Rosalie Sharp on building a home at the

Rosalie Sharp on building a home at the Four Seasons Hotel

The wife of Isadore “Issy” Sharp recalls their first three properties in a new memoir

In this, the year of the pandemic, Issy has been rooting around in his past to understand his success. Why did he never have a fear of failure? What were the way posts? Recently Issy’s high school friend Herb Noble came to dinner bringing a binder full of items describing why Isadore was the most popular kid at school. This was a shock to Issy, who has never had, he says, any “ego.” Why was it that the principal of Forest Hill Collegiate Institute asked him to be the spokesperson to garner student support for an indoor skating rink? And the day my father locked me out, Issy instinctively acted responsibly by speaking to him immediately and making such a winning case, maybe because his parents taught him to do what needed to be done as soon as possible. Issy credits this visit to my father as another of the landmarks for his success that he’s just dug up from his youth.

It took five years of begging, borrowing, and debating, to produce the first hotel, which happened only because of Issy’s persuasive charisma, which to him is a mystery he’s trying to figure out now that there is a lull. Perhaps it’s his self-confidence just short of loftiness rather like Lil Sharp, or maybe it’s the low-key appeal that makes him so likeable. Sometimes while we were driving around the city, instead of paying attention to the road, he would be craning his neck out the car window, looking for possible sites. Now he had two jobs: building apartment towers all day, and at night sitting at a typewriter in our spare room with one finger pecking out proposals for hotels on various sites he had on hold. These three-page prospectuses would then be packaged in a colourful cardboard folder, and the next hurdle was to find investors. So Issy would park himself regularly on the doorstep of Cecil Forsythe, of Great-West Life Insurance, and pester him for money. After three years of proposals, Forsythe — who of course had taken a liking to Issy — finally caved in and pledged half the financing. With the promise from the trades to hold off on their pay, and with $90,000 each from Issy and two partners — his brother-in-law Eddie Creed and a friend, Murray Koffler. Another friend, Wally Cohen, to his everlasting regret, failed to invest.

Isadore was up at 6 a.m. and on the job. He would help his construction workers with menial jobs, and I remember him walking along planks in the air with no safety net. There was a camaraderie between him and the merry band of Italian and Polish workers who called him “Mister Issy” and appreciated his fair-mindedness. One of his workmen, Ciro Rappachietti, recounts that God sent him to Mister Issy because he got off the bus at the construction site of 2515 Bathurst St. when he noticed men were still working in the rain and not only was he hired but became an overseer. Isadore, the construction boss, was so handsomely athletic and dapper even in his work clothes. His arms were tanned below rolled-up shirt sleeves, and his body was hard from the physical work he enjoyed. His lean torso rivalled Michelangelo’s statue of David and, I blush to say, still does. How did I end up with a guy in construction wearing rubber boots when my other boyfriends had been lawyerish shirt-and-tie types? Not to mention that Issy modelled clothes for Simpsons department store every Saturday when he was the “Simpsons rep,” the photo with this title on the inside cover of the school magazine. The Toronto radio station CKEY interviewed him at the time, and the announcer afterwards said: “Isadore, you have the right voice and delivery for radio—you should consider a career on the air.” And at age 90 he still has the deep resonant voice and the power to keep an audience in his thrall.

The Four Seasons Motor Hotel on Jarvis Street was born, opening March 21, 1961, with little fanfare. Not likely a good location because Jarvis Street was the centre of the red-light district. But later it was to develop that at any location where there was a Four Seasons Hotel, the surrounding real estate tripled in value, so the hookers moved to another street. I could have made my fortune by buying the next-door piece of land in 40 countries. The Jarvis Street hotel became the hangout for the literati from the CBC-TV early headquarters across the street, and soon was the place to be seen because it was modern and fresh unlike the ancient monster hotels like the Royal York and the King Edward. Thanks to Issy’s vision, probably influenced by his mother planting all the gardens around their real estate, the building surrounded a garden courtyard with pool and café so sheltered that guests might imagine they were swimming in the tropics.

One day a tall willowy girl with long blond Lady Godiva hair walked through the lobby and out the doors to the courtyard, shedding her clothes as she strolled to the swimming pool and dove in naked. She swam the length of the pool and back, picked up her clothes, and walked out and across the road to the CBC building, still naked. The next day the press noted the incident titled “the Naked and the Fled.”

The second hotel, the Inn on the Park, was conceived in 1961. On a summer’s day we drove up to the corner of Eglinton Avenue and Leslie Street in Toronto, to a hilly meadow of tall grass. “Here,” said Issy, “is the site for the second hotel. What do you think?”

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“I remember the disquieting thought that if this new venture failed, we might have to sell the house and move to a three-room flat—in fact, our house was the collateral for the loan. But I kept my fears to myself.”

- Rosalie Sharp

Isadore and Rosalie Wise Sharp, 1965.

The Inn On the Park in Toronto was designed by architect Peter Dickinson to resemble a Star of David from the air.

There was not another building in sight, trucks were turning in to a municipal garbage dump across the road, and just then a CPR freight train roared by the property. I thought, “What can he be thinking? Real hotels are always downtown, usually handy to the railway station, and have regal names like Royal York, King Edward, and Prince George.”

At the time, there were no rural hotels other than beer halls like the Jolly Miller, and I could not imagine why any hotel guest would choose to sleep in suburbia. I remember the disquieting thought that if this new venture failed, we might have to sell the house and move to a three-room flat—in fact, our house was the collateral for the loan. But I kept my fears to myself. In this case, as usual, his suburban hotel was a roaring success. It’s amazing how many times he has been right, even up to the present.

The Inn on the Park had Issy’s same garden concept but on a huge scale. The courtyard was about 300 feet long with two swimming pools, a wooden bridge over a duck pond, and mature trees bordering a wide meandering path that encircled the courtyard. This walkway became a skater’s road in winter. The complex included a tennis court, gym, and three restaurants. The Inn on the Park became such a smashing success that Americans came there for long-weekend vacations. I remember there was often a row of orange Detroit licence plates in the lot. Our family of six would go on a Sunday, change into our swimsuits in Issy’s office instead of a guestroom, and spread a towel on the grass to leave the chaise lounges for the guests.

One night at the Inn on the Park there was an incident following an Italian wedding in the Trillium banquet room. At the door stood a seven-foot 900-pound art nouveau bronze statue, Bellona, the Goddess of War by Jean-Léon Gérôme. When she was displayed in 1893 at the entrance to his Paris exhibition, it caused a sensation. Her ivory teeth were bared in a scream, her jade eyes wide in terror, a giant cobra in silvered bronze wound about her body. Issy had acquired her for a song when she didn’t sell at an auction in the ballroom. The morning after the wedding—behold, Bellona was missing her head, so sadly, her body was moved by four men to a storeroom. Flash forward three months to New York when I’m taking my usual stroll down Madison Avenue past a shop, the Volpe Gallery (which turned out to be Tod Volpe’s family), and I stop dead in my tracks. The head of Bellona on a base is centred in the window. I went in and asked the price and must have said something suspect and they said, “Sorry, it’s not for sale.” Tod Volpe later served 28 months in jail, having scammed some high-powered clients like Jack Nicholson and Barbra Streisand. So one wonders about the wedding. The body of Bellona is now in the Art Gallery of Hamilton in southern Ontario. Isadore had finally, after much coaxing, sold the headless body to Joey Tanenbaum who had a new head made up, rather different than the original, and donated Bellona to the museum. The night detectives have many such movie-making tales to tell of the goings-on at our hotels. ***

The third hotel, in London, England, was the beginning of the big time.

It’s always been something of a mystery to Issy that he was so trusted and respected by strangers like Sir Gerald Glover and the McAlpine family during the acquisition of the London Hotel. Issy had no wherewithal, just his personality. He travelled back and forth across the ocean for four years until he convinced the McAlpines

Issy and Rosalie, September 6, 2021.

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to give him that deal. Because he sold them on his plan to convert their proposed 320-room hotel to 230 while paying them the same rent, they called him “the crazy Canadian.” Bucking the naysayers is a lonely responsibility that Isadore often experienced as a CEO. On his fifth trip over Sir Gerald asked: “My dear boy, would you come over for lunch to meet the Duke of Westminster and the McAlpine board?” So Issy took the red eye yet again, and in his jet-lagged condition submitted to the friendly interrogation of the grandiose Brits. Their upper crust jargon would have been clearer, says Issy, if only they had subtitles across their chests. Questions about Canadian politics were challenging, but he passed the test as Sir Gerald later said, “My dear boy, I knew you would do well, and please bring your wife over next trip.”

Well, with the deal still unconfirmed after four years, we both came and visited with Gerald and Sue who by now had become friends, having visited Toronto. We had a lunch at their country estate, Pytchley, the typical patrician mansion overlooking the commoners in the nearby village valley. Issy asked Glover, while standing in the garden overlooking a vast velvet lawn sloping down to a curved dark umber stream, cut as if with a knife into the green of the hill, “How, Sir, do you keep the lawn so perfect?”

“No trouble at all my dear boy, you merely cut it every week for 300 years.”

I admired Lady Sue Glover, who ran a home for unwed mothers and then placed the babies in good homes. Amazingly for me, who can’t ride a horse, I watched her canter away side-saddle into the distance on a black horse.

This reminds me of a story about Issy and a white horse. It was at dusk after a few glasses of wine at a friend’s farm. Five of us were standing at a split rail fence admiring a group of grazing horses. Someone said, “Is, I bet you can’t ride that white one bareback.” Of course, he immediately straddled the fence and climbed on. Off they went but the horse was not pleased and decided to gallop off to the barn. “Oh no.” The upper half of the barn door was closed. I covered my eyes in fright, but through my fingers, I saw the most incredible sight. While the horse was in full gallop, and just before he reached the barn door, Issy swung his leg over and jumped off the horse and remained standing, a vision which I never forget.

But back to the Glovers. Later that day, we visited their London townhouse off Park Lane where we faced a three-fork dinner and wondered about the extra spoon. When the dessert of gooseberry tart and clotted cream arrived, I watched, while I used my fork, the other guests used a spoon as well, which I quickly picked up. Ever since that moment, Issy always insists on both spoon and fork as if “to the manner born.” After dinner when cigars were passed in the drawing room, Issy said, “No thank you,” but when the waiter offered me one, I said, “Yes, thank you” and held it aloft until he came round with the lighter to which I said as I put the cigar in my purse, “I’ll keep it for later” as the crowd burst out laughing. Issy told me afterwards he wondered jokingly whether the “yes” cigar meant a no-cigar deal.

Finally, the deal was done somehow, and the hotel was readied for the big opening party with the royal guests of honour, Princess Alexandra and Sir Angus Ogilvy, who I was seated beside at dinner. From then on, because of Issy’s stature, I always draw the most important man in the room as dinner companion, including Pavarotti, Abba Eban, and Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia. I’m told I’m good at this job, although in truth I’m a closet loner. I’ve enjoyed this year of solitude during the pandemic—so few demands for wit and charm and social responsibility, although when it’s required, I do my duty happily. n

Excerpted and adapted from Me & Issy by Rosalie Wise Sharp. © 2022 by Rosalie Wise Sharp. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com