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Round table
In 2011, I visited Wellington, dressed in my best and ready for an interview with Rick Conroy—editor of this paper—for a four-week internship.
After that interview, I took myself out for breakfast at the Wellington Grill, where a group of locals sat around a table, discussing everything from the local gossip to the troubles of the world at large.
By the fall, I had begun a full-time job at The Times, and the Grill had closed, making way for Pomodoro.
In 2012, shortly before I left the County to try my hand at freelancing in Europe, I took a photo for The Times. The Devonshire Inn on the water had been closed and sold to a well-known business in Toronto—the Drake.
When I returned to the County in 2014, the Drake hadn’t yet opened and the group of locals, refusing to be broken up by tourism-motivated gentrification, had moved on to the Tall Poppy, a small cafe down the road. Here, they could discuss the world’s problems in peace. The cafe had a peppy, modern vibe enough to be safe from the deluge of the hip and the new that the County seemed braced for.
I worked at the Poppy for several months, slowly returning to The Times and letting go of my hours at the cafe until I was no longer a part of that crew. Still, my favourite part of that job was the morning, preparing for a busy day and listening to the folks at the big old table in the back of the cafe, discussing politics, local history, gossiping and arguing and complaining about their better halves.
They are, I think, the cornerstone of everyplace. They are the people who remember the past and think about the future, who think they’ve solved all the world’s problems before lunch and then have to do it all over again the next day. They are the same people, more or less, you might meet in a local diner in Antigonish or Moose Jaw or Kelowna.
But they were mine, too. They became a part of what Wellington means to me.
This week, the Tall Poppy closes its doors. It was not immune to the deluge, after all. Only time will tell what the business’s new owners plan to do. How much things will change. Whether the folks who gather early in the morning will return, or go someplace else. Perhaps this time they will end up at Tim Hortons, no longer able to resist the changes that have come to their little village.
I’ve been packing up my apartment, too. I’m also leaving Wellington, although not The Times this time. But where I’m heading, there is no 7 a.m. cafe to visit, no familiar faces looking to solve the world’s problems by lunch. I’m sure I can find them, and when I do, I’m sure the conversations will sound the same, but they won’t be. Not really.
Wellington’s changed a lot since we first met. We all knew the change was coming and it was always inevitable. But as the Tall Poppy precedes my leaving Wellington, it makes me wonder if I’ll recognize the place the next time I come back to it.
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