The Bohemian Embassy

Don Cullen

On St. Nicholas Street, tucked away from Yonge Street, once stood the irreplaceable Bohemian Embassy, a coffeehouse and refuge for beatniks, CBC staffers, poets, and folk artists.

The Bohemian Embassy was an extension of Yorkville’s coffeehouse boom, which peaked between 1960 and 1965 with 22 different coffeehouses. A rise in European immigration in the 1950s brought over distinctly European enterprises that had never been seen before by the residents of Yorkville.

Co-founders Don Cullen and Ted Morris, both CBC journalists, drew attention to the Embassy when it opened in 1960 by listing it in yellow pages under Consulates and Foreign Representatives. It was this playful energy that helped it stand out from the famous Yorkville coffeehouses, such as the Penny Farthing or the Purple Onion. But it was also Don Cullen’s skill at hosting open stages for poetry, folk music, and performance that made the Embassy shine

 From Atwood to Saturday Night Live

At the time, coffee houses were places for young people to  share political and artistic ideas and hear music and poetry about themselves. The Bohemian Embassy was well known as the only place in Toronto where poetry was read every night.

Margaret Atwood describes what it was like to be in the smoke filled, dimly lit room. After climbing a “treacherous flight of wooden stairs with no bannister,” poets might be subjected, mid-reading, to the gurgling sound of the espresso machine. Atwood performed her first poetry reading here and experimented with her performance voice.

Alongside Atwood, the Bohemian Embassy hosted Canadian cultural icons like pianist Glenn Gould, opera singer Maureen Forrester, writer Michael Ondaatje, folk singers Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell, and poet Gwendolyn MacEwan.

As for theatre, the Bohemian Embassy premiered 30 theatre productions over six years, including The Village Revue. The Revue was directed by a young Lorne Michaels, who lampooned Toronto before founding Saturday Night Live in New York City in 1975.

How Toronto’s First Happening Happened

According to the CBC, Canada’s first “happening” took place at the Bohemian Embassy in February of 1963. Happenings were messy, mixed-media performance spectacles that were inspired by the Dada art movement. Everyone present was invited to take part and transform often-cramped spaces like coffee houses and lofts into sites of temporary performance.

The Beat generation loved the sense of play that arose in happenings. CBC coverage from the time showed Embassy denizens acting out Hamlet, interspersed with utterings of “Gee Gee, Gee Gee, Gee Gee,” and other nonsense. Don Cullen noted, however, that nobody present had really seen a happening before, and so the result was more amateur than a more traditional, serious happening like one might see in New York.

Like many Yorkville coffee houses, the Embassy’s life was short. It closed in 1966, but was revived twice in other locations. Its most stalwart advocate, Don Cullen passed away in 2022.