How Rodney Clark became Toronto’s King of Oysters

Rodney Clark opened an oyster house without the oysters. That’s just the kind of guy he was.

It was like an “Irish wake without the noise and booze,” he told the Star in 1987 when he opened the doors to Rodney’s Oyster House on Adelaide Street East in the middle of a federal ban on the Prince Edward Island shellfish. His fish company was losing up to $3,000 a day. His restaurant had to sell pâté and salmon to get by.

And get by it did. Clark was Toronto’s “King of Oysters,” the Star declared , and his rowdy, eclectic restaurant hummed along just fine. In 2001, Rodney’s Oyster House moved to King Street just west of Spadina, where it still lives today .

Clark, a skilled storyteller and entertainer who came from Summerside, P.E.I. to Toronto chasing a woman who would later become hi