Thirty Years on Toronto's Yonge Street

Tony Vrbanatz, the owner-operator of The Kitchen and Glass Place,
reflects on the long, winding road he has traveled on his fascinating life journey.

By John Somerset

IMAGINE THIS:  The scene is a winter's day on a country road in Austria, not long after the conclusion of World War II. You are an eight-year-old boy on your way home from school. You are alone and stop to play on a frozen pond. Soon you notice a strange man walking along the road. The man leaves the road. He is crossing the field, walking towards you. He calls out to ask if your name is Tony. You respond that, yes, it is Tony Vrbanatz. He gestures in your direction, saying that his name is also Vrbanatz, Frank Vrbanatz. You are anxious to hear more, but are quite overwhelmed by what comes next. The man is looking for your mother. This stranger is your father.

* * * * *

Tony Vrbanatz was born in 1938 near Slivocevicy, a small, rural village in northern Yugoslavia. His father operated a three-man shop making articles of clothing from knitted wool. One of the more distinctive products they produced was a toque with a pom-pom adorning the top. When Frank saw the boy on the pond that fateful day, wearing such a toque, he knew he had found his son. He had not seen his family all through the war.

Yugoslavia is a complex and historically impossible construct. In 1918, the regional states, fearing continued domination by the declining Ottoman and Austrian Empires, united to form a kingdom as a single Slavic country under the Serbian dynasty. Yugoslavia is a bizarre patchwork quilt of peoples, languages, religions and cultures shaped by centuries of turmoil after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Between the two world wars, the kingdom was plagued by continuous political and nationalist discord, and then total, violent collapse as the Axis powers invaded in 1941. It was in this seething cauldron of fire and blood that Tony Vrbanatz spent his earliest years.

Not long after Tony's birth, his father went into the army. The young Vrbanatz family lived a rustic, rural life in a small house with an open fireplace that provided warmth and where they cooked their food. Frank only occasionally saw the family after Tony was born, then not at all while the war raged about them. Added to this the communist-led partisans waged a murderous guerrilla struggle against foreign occupiers that intensified as the outcome of the war became increasingly evident. Nightmarish raids became increasingly common, as one faction or another rounded up suspected collaborators and shot them in front of their neighbors and families.

As the situation worsened in the remaining months of the war, Anna Vrbanatz prepared to leave. She packed what she could in a wagon drawn by a pair of horses. With her mother, sister and Tony they fled toward Austria. "I still remember how alarmed the horses were as we crossed the Danube on a barge at night," Tony says.

With war battlefronts ever-changing, the Vrbanatz family was forced to move as circumstances demanded. They sold the wagon and horses and joined the flow of refugees in Eastern Europe, often sleeping in dance halls. They were stuffed into railway cattle cars and transported between makeshift refugee camps along the eastern front. Finally an Austrian farmer gave them a place to stay in exchange for farm work. They lived in one room above an apple storage shed and raked leaves, used as a substitute for straw, for their keep and food. Tony says that he can still recall the smell of the rotting apples used to make hard cider as it wafted up through the floorboards. It was to this place that Tony Vrbanatz led his father on that most fateful day.

The family found better accommodation. Frank worked in a local steel mill, while Tony finished his schooling before starting work as a painter/decorator. Then there was a baby, a brother for Tony, named after his proud father. With people all around moving on and restarting their lives, the family realized they had some hard decisions. Baby Frank was now five years old. Returning to Yugoslavia was not a realistic option. They chose instead to emigrate and applied for Canadian immigration as contract workers.

Tony remembers the ship, The Fairsea, which brought the family to Montreal in 1953. This was high adventure for a fifteen-year-old boy. After immigration processing they were assigned to a farm in Coaldale, Alberta, just east of Lethbridge. The family was provided with a house and began their two-year contract picking sugar beets. Sugar beets, Tony will tell you, are not what people imagine. They average eighteen pounds, making the process tough slugging.

In the mid-fifties, the family of five (a daughter, Anne, was born in Canada) moved to Toronto where they opened a variety store. It was a struggle in that the location was poor; it drew from a thin market area. Tony, now seventeen, went to work as a laborer at Hawes Wax. If there was one thing Tony knew, it was hard work. The company gave this conscientious and eager immigrant worker more challenging assignments that eventually led to assistant plant manager.

Tony was making enough money to allow for travel to Europe. There, he was struck by the vast array of fascinating kitchenware. While Canadians were content with cheap and functional, Europeans sought superior quality and color. Canadians were also increasingly interested in cooking, influenced by the mosaic of nationalities settling in Toronto. The kitchen was becoming an important room in the house, a trend that exists yet, only more so. European giants such as Braun, Copco, Cuisinart and Melita, for example, were making significant inroads in the Canadian market -- proof that a quality layer could be laid over top of common economy ware. Tony recognized the trend and a need for an up-market kitchen store in Toronto.

Tony bought a corner building on Queen Street in the Beaches area of Toronto. In the late sixties he opened a store in his building, dressed it up with barn board and named it Pottree & Pantree. Long-term suppliers, such as Ed Hudson, Ian Lafayette and Brian Schmidt, say that Tony Vrbanatz introduced the kitchen shop concept to Toronto and was much copied from the start. He had all of the big names: Spode, Dansk, Fieldcrest, Villeroy & Boch, Le Creuset, Copco, Mikasa, and so on. He opened a second trend-setting store on Yonge Street featuring cooking classes and visiting culinary celebrities. Then the Eaton Centre opened, practically destroying nearby retailers on Yonge Street. This was tough on Tony, as he was forced to close stores. He now has the one store just north of Bloor Street.

What kind of a person is Tony Vrbanatz? He dotes on his loyal customers. His suppliers are true friends. He has an attractive warmth about him. When he opens the store, he asks the street people to move from his doorway, but not before giving them a coffee and a few dollars from time to time. He remembers too well the struggles in his own life. More than fifty years later, Tony is still the boy in the toque with the pom-pom on top.