Monday, November 26, 2007

Hemingway the tutor

I’ve always been curious about where Hemingway actually lived in Toronto. Always assumed he'd come here as a journalist. But in fact, after World War I, while he was barely recovered from the injuries to his legs, he was sometimes hired by small civic organizations to give talks about the war. Visiting Torontonian Harriett Connable (whose husband was a Woolworth’s executive) saw one of these lectures in Michigan, and she hired the young Hem as a tutor for her invalid son. Hemingway lived in their house, above, on the edge of one of Toronto’s legendary ravines, and it was the boy’s father, Ralph Connable who introduced him to the editor of the Toronto Star Weekly. Which led to Hem’s meeting fellow-writer Morley Callaghan, and also gave him an excuse to move to Paris, to be the European correspondent for the Star. So really, you could argue the whole thing spirals out of this rather tony address, which has since been cut up into apartments…

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