Change coming to Evangeline Inn and Motel
Remember the White Spot Motel and Restaurant in New Minas? An iconic family business, it was well frequented until fast food took over the village.
Multigenerational businesses have a special personality. Uniquely Phinney’s in Kentville manages that spirit long after Wendell Phinney’s demise.
This week, I’m back in Grand Pre again due to what I think is good news about the Evangeline Inn and Motel
When I was a kid, we always stopped at the café. The food was reliably good and the pies were legendary due to the family fruit growing operations going back to 1917.
Once my aunt took my sister and I there for lunch. The café was full, as per usual, so we sat at a picnic table outdoors. Before long a serious looking man joined us. His name was Robert Stanfield. He and my aunt both worked at Province House.
When I think about that casual meal now, I’m amazed at the lack of entourage. Back in 1964, the premier drove himself when he needed to visit the Annapolis Valley and he, no doubt, knew the café’s reputation. Marjorie Stirling had imbued her business with quality.
As the story goes, Miss Stirling had been a big city hospital dietician and had come home to start the café with
her brother, help from A.R. Stirling. She was there long past the average retirement age to provide for quality control. Famously, she decorated the walls with shelves of china cups and saucers.
We have another family story that happened at the café. Two parents with two
thinking cars left a child behind the other adult had the oldest. Probably Miss Stirling handed him the phone while offering reassurance. Eventually, her great niece
running Sheila McKay took over the successful operation. There was an expansion for more tables under cover. Recently she turned over the Evangeline Inn and Motel to Avram Spatz of Halifax. I’d heard about the sale at the Devour Food & Film Festival last fall, but it wasn’t until
following some folks concerned the loss of the venerable Reid house in Avonport reached out that I decided to try and contact a Spatz spokesman.
Spatz was good enough to call me back. He said as a
young competitive swimmer his family had always stayed
Annapolis at the motel while in the Valley.
“So I don’t’ plan to mess with the pie,” he joked. His initial plan is to re-open in late spring or early summer.
He added that he wanted to assuage any fears about the integrity of the house that was the boyhood home of former Canadian prime minister Sir Robert Borden, who served from 1911 to 1920. The house is getting a fresh coat of paint, he said, but exterior changes are not planned. In fact, Spatz thinks some restoration might be in order.
That would be great.
There are several Borden
heritage family homes with built values in Kings County, but the house on the hill is the only one with a stone cairn placed there by the federal government.
Back in 1999, the Grand Pré Heritage Conservation District was created by the municipality to help preserve the
character-defining elements of the wider community. It is a special place with more than 40 meaningful residential, commercial, agricultural and ecclesiastical buildings. The UNESCO designation only added more elements that are worth preserving.
Based on our conversation, Spatz gets that status and he appreciates the fact that the history of the Evangeline Inn makes it in essence a local institution.
The Spatz family has a unique history in terms of Canadian immigration. Simon Spatz was a Polish Holocaust survivor who came to Halifax early in 1950. He worked in the grocery business to learn English, then he went into real estate and business.
Eventually Simon’s son,
Jim, who was a physician in Montreal, returned to the city and took over his father’s firm. It was Avram’s father who made a donation to create a theatre in the new Citadel High School. I consider
that impressive.
So it makes sense that
Spatz, who is a lawyer by training, has taken on the challenge of some prime local real estate. He envisions the café being open year-round
“superb and noted that he has a chef” lined up. Saving that announcement he decided mid-conversation, but he added that Adara Morton, who managed the café recently, will be staying on.
“We’re really excited,” he said. “We think we can bring something great to the area.”
Down the road, the fiveroom motel space could be enlarged because “there is a demand for more hospitality rooms.”
A phased approach sounds good. Change is inevitable even when it comes to local institutions, but I’m reassured. Spatz knows the importance of pie.