© 2023, Christian Cassidy
Place: Stork Luncheonette / Roy's Florist (website)
Address: 710 Notre Dame Avenue (Map)
Constructed: 1948 - 49 (addition 1975)
Contractor: F. W. Sawatzky
February 11, 1950, Winnipeg Free Press
Builder F. W. Sawatzky of Steinbach got a construction permit for around $15,000 in September 1948 to build a store with an upper floor residential suite and basement on this site. It had previously been home to a smaller commercial building that through the 1940s was a shoe repair shop. (A single-storey, 24 foot x 24 foot extension was added to the rear of the building in 1975.)
The first person to call the building home was Mrs. Augusta Snowaert who moved into the suite upstairs and opened the cleverly named Stork Luncheonette on the main floor in 1949. (At the time, the city's largest maternity hospital was being built across the street and would open in April 1950).
Snowaert came to Canada from her native Belgium with her husband Omer in 1928. They went on to have two children.
Augusta was widowed at some point. She first appears in Winnipeg street directories in 1943 as the lone proprietor of the Maple Leaf Café at 659 Marion Street with no listing for Omer. It is likely, then, that the family lived elsewhere and moved to Winnipeg after he died.
1957-58 Daniel McIntyre Collegiate yearbook
The restaurant changed hands in 1952 when James D. Mannall purchased it and moved into the upstairs suite with his wife and children.
By 1960, Mannall had at least two employees: Evelyn Tkachuk (cook) and Juanita Trottershaw (waitress). The restaurant was described around this time as seating 60 and the upstairs had been subdivided into two three-room suites.
Mannall put the business and building up for sale in September 1961. The for sale ad noted that he was leaving town and the place was priced for a quick sale. The business continued to run ads looking for waitresses until October 1961 and Mannell and his wife were still living there until at least mid-December.
Roy's sign in 2010 (C. Cassidy)
The next business to call the building home was Roy's Florists starting in 1962*. Street directories through the early 1960s list the proprietors as brothers Enpay "Roy", Ronnie and Freddie Kaita with other members of the Kaita family listed as also working there. The shop was named for Roy, the eldest brother, who lived on a farm on north Main Street in West St. Paul.
(* Roy Kaita's obituary states the store opened in 1960, but street directories and newspaper classified ads show that Stork Luncheonette was still operating from this address in late 1961. There is no listing for this business name in street directories prior to the 1963 edition, the data for which would have been compiled in 1962.)
Enpay "Roy" Kaita was born in 1924 in B.C. and grew up on the family farm with his six sibling.
In response to Japan entering World War II, the government of Canada seized property owned by Japanese Canadians and sent many of them to live in internment camps starting in early 1942. Roy was interred at New Denver, B.C..
The government put out a call asking other provinces to take in some of the interred and the first 25 Japanese families arrived in Winnipeg from B.C. in April 1942 to work as labourers on Manitoba farms that were suffering from manpower shortages due to the war.
At its January 1943 annual meeting, the Manitoba Sugar Beet Producers voted to submit an application to have additional Japanese-Canadians sent to work on its members' farms. One of those who came was Roy Kaita who worked at the Tully sugar beet farm near Portage la Prairie.
Immediately after the war, Kaita bought some farmland in West St. Paul and began a vegetable market. He married Yoriko in 1955 and they had three children.
December 3, 2009, Winnipeg Free Press
Roy Kaita worked at the flower shop until his retirement in 1988. His son Michael and wife Kathy then took over the business.
In March 2009, a fire broke out in the building that gutted the main floor the main floor. The Kaita family rebuilt and were back in business by December.
A mural called Nostalgic Notre Dame by Roberta Hansen and Michelle Gamache was added to the building's western exterior in 2010.
The business and building were eventually sold outside the family in 2015.
Shop interior, September 2023, by C. Cassidy
The current, and third, owner of the business is Debby Chan. She went to school in Winnipeg and was working in the business sector in Hong Kong when she returned to the city in 2017 to spend more time with her parents. After her mother died in 2019, she bought the funeral flowers from Roy's and shortly after bought the business from the current building owner.
The building is currently for sale. Chan says that the business has a lease to stay until late 2024 which will give both the new building owner and her time to decide what to do.
Chan's intention is to keep the legacy of Roy's Florist going and notes that one of the original owners, Ronnie Kaita, now 92, still drops by the shop from time to time!
Related:
Roy's Florist website
First Japanese arrive to work here - Winnipeg Tribune, Apr. 14, 1942
Manitoba after Japanese to help on beet crop - Winnipeg Tribune, Jan. 23, 1943
Florist shop blooms again - Winnipeg Free Press, Dec. 3, 2009
Petal to the Metal - Winnipeg Free Pres, Feb. 14, 2022
Enpay Kaita obituary
Yoriko Kaita obituary
The History of Japanese Canadians in Manitoba - Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba
Japanese Canadian Internment - The Canadian Encyclopedia
Duplex Vacancies in Canada
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