The borough of Scarborough was a post-war, car-centric suburb. East of Toronto, it marked the edge of town, and it may as well have been the edge of civilization. Scarborough was exploding with new families, subdivisions and shopping plazas, creating an automotive suburbia built around the freedom of having your own wheels. Businesses sat behind enormous parking lots. Long plazas stretched beside wide arterial roads. People drove to shop, drove to eat and drove out for entertainment. In Scarborough, the automobile wasn’t simply transportation. It shaped the neighbourhood.
Harry’s Drive-In was a product of that Scarborough. Sitting at 2280 Lawrence Ave East in front of White Shield Plaza, the little roadside burger joint looked almost comically small compared with the vast parking lot behind it. Local history generally dates Harry’s to 1965, although some accounts place its beginnings as far back as 1954.
This wasn’t the glamorous ‘American Graffiti’ kind of drive-in, with roller-skating carhops carrying milkshakes to chrome-bumpered convertibles. Scarborough’s version was more practical. Drive east on Lawrence, pull into the plaza, park the car and order a homemade burger. Harry’s had only a handful of seats inside because the car was basically part of the dining room.
Generations of Scarborough kids knew the place. For decades, students from Winston Churchill Collegiate jaywalked across Lawrence Ave for lunch because the food was good, filling and inexpensive. Remarkably little changed, yet everything around Harry’s did. The neighbourhood grew, traffic got heavier and chain restaurants arrived. Scarborough transformed from a sprawling post-war suburb into a denser, busier part of Toronto, yet Harry’s stayed planted in front of White Shield Plaza, grilling burgers while generations of cars rolled past.
Harry’s was a relic, but that word shouldn’t be an insult. It was a surviving fragment of the Scarborough that helped create generations of gearheads: wide roads, huge parking lots, roadside restaurants and the freedom that came with having your own set of wheels. It belonged to the era of tailfins, chrome bumpers and optimistic post-war suburbia, when cars represented independence and roadside architecture was designed to catch the eye of passing motorists.
That run ended last Friday, when Harry’s Drive-In shut off the engine for the final time. The landlord has sold the property to a condo developer, and another roadside landmark from Scarborough’s automobile age is gone. Places like this gave Scarborough its identity: burger joints, plazas and parking lots where people met friends, showed off their cars and spent their evenings. For gearheads especially, losing Harry’s means losing another small piece of that world.
So there was really only one proper way to say goodbye. Drive in one last time, park out front and order a homemade burger combo with fries and a Coke. The same simple meal someone could have ordered there half a century ago.
Bummer. Sometimes I really hate ‘progress’…