What it’s like working at the ByWard Market’s oldest dive bar

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Once a gem in the centre of the nation’s capital, the ByWard Market is losing its place in Ottawans’ hearts. Longstanding businesses have closed. A rash of high-profile violent crimes — including a brazen daytime shooting — and rampant opioid abuse have increased calls from locals for help. The attempts to revitalize the area — from the addition of a $50 million neighbourhood police station to installing an undersized fake-ice rink — vary widely. But what say the people who are still there? We interviewed folks who live, work and play in the ByWard Market. These are their stories, in their own words.

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Deek Labelle is the manager of the Chateau Lafayette House, known to locals as the Laff. The York Street pub may be the original Canadian dive bar, and Deek has worked there for decades. When speaking to her, her passion for the neighbourhood is undeniable.

I joke that I’ve been working here since the day I was born. But really, I started working here probably in my early teens. My first summer working here, I think they just created a job for me. I set myself up with a grocery cart, a coffee maker and a cooler, and I would go out and sell breakfast and coffee to the farmers and vendors in the market. I’d take their lunch orders, go back out and deliver their lunches, and go back again in the afternoon with snacks, ice cream. cold drinks. I’d really only serve people in the market, because a lot of them couldn’t leave their stalls for the day, or only leave for a few minutes of the day. It was awesome, I got to know everybody, they were all like aunts and uncles, “ma tante” and they always treated me so nice.

(The ByWard Market) changes day by day, minute by minute, and hour by hour. As the day goes on, your clientele changes. Every day is an ebb and flow, which is one of the reasons why I love it. It’s never the same, but it’s also never different. It’s like a little tiny city within Ottawa. It has culture, history, it has new, it has old, it has art, graffiti. It checks all the boxes from bougie to basic and back again. That’s what I really love about it, there’s something for everyone down here. As long as you’re willing to open your mind and your eyes and your heart, you can find love in the ByWard Market, for many different reasons.

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I love walking down the street and being able to say hi to everybody. Most times, people have a fun story to tell you. I love discovering something new, and something that has been right under my nose for 20 years, and I get to discover it for the first time. You uncover hidden gems every single day.

A lot of challenges in the ByWard Market are external, and not really within our capabilities of solving. For example, vagrancy, and the housing crisis that Canada and Ontario is facing. The struggles with how we help the marginalized members of our community. And I do not have a solution for that. We all have these empathetic views on what to do, but we don’t know how. I don’t think anybody really knows how. The feds are talking about housing and stuff, but housing only works if there’s diversity. You can’t just have a whole bunch of buildings and call it homeless housing. That doesn’t work. There needs to be a plan for everything along the way. There has to be a broader vision for all of that.

I’m willing to try. I’m willing to help. I’m willing to brainstorm, whatever it takes. I think that’s what I’d like to see from my neighbours in the area, not just residential neighbours but my commercial neighbours as well. Patience, empathy, and just knowing that this is all being dealt with, but there’s no one fix. It’s going to take time.

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The biggest opportunity is the current interest in the area. The underlying love for the ByWard Market is still here. We really need to take advantage of the potential for growth right now, the money available, the changes coming, the investment the city has committed to with the public realm changes. These are the things we need to grab hold of and not let go until they’re perfect.

My ideal dream is 55 ByWard gets redefined within the public realm, and it becomes the market building again. Change is coming down the pipe. I don’t love the thought of displacing the tenants there, because they’ve been there for a very long time. However, there is potential with the parking garage renovation coming. More new commercial space. Always space available on side streets, perhaps we can work on a plan to move everyone slowly, surely and comfortably. Ideally, that’s what I’d like to see, that building becoming a 365 day per year farmer’s market with lighting, security measures, power. That would be my ideal solution. Keep those businesses close by, and get them set up some place newer, because that building needs a lot of work.

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I want to talk about businesses that are closing. It is absolutely heartbreaking and tough. Businesses are closing, but it’s not always for these awful, terrible reasons. So don’t think of the ByWard Market dying every time you hear a business is closing. Ask why. When you’re trying to sell a business, oftentimes there are things that come with it that don’t make it saleable. And it’s unfortunate, but it’s not necessarily because the market is going to hell. So I want everyone to remember that. The market isn’t going to hell, OK? We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen. Especially people like us, who have been here for 175 years. We’re pulling you all up by your bootstraps, and we’re going to keep you up here.

We’re like an old grandfather, saying “smarten up, let’s go.”

As told to Marlo Glass. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

MORE STORIES FROM THIS SERIES

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