June 23, 2003
Runyx on Dundas Street will never be the same. The first table on the right, where private eye Jim Lillie held lunchtime court, will be haunted forever by his lively ghost.
Jim Lillie, of Bay Street Investigations Inc. (BSI,) passed away on June 15, taking with him another era. An era where private eyes never gave up digging up the facts; an era where real life P.I.s looked and did precisely what their counterparts did to entertain us on television.
Jim Lillie died a P.I. legend, and was more than likely born as one.
The catalyst for a firm that was slightly irreverent, loaded with character, and very much in your face, he once surprised your Attorney General with a telephone call to his unpublished private number at home.
The savvy private eyes under Lillie’s direction have been known to hunt down errant hubbies in the most exotic of lairs. They were so good at their jobs, the competition begrudgingly dubbed them ‘Spies Are Us’.
The stories spun by the handsome Lillie kept us spellbound at Runyx, home of gourmet pizza and with its ever-burning candles and cozy fireplace, the best downtown place to be on gloomy, rainy afternoons.
Some of this city’s top investigative journalists hung onto their bylines thanks to the digging of the gumshoes with the gravelly voice.
Along with research smarts, Jim Lillie had heart and solved many a mystery for those who could not afford his price.
He had a thing until the day he died for deadbeat dads and tweaked the tails of a series of governments to do something meaningful about them.
According to prominent newspaper columnists, such as Ian Harvey of the Toronto Sun, the Family Support Plan (FSP) is a dead duck. In Ian’s terms…"an impotent agency, unable to track the most casual of dodgers even when given direct leads." At the time of his writing, that was FSP to those owed money--97 percent of them women.
To the main players caught up in FSP’s sticky web, (97 percent of them men) it was "a faceless, passionless, robotic bureaucracy."
And those barbs to the Premier of the day were gentle compared to those of bottomline Bay Street private investigator Jim Lillie.
Lillie had the temerity to suggest to then Attorney General Charles Harnick: "There is now over $900 million owed by so-called ‘deadbeat dads’ in support payments and what are you and your staff doing about it?"
As Lillie would tell us over lunch at Runyx, "It seems that no blankety-blank government of any stripe excels in the fine art of private investigation, or even, for that matter, plain old-fashioned skip tracing."
Said Lillie: "When Liberal Ian Scott was in power, he thought that the plan of BSI was great, but his bureaucrats advised that they were more than capable and could solve the problem without help. Well, the problem jumped up to $450 million."
So much for any Columbo types on staff with the Liberals of the day.
After Bob Rae and the NDP came to power, the problem ballooned to $850 million and in that chapter, BSI investigators were actually thrown out of their Queen’s Park offices, all because of their suggested plan of action ("we’ll find the beggars!") was deemed to be too aggressive and likely to offend some people’s sensibilities.
Through all of this Lillie merely drank more black coffee (without Pepto Bismal, which he kept for his Scotch) while he bided his time, and when the Common Sense government was elected, he met with their staff and telephoned many times, with no results.
As of February 1996, there was over $900 million outstanding, representing 150,000 support orders. Only 25 percent were in compliance, therefore 75 percent or 112,000 were in partial compliance or non-compliance--and the number was growing.
Abandoned mothers continue to feel humiliated and frustrated because they have support orders but can’t collect.
Like the mounted police of old, Bay Street Investigations always got their man. They were the only investigation company who claimed to provide only one service: "We find people who do not want to be found."
April was the last time I talked to Jim Lillie. I had called his office, hoping some one else would pick up the phone so I could ask about Jim’s cancer. Jim answered the telephone, and told me in the most calm of ways that he didn’t think he’d make through the month of May.
Incredibly, he tried to soothe me about his imminent death. "I’ve had a good long interesting life, and we all have to go someday to the other side," he said in his usual gravelly voice. He even joked about the possibility of meeting up with a beloved cat who had died.
Brave to the bitter end, that was Jan’s hubby Jim Lillie.
If there’s any need for gumshoes in Heaven, they’ve got the best.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the 'fair use' exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Views are those of authors and not necessarily those of Canada Free Press. Content is Copyright 1997-2024 the individual authors. Site Copyright 1997-2024 Canada Free Press.Com Privacy Statement