

   In 1859 the Palace Street School was built. The area around the school was residential at the time with lots of homes and children. The Gooderham & Worts Distillery had opened in 1837 and many people who lived in the area worked there. Industry continued to grow in the area and the school closed in the 1880s.  

      The building across from the school was the Canadian National Railway building. Over 200 homes were demolished and replaced with a huge rail yard. It is this building in Kick-Ass, where Red Mist takes Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor Johnson) to meet Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and then they get kidnapped. You can see the Canary Restaurant when the cars drive in and away. Sorry, we are getting ahead of ourselves. More on movies and restaurants later.

   The former Palace Street School building added some additional floors and became the Cherry Street Hotel.

    After the hotel closed the building was used as a warehouse for companies such as Thomas Davidson Manufacturing. The abbreviated writing on the wall has been fully restored.

   In 1965, the Canary Restaurant moved from University Avenue and occupied what was formerly the lobby of the Cherry Street Hotel. It remained in business until 2007. During this time it served many a meal and was also a popular filming location.

      In 1990, The Kids In The Hall aired a sketch that ended outside of the restaurant. It was called Hoopla and Bruce McCulloch steals some salt and gets away in a car driven by Dave Foley.

  In the movie Three To Tango, Matthew Perry (Friends) and Neve Campbell (Party Of Five) run across Cherry Street in the rain. You get to see the Canary Restaurant sign all lit up in yellow and blue. They sit just inside the first big window and enjoy what they are told is tuna melt. Afterwards, they both throw up on the sidewalk.

 Some other movie diners also eat at the Canary. In Maximum Risk, Jean Claude Van Damme and Natasha Henstridge have a coffee beside the window to the left of the photo above. They discuss their predicament and then exit the restaurant and head south down Cherry Street.

  In the movie Get Rich Or Die Tryin', rapper 50 Cent is trying to impress a girl over lunch. His crew comes in and joins them at a table in the center of the photo above. When asked what he does for a living he tells her he is a rapper, a gangster rapper.

 A lot has changed since 1996 when The Long Kiss Goodnight was filmed. The condo towers now rise high above everything. The area around the Canary Restaurant has been named the Canary District in its honour. The buildings all have a fresh coat of paint too. When Geena Davis throws Samuel L Jackson out of her car, it is on the west side of Cherry Street in front of buildings that no longer exist. In a bit of a continuity error, Geena dumps Samuel and drives around the corner in front of the restaurant. As he lies on the pavement, she drives past the Canary one more time before stopping to pick him up.

 I wouldn't get too comfortable lying near the corner of Front and Cherry streets. In the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead a whole bunch of zombies come running from Front Street and head north on Cherry Street. As the small group of human survivors makes their escape in fortified buses, they drive away from the Canary Restaurant and then drive away from the Canary Restaurant again. Who's driving that bus, Geena Davis?  No, this times it's Ving Rhames at the helm. He drives Sarah Polley and an ever decreasing cast of characters to safety.

 The most recent change in the neighbourhood is a new Indigenous Hub. It sits right beside the Canary Restaurant building. This metal wall artwork features an etched bear, wolf, turtle and more. No matter what happens around it the Canary Restaurant building will be there to witness it all.

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Map of Our World
Canary Restaurant

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Post # 350