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“I don’t know who this Tony is … What’s the problem? He owe any money, this guy?”

At the paint store a block over, a customer recalled two brothers running a restaurant beside Tony’s Variety in the 1980s or 90s.

“One of them might have been named Tony,” he said. “I remember because I ate some veal cutlets there once.”

This tip led to a dead end.

“I always thought the old guy was Tony,” said the crossing guard at the corner, Felix Rinfret. “I always called him Tony.”

But the old guy, who ran Tony’s Variety until he shut it down late last year, was not Tony. Residents knew him only as Mr. Lee, a quiet, kind fellow.

“He knew all of my kids by name,” said Christine Horgan, who lives in the neighbourhood with her five children.

Generations of students at the Ontario School of Ballet three doors down have joked about the sign, which hasn’t changed in the three decades Sarah Lockett has been teaching there.

For years, Horgan was secure in sending her girls to the ballet school, because she knew they could tuck into Tony’s if they ran into trouble on the walk home.

“The kids know that they’re safe there,” Horgan said. “(Mr. Lee) was one of those little anchors of the neighbourhood.”

With Mr. Lee gone, this convenience store on the corner is at risk of disappearing, with its strange question unanswered.

***

Hilda Jasmer was separated from her family during a bombing raid in eastern Germany during the Second World War. A family of Spanish immigrants took her in. They had come to Germany fleeing the Spanish Civil War, only to find themselves swept up in another war. None of them spoke German, and Hilda didn’t speak Spanish.