Hi-Ho

View Comments

• My great-uncle used to take us to breakfast at the west end location after the early morning mass at Assumption. It was a pretty big deal for us as kids.

  The founder apparently ran Placefortin in Emeryville as a sort of "encore" with menu items from the Hi-Ho but as he grew older retired from the business. Last time I stopped by that location it was a Chinese restaurant - but they keep the "original purveyors of the..." Hi Ho menu items on the front of the restaurant. Don't be fooled though!

  I'm not sure what the proper connection is but for a time at least the Double-H on Walker road just north of Ottawa was supposedly run by a former Hi-Ho operator. I'm not sure what its status is now. They run a busy diner there anyway.

• Interesting....I don't reconize any of these buildings tho...do they still exsist? I'm sure they have been covered, and stucco'd or whatever....but wonder if they are still around...and what business are in them today?

• The Grumpy Burger was the best.

• Ross - Sandwich St. @ Prince is still standing. It's in the parking lot of another building (Vollmer?), the Howard one @ Grand Marais, is long gone. I had a photo of that building when it was another diner and I tried tracking it down. As best as I can figure, it was lost when the expressway went in.

  The Walker Rd. location near the airport doesn't look familiar. It does kind of remind me of the old Country Style that was pulled down for a car wash maybe 10 years ago?

  5240 Tecumseh Rd E., comes up today as the Maple Leaf resturant. If you've ever been in there, it's painfully obvious that the building has undergone expansion and renovations, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn the building is in there somewhere...

• Thank you for the memories! It was the one on Tecumseh East that I remember! In the age of B.A.C. - Before Air Conditioning, when it got toooo hot to cook, that was my mother's escape for the family.

• The Canadian Transportation Museum south of Essex did a big tribute to Hi Ho last year. The Fortin Family was profiled in the very odd local film called The Rise and Fall of the Grumpy Burger, which had virtually nothing to do with Hi Ho, surprisingly.

  From an exhibit I put together last year at Art in the Park; the poster was entitled "First Drive-In in Canada":

  "The Hi Ho Drive-In began on Sandwich Street on the west side of Windsor, Ontario, in 1937 by Aimee Fortin. Hi Ho was the original fast food drive-in restaurant in Canada, featuring “curb service.” The Fortin family asked for and received permission from the Walt Disney Company via a simple letter, to use the trade marked Seven Dwarfs and the “Hi Ho” name for their restaurants in 1934; no lawyers were involved. Hi Ho eventually expanded to four locations but closed in the late 1970s."

  Andrew, I have photos if you are interested in posting them

• Walkerpub... Please send them along, I would be happy to post them.

• Wow, with the Disney cartoon branding, Hi Ho could have really given McDonald's a run for their money. They could have even entered a joint venture with Disney to sell their restaurant franchises internationally. This place sounds more appealing than Burger King and Wendy's. Anyone know why it failed?

• The HI HO on Walker still stands, it's currently Champions Roadhouse.....

• Thanks Bob!