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HYDROSTONE
CAFE STAFF
SAY WHERE’S
THE DOUGH?
BY PENNY LESS
FORMER WORKERS AT A SHUTTERED NORTH
END CAFE SAY THEY’VE BEEN STIFFED FOR
THEIR LAST PAYCHEQUES.
Patrick Doherty, who owned The
Hydrostone Cafe at 5530 Kaye Street, left
seven employees in a lurch for almost $3,000
worth of wages, they say.
Doherty was supposed to pay his staff the
week of Oct. 15, but when manager Rosemary
McKernan walked by the cafe the night
of the 16th, she noticed the windows had been
being papered, though the lights were still on
inside.
“I had a heart attack when I saw it,” said
McKernan. She put her key in the lock to go in,
but the lock had been changed, and no one
answered the door.
She says many employees had left important
items inside, including a guitar, a personal laptop,
and hundreds of dollars worth of local art.
Building owner William Alsop says Doherty
showed up the next day with a key for him.
“He just appeared here and gave me a key,
said he’d changed the locks, and said he’s closing
for a little while.”
He says Doherty is still paying rent.
A month later, McKernan says she and her
former co-workers are still in the midst of a
labour dispute.
It may have been a “hard location,” McKernan
admits, but since she’d started in June, business
had gone up 700 per cent, she says, and
they had begun to break even.
“Had (Doherty) waited one more month, he
would have been making money,” said counter
staff Moriah Rose.
“The last day, it was full all day. It was such a
good environment.”
She says one day as she and McKernan
were driving by, they noticed Doherty inside
with four others. With month-old baked goods
still sitting on the shelves, Moriah says she
asked if Doherty was “ever going to pay us.”
She says he said yes, but the people he was
meeting left quickly and awkwardly during the
confrontation.
Doherty has not returned calls from Frank.
McKernan is on EI and applying for SEED funding
to open a cafe of her own, and Moriah is
working at a Boston Pizza in Lower Sackville.
neal@atlanticfrank.ca
18 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK DECEMBER 7, 2010
It was this curious chalkboard Leviticus quote that tipped Frank off to the plight
of Hydrostone Cafe workers Rosemary McKernan (left) and Moriah Rose.
NOTHING COOKING YET AT THE AGNS
NOBODY WANTED TO TAKE OVER THE
CHEAPSIDE CAFE SPACE IN THE ART GALLERY
OF NOVA SCOTIA.
But after the tenders closed Oct. 18,
Armview Restaurant and Lounge owner
George Kapetanakis bought Unni
Simensen’s equipment and put in an offer.
“We are actually looking into it, but nothing’s
official yet,” he said from the Armview early
one morning, adding: “We didn’t actually need
all the equipment.”
He said they’re already using some of it in the
rotary-gazing eatery, and took the rest “out of
the AGNS already, until the deal is for sure.”
Scanway Catering’s Simensen says it was
time for her to get out.
“There’s never any parties at the gallery any
more, and that’s why we opened, not for the
cafe,” said Simensen, who says the cafe only
did lunch.
“It was so little kitchen space, you could never
really do anything.”
“The space is potentially going to be larger,”
said Kapetanakis, “so there’s definitely some
investment that would have to go into this place.”
Kapetanakis wouldn’t get into numbers.