Toronto Life – December 2018

December 2018 toronto life 103

Confessions of

a Rebel Chef

In Toronto in the 1980s,

I was cooking in the city’s

best restaurants. I got

hooked on the fame and

the glamour before

crashing in a blaze of

booze, coke and heroin

A memoir by Greg Couillard

I

came to Toronto from Winnipeg by train when

I was 18. It was August 24, 1971. I remember

the date because the CNE was on. I could see

it out the window of the train, bright lights and

roller coasters. I’d been trading love letters

with a hippy-dippy guy who lived in Regent

Park, and he invited me to live with him. So

like some sort of mail-order bride, I stuffed my clothes,

my records and $120 cash into a suitcase, then did the

Mary Tyler Moore thing and threw my beret in the air.

To find a job, I set up an interview at Canada Man-

power, a Pierre Trudeau program designed to get disaf-

fected youth into the workforce. The guy who interviewed

me was a lecherous old queen, and I was a lovely piece

of chicken. He asked, “Well, what have you done?” I

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