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<\/p>\nIt has been six years since London’s Call the Office closed its doors, but now the beloved former venue is being remembered in a documentary premiering at the Windsor Film Festival next weekend.<\/p>\n
Call the Office: A Documentary has been a three-year labour of love for filmmaker Sean Stanley.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only did it bring incredible bands through the city … for decades, it also created a vibrant social hub. People would come here and just hang out,” Stanley told CBC News.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you had no clue who these three bands were, you [knew you] were going to see something good that night, and that was very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Call the Office is seen from Clarence Street in London, Ont., in June 2013. (Matthew Trevithick)<\/p>\n
The documentary premieres Oct. 31 in Windsor, and will play at London\u2019s Hyland Cinema in November<\/a>. It features rare footage and photos provided by musicians, former staff and patrons, covering the venue’s early days to its closure in November 2020.<\/p>\n For a place that meant so much to so many, including the countless local and independent bands it helped find an audience, Stanley said it was important the documentary truly honour the venue. <\/p>\n The hardest part was getting the film to a two-hour runtime from a four-hour cut, a process that was \u201cvery painful,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are getting older, people are passing away. And if you don\u2019t tell this story now, in 20 years somebody will be researching, and they\u2019ll be like, \u2018Oh, that sounds exciting,\u2019 but they won\u2019t have experienced it.\u201d<\/p>\n LISTEN | Filmmaker Sean Stanley talks Call the Office documentary (2024):<\/p>\n London Morning7:11New Call The Office documentary in the works<\/p>\n Call The Office was a significant venue in London, where many top acts played in their formative years. Local filmmaker Sean Stanley is working on a documentary about the London landmark and he told London Morning about his own fond memories from inside Call The Office.<\/p>\n Stanley said the documentary also touches on the history of the building at 216 York St., which dates back to 1880. Originally called Atlantic House, it was also known as Hotel Bodega, Hotel Cecil and, for four decades, the York Hotel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Call The Office (CTO) opened in the space in 1984<\/a>, continuing a musical legacy that began taking shape in the 1960s with the loosening of Ontario liquor laws. Those of an older generation still remember the Nihilist Spasm Band\u2019s Monday shows<\/a> at the York starting in 1966.<\/p>\n Though CTO developed a reputation for punk, hosting homegrown acts including 63 Monroe<\/a>, The Demics and October Crisis<\/a>, it also booked other genres, including reggae, rock, rap, and to a lesser extent, country and western, Stanley said.<\/p>\n \u201c[There’s] things like The Tea Party<\/a> playing Wednesday nights for $3 and doing three sets of music. There\u2019s a lot of memories like that of bands that spent their early days there and seeing how far they\u2019ve come,\u201d said Tony Lima, CTO’s longtime former co-owner, who also booked its acts.<\/p>\n \u201cSum 41 sold out Canada Life Place. They used to come and open up and be the first of five bands on a bill for $6.\u201d<\/p>\n Call the Office’s former co-owner, Tony Lima, photographed in November 2025 showing off two of the many show posters he designed for the venue. (Kendra Seguin\/CBC London)<\/p>\n Household names have taken the stage over the decades, including The Tragically Hip<\/a>, Blue Rodeo, Nelly Furtado, Nickelback<\/a>, Barenaked Ladies, Bif Naked, Blink 182<\/a>, Queens of the Stone Age<\/a>, Goo Goo Dolls<\/a>, The Sadies and Crash Test Dummies, to name a handful<\/a>.<\/p>\n CTO also showcased local talent including The Gandharvas, Constantines, Single Mothers and Thunder Queens<\/a>, and most famously, an up-and-coming British quintet called Radiohead. Hot off their chart-topping sophomore album, The Bends, the group hit CTO’s stage on July 24, 1995<\/a>. Price of admission: $10.<\/p>\n \u201cBands that are only vaguely familiar with CTO, the first thing they’ll say is, \u2018Didn’t Radiohead play there?\u2019” <\/p>\n Ahead of the gig, a sleepy Thom Yorke phoned into<\/a> BBC Radio 1\u2019s Evening Session.<\/p>\n \u201cIt says here on this piece of paper that I\u2019m in London. Is that in Ontario? London, Ontario, in a place called Call the Office, which is a club. I\u2019ve just got off a bus and I\u2019ve been awake approximately five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n Call the Office in December 2020, roughly two weeks after its closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Matthew Trevithick)<\/p>\n Lima says it may be hard to believe a band like Radiohead would play CTO, but \u201cthat\u2019s the way things used to be done.\u201d CTO was one of several<\/a> gigs they played across Canada that year. <\/p>\n \u201cAt one point in time there were clubs like Call the Office all across Canada and the U.S. that were an important part of breaking new music and exposing people to new underground sounds. Most of those places are gone now,\u201d said Lima, who left CTO when it was sold in May 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n CTO is among them, along with other lost local music spots including The Wick, The Embassy, London Music Club and Norma Jeans. <\/p>\n Renovation plans provide hope for CTO’s return<\/p>\n CTO faced an uncertain future<\/a> in 2018 amid mounting financial and maintenance challenges, and though Londoners came to its rescue, the COVID-19 pandemic proved a tougher foe<\/a>.<\/p>\n “In a post-lockdown world … people don’t go out as much as they used to. That makes live music much more difficult,” Lima said.<\/p>\n The building itself was sold twice in 2020, including for roughly $1 million to TKFV Holdings Ltd., a London-registered company run by Kenneth and Nemesia Demelo.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792925170_990_default.jpg\")
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