The Revue Cinema Office

The Revue Cinema is arguably Toronto's oldest operating movie theatre and likely one of the oldest in Canada. It opened in 1912 at a time that predates what most people think of as the golden age of Hollywood and the classic silent film era. “Movies weren't quite the movies yet,” says Eric Veillette, who became The Revue's programming director after working for eight years as a film journalist and columnist for the Toronto Star. "Films like D.W. Griffiths' Birth of a Nation hadn't really become popular yet, so you had a lot of short films." In fact, Charlie Chaplin hadn't even arrived on the scene yet.

When The Revue opened, seating extended into what is now the lobby. A single showing on its only screen could accommodate 515 people, and that was for a film's second run. “As we are now, we were always a second-run cinema, which was very common for the neighbourhood cinemas at the time," says Eric. "From the teens into the twenties and thirties you had these big grand houses like the Loews Yonge Street – now The Elgin Theatre – that would open the big movies and then those movies would slowly trickle into the neighbourhoods. If you wanted a big night on the town, you went to a place like Loews, but if you wanted something closer to home, you went to a place like The Revue."

The Revue Cinema changed as movie tastes changed and it valiantly kept up with the times. But, in 2004, its long-time owner Peter McQuillan passed away and the future of The Revue Cinema was put into severe doubt for the first time in its history.