Tony Clement, then a 27-year-old law student at the University of Toronto, says he was never called on to help the Iron Lady after all. He did, however, catch a glimpse of the British Prime Minister while hanging around on one of the upper floors of the hotel one day.
"She was going from one meeting to another. We all waved at her and said 'Ms. Thatcher! Ms. Thatcher!' and she waved back."
Mr. Clement's cabinet colleague, Peter Van Loan, was a fellow volunteer at the summit. He recalls that world leaders would walk the streets of the city between events.
"I remember Helmut Kohl going for a stroll away from his security people in the Beaches, and going in to grab a piece of chocolate cake that was tempting him in the window," he said.
Chancellor Kohl's walk wasn't the only foray into the city for the world leaders. Then-federal cabinet minister Barbara McDougall recalls Margaret Thatcher walking from her hotel to events.
"There were people who ran up to Ms. Thatcher on the sidewalk to say hello. She was friendly and nice - contrary to her reputation as being a bit of a battleaxe."
At the airport, leaders jockeyed for the honour of arriving before the others. "The biggest ego in the bunch was always Mitterand - he always had to make an entrance," Ms. McDougall said.
Barbara Eastman remembers hearing about a tussle between the city and the federal government. "I believe the mayor was told he would not be allowed to greet the world leaders at City Hall. The air went blue with Anglo-Saxon expletives," she says. Federal officials gave in after then-mayor Art Eggleton threatened to lock the doors to City Hall, she said.
Bill Graham, who would later take part in his share of summits as foreign affairs minister, was a University of Toronto professor at the time and helped set up what is now the G8 research group at the U of T. At the '88 summit, leaders would emerge periodically from the meetings to speak to the media and he took the opportunity to approach Margaret Thatcher and her finance minister, Nigel Lawson, after a press conference and talk about economic issues.
"They engaged us for 15 minutes in conversation before they had to move on to something else," he said. "There weren't these great walls between everyone."