A funereal mood is to be expected Sunday as crowds gather for the 65th anniversary party of Honest Ed’s. Earlier this week it was reported that the site is on the auction block, at a rumoured asking price of $100 million. For some Torontonians, it’s almost as if Ed Mirvish, the U.S. émigré who first opened the store in 1948, and passed away six years ago at age 92, was dying all over again.

Ed Mirvish was beloved in this city, a contrast to a generally negative regard for business today, after the Wall Street meltdown, epic Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and Lac-Mégantic tragedy.

The anguish over possibly losing Honest Ed’s, so named because its inception came at the time when merchants were notoriously unscrupulous, is palpable. Though no plans for the site have been disclosed, it’s widely assumed that yet another condo development will spring up at Bathurst and Bloor, and the magic that was Honest Ed’s, as many have called it this week, will disappear. Star commenter Dessy Pavolova wrote: “Ed Mirvish was an amazing man, and I would hate for his good work to rot away into completely corporate and commercial blasphemy.”

Mirvish’s only child, David, runs the family business and is the presumed heavy in Honest Ed’s looming demise. But it was Mirvish Sr. who parted with the cavernous Ed’s Warehouse and his other eateries along King Street West that once served about 6,000 meals a night. And who finally gave up on London’s Old Vic, an 1818 landmark that he and David lovingly restored, after chronic losses at the theatre wore them down.

Yes, the dispenser of free turkeys at Christmas was a man of copious private and public philanthropy. He energized a then-nascent architectural preservation movement by rescuing the jewel box Royal Alexandra Theatre from the wrecking ball. And the Mirvishes created two municipal tourism magnets – the Markham Street arts community and the King Street West live-theatre district. These have created the kinds of “creative economy” jobs that urbanologist Richard Florida considers essential to municipal vitality.

But if the legacies of Hart Massey and Sam McLaughlin are in no jeopardy long after their tycoon days had passed, neither is that of Ed Mirvish. The most compelling aspect of that legacy is that Ed Mirvish was both a business trailblazer and showed that in business one can do well by doing good. And that, rather than the gaudy edifice at Bathurst and Bloor, might be worth mourning, since innovation and moral probity have been at a low ebb in business for some time now.

Mirvish pioneered the winning discount-retail model that would later underpin the business formula of discounters Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Kmart Corp. and F.W. Woolworth Co.’s Woolco division. All three were launched in 1962, 14 years after “Honest Ed’s Famous Bargain House” first opened for business.

As Mirvish had done, Sam Walton would start out by scouting factories in liquidation and burned-out warehouses for blouses he could buy in volume at 50 cents apiece and sell at his first store, in Rogers, Ark., for $3.

Honest Ed’s was a world first at its inception, an Eaton’s-sized emporium boasting that store’s variety of merchandise but at knock-down prices. What Japanese industrialists would later perfect and call kaizen, or “continuous improvement,” was the animating spirit of shopkeeper Mirvish in the 1950s. He was constantly innovating. He knew his customers intimately because he usually was on the sales floor. (So did his mother, an accomplished spotter of shoplifters.)

So Mirvish was among the first North American merchants to experiment with self-service; “loss-leader” goods; and pharmacy, photo-finishing and other in-store shops. Embracing his largely immigrant clientele, Mirvish offered wire-service transfer services to the Old Country. And Ottawa eventually set up a passport renewal kiosk.

Mirvish was a glutton for free publicity, and became expert at getting it. For his “Pink Elephant Sale,” he installed a pachyderm in the parking lot and painted it pink. Mirvish garnered still more publicity when he was obliged to scrape off the paint when told that elephants breathe through their skin. For his “Triplets Fashion Show,” Mirvish somehow managed to recruit 21 sets of triplets.

To be sure, nearby cash-pressed University of Toronto dorm residents relied on Honest Ed’s for 50 cent plates and 33 cent ramen noodles. But unless you happened to first meet your future spouse there, “magic” was not a feature of Honest Ed’s. Ikea-style, Honest Ed’s was a fun-house jumble of perhaps two dozen rooms, each with a floor several inches higher or lower than the last. The layout obliged visitors to navigate the entire store, accumulating impulse buys along the way, before they would next see daylight.

Mirvish himself amassed probably the world’s largest collection of bad puns, a ubiquitous feature of the premises. (“People say Ed is nuts. Just look at the cashew save!”)

As first-year sales of $25,000 climbed to $65 million by the early 1990s, Mirvish resisted the compulsion of most entrepreneurs with a winning formula, and opted not to expand into a chain-store operation. He feared losing touch with customers, a profit-sapping outcome not contemplated by architects of over-expansion at Starbucks Corp., Gap Inc. and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc.

Neither did Mirvish issue stock, despite the windfall he would have reaped from an initial public offering (IPO). He blanched at becoming a slave to Bay Street analysts demanding constant short-term revenue and profit gains, no matter how achieved. Besides, Mirvish’s one bargain outlet threw off enough cash to finance his theatre impresario sideline. And his store outlasted the rival Bi-Way discount chain. And Mirvish Productions, which garnered eight awards at the latest Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards, has carried on after the implosion of the less cautious Garth Drabinsky.

Mirvish clung to Honest Ed’s because it financed his philanthropy, city building and astute real estate investments, the last two eventually becoming self-sustaining. That was fortunate, since Honest Ed’s ceased to be a golden goose some years ago.

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Mirvish at heart trusted most in retailing - in business - because unlike entertainment, it did not resist his control. “If I have diapers and they’re not moving, I can reduce them by 25 cents, and they’re all gone the next day. But if I have a show that people don’t want, you can’t pay them to sit through it.”

Actually, you could give away tickets, but then you’d have lost your discipline, and you’d risk losing everything. Instead, the Mirvish family has reason to expect it will be a major force in philanthropy, fine art, and live-theatre production for many years to come.