As 1940s jazz ekes out of the jukebox, beer mugs clink amid a raucous chorus of “Cheers!” Tonight, Nov. 15, the Imperial Pub, near Dundas and Victoria, is pouring its last pint. The floors are packed shoulder to shoulder — upstairs and downstairs alike. Every seat is taken, with a mix of Torontonians, from TMU students to hockey players in their 60s, to couples shooting pool. Stacked bookshelves line the low-ceilinged space, and the smell of burgers, wings and French fries swirls around the few lucky diners who snagged the cosy couches. At one point tonight, the pub even runs out of glasses and pours mixed drinks into coffee cups. Patrons stand to eat wings, chat and soak in the atmosphere, oblivious to the awkwardness of it all.
The closure of the Imperial is more than a farewell to one bar — it marks a turning point in Toronto’s nightlife. The city is losing its historic “dive bars,” venues that are more than places to drink, including the Gem on Davenport, the Red Room on Spadina, Dundas Video, and the Dakota Tavern. They are social hubs where patrons can gather without curated aesthetics or branded experiences, and where the quirks and messiness of the space — worn furniture, scuffed floors, and the smell of fried food — make it feel lived-in and welcoming.
Christine Sismondo, Toronto-based author of “America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops,” notes that establishments like the Imperial are among the last public drinking spaces where people connect organically. “A dive bar is where anything can happen, and where customers can have a sense of ownership of the spot,” she says. She adds that there is no recipe to become a dive bar — “in fact, the more bar owners try to make a place divey, the more it fails in doing so.” Dive bars earn their pedigree through grit, longevity, affordability, consistency amid change, and some accumulated charm (like the Imperial’s cosy couches) that makes the place feel truly lived-in.
A gathering spot for generations
For regulars, the Imperial is more than a bar — it is a repository of community, memories, and serendipitous encounters.
Dave Bidini, lead singer of The Rheostatics and publisher of indie newspaper The West End Phoenix, has long visited the Imperial with bandmates, friends, and his hockey team. “There are few of these great taverns in Toronto any more,” he says, “and it’s the kind of place where you can be yourself, where you don’t have to care about what you looked like, where everyone from every pedigree would be welcome.”
He recalls when he was reading from his “Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places” in 2000 at a book launch at the Imperial’s ground floor and “felt the subway rattle under my feet. That was a unique moment.”
Sook-Yin Lee, the former MuchMusic VJ-turned-filmmaker-and-musician, stopped by the Imperial a few weeks before its closing, and says the Imperial has long been a constant in her life in Toronto. “There’s something about that fish tank behind the bar at the lower level, I love it, you don’t see that anywhere else,” she says, “and I have a vivid memory of hearing some poetry upstairs with my friends and rolling over laughing at some hilarious lines, like literally collapsing on the ground outside when we left.”
For long-time Imperial customer Mike Duffie, he says, “The Imperial felt like a friend’s basement that didn’t try too hard to look like a basement, if that makes sense. It always had a chill vibe.”
He adds, “Toronto is losing so much history, with Clinton’s now done, with Grossman’s Tavern not being as packed as the when I remember it in the ‘90s.”
Owner Fred Newman agrees: “These bars become the fabric of Toronto, and when places like ours close, we lose what makes Toronto wonderful and you really don’t want the city to be completely sterile.”
Economic and cultural shifts
The decline of dive bars reflects broader economic and cultural shifts in Toronto. Rising downtown rents have pushed out lower-income patrons, and younger generations are drinking less. “If you don’t have young people coming into a dive bar to play pool, whether ironically or unironically, that’s an important ingredient that’s missing,” says Sismondo. She also notes that dive bars have long operated on low margins, trading in cheap beer and affordable food — a model increasingly difficult to sustain given rising ingredient and real-estate costs.
Queen West pillar Squirly’s faced its own brush with closure earlier this year, before new owners stepped in to keep the 37-year-old bar alive.
Patrick Grant, the co-owner of Squirly’s, says Toronto not only loses a piece of its history when places such as Clinton’s and the Imperial close, but gains little in return. “What replaces these places when they leave?” he asks. “A franchise or larger company will move in, or maybe condos — so where will fans of that great spot go then?”
On one of its final Fridays, the Imperial was still alive with energy. Patrons crowded every corner, ventured into the chilly night to enjoy the patio, cheering friends at pool, and laughing with strangers who felt like old friends. The lived-in quirks of the space (couches, books, old-timey jukeboxes) reminded everyone why the bar had been a mainstay for generations.
When Bidini considers the question on what makes dive bars appealing to customers, he turns to a Neil Young lyric: “See the losers in the best bars, meet the winners in the dives where the people are the real stars all the rest of their lives.”
