In our faux timeline for Mr. Gameways’ Ark, it is now hurtling towards oblivion.
I was talking to a fellow at OSRCon who added a wrinkle. The third floor was not part of the store. It was a warehouse and the home of the Full Spectrum Gaming Club, which had D&D, The Morrow Project, massive Squad Leader games, and all kinds of adventures every week.
My source told me you’d take the other set of stairs, the ones off Charles Street, up three flights to the club. This is a building from 1906, a three floor walk-up with two massive stair cases diagonal from each other in opposite corners of the building.
The club was run by Wally Hnatiw and Karen Jenkins. He also told me that they ran a gaming club at Harbourfront. Well, thrill seekers, because I’m completely fucking OCD, I’ve found it.
My man told me it didn’t run that long, as it was aiming a bit too young and there was no continuity between games from week to week, because the attendees were always changing. At any rate, on page 4 of the Fanfare section (Toronto events and articles) of The Globe And Mail dated 13 August, 1983 is an entry under the Special Events section for Harbourfront.
“Toronto Fantasy Games Club: Tuesday at 6pm, $2”
The listing runs in Fanfare for about four weeks and then stops. I do suspect it was a forerunner for Harbourfront’s D&D Summer Camp, which started around that time, still runs (or did until recently), and which Cory Doctorow makes mention attending here. Of course, the Ark, by that time, was dead.
OSRCon 
Just to clarify…the folks who kept the Full Spectrum running were Wally Hnatiw and Karen Jenkins (who always seemed to be hanging out together, so we all assumed they were a pair). I don’t know just how the events were listed in advertising, but Wally’s later gaming efforts at Harbourfront were through Dungeon Parties Inc. (DPI): the time-frame described for that sounds about right. Wally and Karen also put out a gaming-related ‘zine, “Gamevine”, which ran around a dozen issues or so and was distributed through Toronto stores at the time, although Pierre Savoie took the ‘zine over pretty much as soon as Wally and Karen had it ready to go. They were big in early Toronto gaming – really big, in their way – but few remember them now…
“A fellow”
(Ronald M. Green)
Super. Thanks for a clearer picture. I spelled the last name wrong, certainly.
Did Wally and Karen have anything to do with a store called Fields of Fantasy in the later 80’s? I’m just trying to put this in a personal context.