Public interest and private grief in the life and death of Honest Ed Mirvish
Did the Star cross the line between public interest and private grief in reporting that Honest Ed's gravesite has no headstone?
When Ed Mirvish — Toronto’s legendary Honest Ed — died five years ago this week, this city mourned along with his family.
More than 3,000 people attended Mirvish’s funeral at the Beth Tzedec Synagogue on Bathurst St. Toward the end of the service, Rabbi Yael Splansky announced that rather than a private interment at Pardes Shalom Cemetery in Vaughan, everyone was welcome.
The general sentiment that day was that Mirvish, the discount king, theatre impresario, restaurateur, philanthropist, who had been so long beloved by so many, would have approved. After all, as the Star’s July 12 editorial stated, “ ‘Honest Ed’ Mirvish never lost the common touch that endeared him to generations of Torontonians.
“His death yesterday morning at the age of 92 marks the passing of a legend. It can be said with no exaggeration that few people, if any, left a greater mark on Canada’s largest city than Edwin Mirvish.”
In his eulogy, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Mirvish “helped define the city, but he also touched lives. He provided the city with so many landmarks, and provided people with so many touchstones.”
The touchstones to Ed Mirvish remain throughout Toronto. There’s the Ed Mirvish Theatre on Yonge St., Ed Mirvish Way north of King St., Mirvish Village in the Annex. And of course, there’s Honest Ed’s, the garish discount emporium at Bloor and Bathurst Sts. that’s long been lit by 22,000 flashing light bulbs. Who can ever forget their first glimpse of Honest Ed’s?
Ironically, as the Star reported this week on the fifth anniversary of Mirvish’s death, there is as yet, no permanent headstone marking the life and death of Ed Mirvish at his Vaughan gravesite.
David Mirvish told reporter Laura Stone that it has been difficult emotionally for the family to deal with erecting a gravestone. While he hopes to have a stone in place by fall, he made clear, “We didn’t forget my father. We’ve honoured his memory in many other ways.”
Stone’s story and photograph of the gravesite with its temporary marker sparked angry reaction from readers who believe the Star crossed the line here between public interest and private grief. These readers characterized this story as intrusive and insensitive.
“Yes, Ed Mirvish was a public figure and his son still is, but their private life is just that, private,” wrote one reader. “They obviously loved Ed so much that they, after five years, are still unable to deal with the grief and your reporter dares to intrude.”
I understand this reaction and agree that grief is a private emotion. But I don’t think this story was out of line. No one can dispute the fact that Ed Mirvish was a public figure, writ larger than life. And for many, particularly the history buffs among us, the gravesites of famous figures are of enduring interest.
What is most significant to me here is the fact that David Mirvish spoke to Stone with apparent full understanding of the focus of her article. Had he outright refused to talk about his father’s gravesite that would have been a different story entirely. The newsroom would indeed have faced an ethical dilemma on whether to report this.
Stone says she could not have written this without Mirvish. The story was her idea, the result of a curious reporter asking the most basic of a reporter’s questions — “Why?” Stone took notice of Mirvish’s gravesite while visiting the cemetery several times with her grandmother. Her grandfather, Phil Stone, who died in 2008, is laid to rest one row over from Mirvish.
“I always found it a curious sight seeing as Ed Mirvish is so well known in Toronto and literally has signs dedicated to him everywhere. But the sign on his grave was so modest and unfinished, I wanted to know why,” Stone told me.
There’s more coincidence and Toronto history here: Stone’s grandfather, a former CHUM broadcaster who made history playing the first rock and roll song ever in Canada — Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” in May 1957 — was pals with Ed Mirvish dating back to their youths in the traditionally Jewish area of Toronto along Spadina Ave.
Stone arranged a telephone interview with David Mirvish to ask him about the gravesite. He spoke lovingly of his famous father, telling Stone he didn’t really think his dad would care that a gravestone has not yet been erected.
“It didn’t seem to me that his memory was preserved in having a headstone, as much as in our daily lives,” he said.
Indeed, while speaking to the Empire Club in 1989, Mirvish joked that instead of a tombstone he would like to erect a huge throne in the centre of Honest Ed’s and have his ashes put in an hourglass atop the throne.
“I would then like someone sitting on the throne to keep turning the glass up and down, up and down, and the employees would point to the hourglass and say, ‘There’s Ed, he’s still running.’ ”
Mirvish told Stone his father believed that “living in the present and trying to make a difference and do something while you’re alive is the best assurance of people remembering you.”
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