Canada's Theater King Sold Everything for Millions, Then Vanished From His Office That Night

On December 2, 1919, one of the richest men in Canada sat in his office at the Grand Opera House in Toronto, finishing some business with his lawyer.

The day before, he had sold his entire theater empire. Theaters in seven cities. A profit of one point seven million dollars. In 1919, that was a staggering fortune.

At five-thirty in the evening, his lawyer said goodbye and left.

That was the last time anyone is known to have seen Ambrose Small.

He did not go home. He did not go to his bank. He did not take a train or a ship that anyone could find. He simply vanished, from the middle of a busy city, at the moment of his greatest success.

And for weeks, nobody even reported him missing.

Amby

Ambrose Small was born on January 11, 1866, in Newmarket, Ontario. His father ran a hotel and saloon right next to the Grand Opera House in Toronto.

As a teenager, Ambrose went to work at that theater, behind the scenes, as an assistant treasurer. He learned the business from the inside.

And he was very, very good at it.

By 1919, at fifty-three, he owned theaters in seven Ontario cities, including the Grand Opera House in Toronto, and Grand theaters in Kingston, London and Sudbury. He controlled dozens of other buildings. He was a self-made millionaire.

People called him "Amby."

He was also known for other things. He gambled. He had affairs. And he had a habit of disappearing for short stretches without telling anyone, to drink and gamble and spend time with women. His office at the Grand Opera House reportedly had a private, secret room with its own entrance, where he was said to settle gambling debts and meet with actresses and chorus girls.

In 1902, he married. His wife would play a large part in what came after.

The sale

On December 1, 1919, Small completed the sale of all his theater holdings. The deal brought him a profit of about one point seven million dollars.

According to many accounts, part of the payment was a check for one million dollars, which was deposited in his bank account.

He was at the peak of his life. Rich beyond anything he could have imagined as the son of a saloon keeper. And free of the business that had consumed him for more than thirty years.

December 2, 1919

The next day, December 2, Small met with his lawyer, F. W. M. Flock, in his office at the Grand Opera House.

Flock left at five-thirty in the evening. He was the last person known to see Ambrose Small.

That night, Small disappeared from his office. Nobody who later testified claimed to have seen him leave the building.

A man who ran a newsstand later claimed he had argued with Small that evening about late newspaper deliveries. The police did not believe him. They thought he wanted attention.

Nobody called the police

Here is one of the strangest parts of the case.

For weeks, nobody reported Ambrose Small missing.

Partly, that was because of his reputation. He disappeared on drinking and gambling trips often enough that people assumed this was just another one.

His wife later suggested he had fallen into the hands of a "designing woman," a mistress who had lured him away. But the police could find no such woman.

It was not until January 1920 that Flock and Small's wife finally notified the police.

By then, the trail was a month old.

The secretary

When police began investigating, they discovered that someone else was missing too.

Small's former secretary, John Doughty, had not been seen since December 2, the same day Small disappeared.

And Doughty's last confirmed sighting in Canada was at a bank, where he had cashed one hundred thousand dollars' worth of bonds belonging to Small.

That looked very bad for Doughty. Police tracked him down in the United States and brought him back to Canada.

He was convicted of stealing the bonds. But there was no evidence linking him to Small's disappearance. He was never charged with harming him.

A sensation

The disappearance of Ambrose Small became one of the biggest news stories in Canada.

His wife offered a reward: fifty thousand dollars if he was found alive, fifteen thousand if he was found dead. Nobody ever claimed it.

There were sightings. In 1921, a private detective claimed a man in Des Moines, Iowa, looked like Small. It went nowhere.

The case drew attention from famous names. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was consulted during a visit to New York. He politely declined to get involved, though one newspaper still ran the headline, "Sherlock Holmes takes Small case under wing." The writer Charles Fort, who collected strange events, noted that an American writer named Ambrose Bierce had also vanished a few years earlier, and asked, "Was somebody collecting Ambroses?"

In 1923, Ambrose Small was officially declared dead.

The wife

The case was never really closed in the public mind.

In 1936, the Attorney General of Ontario ordered the Ontario Provincial Police to take another look. The investigation was led by Inspector Edward Hammond.

Hammond came to a dramatic conclusion. He believed Small had been murdered, and that his wife was the "prime mover" in the plot. He also suggested that the original lead investigator had ignored evidence pointing to her.

But no one was ever charged. His wife had died in 1935, and the government publicly defended her. She had left most of her estate to the Roman Catholic Church.

That same year, a letter surfaced from someone calling himself "Reuter," claiming to be the killer. It said Small's body had been buried in a ravine and partly burned in the furnace of the Grand Opera House. The letter was published around the world. It was never verified.

The theories

So what happened to Ambrose Small?

The first theory is murder, possibly over money. Small had just sold everything and was enormously rich. His wife would inherit. Inspector Hammond believed she was behind it. But nothing was ever proven.

The second is murder by someone else. A gambling creditor. A rival. A jealous husband. Small had made plenty of enemies.

The third is that he chose to disappear. He had just sold his business. He had a lifelong habit of vanishing for days at a time. With his money, he could have gone anywhere and started over. But if he did, he never touched his fortune in any way that anyone could trace.

And the fourth is the one people like to whisper about. The secret room. The theater furnace. A body hidden somewhere in the building he loved.

What we still don't know

The case was officially closed in 1960. Ambrose Small's body has never been found.

The Grand Opera House in Toronto was later torn down. But one of his theaters still stands: the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. It is still a working theater. And for decades, stories have circulated there that Ambrose Small never really left. In 2019, a century after he vanished, the theater commissioned a play about him, called Grand Ghosts.

The facts are simple. A man sold everything he had built. He met his lawyer. His lawyer left at five-thirty. And he was never seen again.

Did someone kill Ambrose Small for his money? Did he walk away from his life? Or is he still somewhere inside one of his theaters?