DUTCH TREAT ON LACHINE CANAL
Floating café offers taste of Holland
You don’t have to be Dutch to enjoy Canal Lounge, a new café-bar-ona-boat docked near the Atwater Market. But it helps. Greta Veer and her husband Keith Evans have been regular patrons since the lounge opened in mid-June. Veer, who was born in the Netherlands, uses a Dutch word to explain what keeps bringing her back to the boat. “It’s gezellig. There’s no word like gezellig in English. It’s better than cozy and warm,” she said.
When Veer and Evans, who live in Little Burgundy, spotted the lounge on one of their walks along the Lachine Canal, they were reminded of their last visit to Amsterdam, and a dinner they had on a canal boat.
The café-bar belongs to Gurvan Bartholo and Jeroen Ter Schiphorst. Bartholo, 42, was born in Lyon; Ter Schiphorst, 35, is from Amsterdam. The flight attendants met in Cancun a decade ago, and married last year. “It was a small wedding. No tiara, no diamond,” joked Ter Schiphorst, before turning serious and adding, “All our money is in this boat — every penny, every credit card.”
The pair never planned to open a café-bar-on-a-boat. But in 2014 Ter Schiphorst spotted an online listing for a Bateau-Mouche. The next day, he and Bartholo drove out to Sainte-Catherine, near Kahnawake, to check out the boat. Built in 1971 in Collingwood, Ont., it had done years of service as a touring boat, but was in a state of disrepair.
“It was a wreck, but something told us we should do something with it,” recalled Ter Schiphorst.
The pair, who continue to work as flight attendants, spent nearly all their free time restoring the boat. It took six months to remove the rust from the hull with a drill. “We couldn’t use a sandblaster because there were other boats nearby,” said Ter Schiphorst.
These days, the look on the boat is casual chic. Bartholo built the bistro tables. The décor was inspired by the couple’s international travels. The silver sequin pillows come from Bangkok; the turquoise pillows from Amsterdam; and the photo of the Netherlands’s former queen, Juliana, mounted on ceramic and displayed behind the bar, was a gift from a customer.
Except for the popcorn that comes with alcoholic beverages, and Dutch cookies that come with the coffee, no other food is served on board. The lounge carries only one kind of beer — Sleeman — and there is no Internet access. But that was part of the plan. “When we are crew on a flight and we arrive in a country for a layover, we like to go out for a nice coffee in a nice environment where it’s not expensive,” explained Ter Schiphorst.
Ter Schiphorst laughs when he is asked what else makes the lounge Dutch. “I make it Dutch,” he said. There are also miniature Delft blue houses — souvenirs for KLM business-class travellers — that Ter Schiphorst, who works for the airline, has transformed into sugar bowls.
The boat seats 42 inside plus eight outside. On summer evenings it is often filled to capacity. “When we first opened, customers told us to hang flags to let people know we were here,” Bartholo said. “Now they don’t want too many other people knowing about it.”
Bartholo and Ter Schiphorst like to show patrons the photo album that documents the couple’s work on the boat. “People say that when they hear our story, they feel inspired. It makes them think they can realize a dream too,” Bartholo said.
The lounge opens daily at 5 p.m. Because it is part of Parks Canada, it closes at 11 p.m. The lounge will stay open through mid-October. After that, the pair will sail the boat back to Sainte-Catherine and dock it there until May.
Because business has been good, the couple plan to treat themselves to a winter holiday. “We might take a cruise,” Ter Schiphorst said.
The Canal Lounge is located at Quai Atwater. More information, facebook.com/canallounge