Hav A Nap Motel

Location: Kingston Road at Brimley
Date photo taken: 5 September 2013

The Hav A Nap Motel is one of the many vintage motels lining this strip of Kingston Road. A throw-back to the days when Highway 2 was a main route in and out of Toronto, the construction of the 401 signaled the start of hard times for these motels. There continued existence owes quite a bit to the city's practice of renting rooms to house overflow from the city's shelters. Now that the city is focusing on the revitalization of Kingston Road, these motels might go the way of their western counterparts, replaced by condos. If this happens, I like Dave LeBlanc's idea, expressed in a Globe & Mail article in 2009: "...save a few of the old motel signs and gather them up in a new public park... Electrified once again, they'll remind us that 'amenities' along here once meant massaging beds, colour TV, kitchenettes, heated pools and air conditioning."