ANTIGONISH – Dylan, age seven, and Rhyan MacDonald, nine, cleared tables and delivered meals as Bonnie MacInnis sat down at a booth with The Journal early Friday morning, the final day of operations of Myers Tea Room in Antigonish. The girls, on their March break, are the fourth generation of the Myers family to greet and serve customers, mostly regulars, here at the cozy café that has felt like home for generations of Antigonishers.
The Tea Room, which still operated as a cash-only business, was opened by Bonnie’s father, the late Chester Myers, and his wife, Kaye, 42 years ago. Regulars will miss the fish and chips, western and clubhouse sandwiches, Newfie fries, homemade butterscotch and lemon meringue pies, and the fruit tarts that rank among customer favourites. Everything was homemade in the kitchen by Bonnie’s husband, Danny MacInnis.
Despite the sadness of many in seeing a local institution like Myers Tea Room close, Bonnie and Danny have received nothing but best wishes for their well-deserved retirement.
“It’s time,” Bonnie simply says, when asked how she feels about closing the doors for the last time.
In a Facebook post, The Journal asked people to share their favourite memories from the Tea Room. Some talked of going there with friends as teens to hang out together and make plans for the weekend. “It was a safe place to hang out, I guess,” posted Kerry Hanlon.
For others, it was a multi-generational tradition, going with their grandparents and later taking their own children to the Tea Room.
“Your eatery made a comfortable home for so many people,” Nancy Turniawan said on Facebook.
Many customers were daily, or almost daily, visitors. Bonnie says if they hadn’t seen one of those regulars in a couple of days, they would sometimes call to make sure they were okay.
That extended family of Myers Tea Room included other staff over the years, such as Debbie MacNeil, who worked behind the counter for 20 years.
The Myers family has been in business on Main St. since 1972, when Chester and Kaye bought Adams Bakery from Jimmy and Olive Adams. Before that, he had been in the oil delivery business, with Chester Myers Oil.
Adams Bakery, which also featured a lunch counter, lacked parking. So they bought Poirier’s Bottle Exchange behind the building, with an entrance off Hawthorne St. Chester kept the recycling business going while gaining the parking the bakery needed.
He and Kaye later opened a donut shop at the Antigonish Mall, running the three businesses simultaneously. He closed the donut shop when he bought the building at 235 Main St. in 1984 and opened Myers Tea Room.
Danny worked at the Tea Room full-time while Bonnie spent most of her working life at the former Philatelic Centre in Antigonish. She joined him at the Tea Room for the past eight years, since her retirement from the Philatelic.
Over the past four decades, customers often saw various members of the Myers family helping out at the counter as needed. That includes Bonnie and Danny’s five children and, more recently, some of the grandchildren.
“Everybody’s been pretty good,” she says of how the family is accepting the end of an era. She says their children all had the opportunity to take over the business if they wanted, but it wasn’t a good fit for them.
Bonnie and Danny’s growing family now includes seven grandchildren, with an eighth on the way. Great-grandmother Kaye, now 85, was also in that Friday morning, reminiscing about the past with friends.
Dylan is sitting on her grandmother’s lap when asked what she likes most about helping out at the Tea Room. She looks at Bonnie and says shyly, “Being with Grammy.”
Bonnie and Danny have had the building that houses the Tea Room for sale for many months. She says they aren’t at liberty to disclose who bought the property or what their plans are for the main-floor space.
