“I dropped out to start a café on Ward’s Island. Even after a devastating fire, it’s still my dream job”

My parents, Peter and Maura, bought a house on Ward’s Island in 1983. It was an idyllic place to grow up: I spent a lot of time outdoors, roaming around on bikes and boats. The community is close-knit, like a small town in the middle of the city. My parents’ house is a stone’s throw away from the Ward’s Island Association clubhouse, which has been the hub of island life since it was built in 1938. All the neighbours come out for bingo, and so many of my friends got married at the WIA clubhouse. For years, the building housed a small café that was run by various people—including my parents from 1983 to 1993. They shut it down when I was a toddler, when they weren’t able to renew their lease with the WIA, but I always had a soft spot for the clubhouse, knowing that my family had once had a business there.

I moved off the island for university in 2008. The following year, on a break from my summer job in Northern Ontario, I returned for a visit. One night, I crashed at my parents’ place after going out with some friends on the island. The next morning, I was desperate for some coffee, so I tried to stop by the café. It was a Saturday morning in August—the middle of the high season for tourism on the island—but it wasn’t open. I remember that really bothered me, and it was like a light bulb lit up in my brain. I was feeling a bit lost at the time: I was 19 and didn’t have a clear career path with the arts degree I was pursuing. I was excited by the idea of doing something more concrete. As a teen, I had worked as a dishwasher and a prep cook at the Rectory, the other restaurant on Ward’s Island, and at a long-gone Italian restaurant at Spadina and Richmond. I loved the kitchen culture, chatting with older cooks and trying different dishes. Though I didn’t know it at the time, both experiences had planted a seed.

Near the end of the summer, I called the WIA, and they told me the lease on the clubhouse space was up at the end of that year. I wanted to apply, but they said I’d need a business partner, preferably someone over 20 with some financial backing. It took some persuading, but I convinced my parents to co-sign the lease for about $4,000 a month, and it became our family business for the second time. My initial plan was to run it in the summers, then go back to school in the fall. My parents were both teachers—my mom at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and my dad at King Edward Public School—but they were able to dedicate summers to the café. My mom and I worked in the kitchen: she baked, and I cooked the lunch and dinner menu. My dad handled the accounting and was our fix-it guy, tackling plumbing, electrical, you name it. To save up some money, I worked a construction job for six months. In that first year, I kicked in around $10,000, and my parents invested about $20,000. The coffee grinder and espresso machine alone cost $15,000.

We opened in the spring of 2010. Halfway through the season, I realized I wasn’t going back to school. I thought we should be open through September, and there was so much prep to do for the next spring—and honestly, I was having fun. I had so many ideas for improving and expanding the café, and I wanted to give it my full attention.

When we took it over, the space was just a run-down takeout counter. The previous tenant served only coffee, hot dogs and ice cream. Right from day one, we started serving more food. We wanted to make everything from scratch and to source as sustainably and locally as we could. Those first two years, our kitchen really was just a domestic stove and a hodgepodge of fridges and freezers. By 2012, we had squirrelled away enough cash to make a big investment. We built a proper commercial kitchen with an extraction fan and a fire suppression system and installed deep fryers, big commercial stoves and ovens, and a walk-in fridge and freezer. We built a patio for table service, and we got a liquor licence. We started hosting a summer concert series, with musicians playing on the patio. Three years in, we were finally established enough for me to enrol at a different university to finish my degree.

The community on the island was really welcoming. People were excited to have real food available to them. We’ve always prioritized hiring island youth, so tons of young people who grew up on the island worked here as their first summer job. It’s nice for them to get work experience, and it’s great for us because we don’t have to worry about them missing the ferry and being late for work—one of the many challenges of running a business on the island. Not many vendors come to our door, so we’ve had to work out a system. Delivery drivers aim for certain ferry times and call us when they’re on their way. One of our staff will meet them at the ferry terminal on the mainland with a big wagon and pull the shipment onto the boat. There’s certainly a lot of coordination. We also have our own boat, so in a pinch, someone will drive it to the city side to receive a delivery, but it’s not as easy as just running to the store if we’re out of milk.

Despite the logistical headaches and long summer hours, running the Island Cafe has been a dream job. My partner and I now have two kids, four and six years old. During the off season, we live at College and Dufferin, but in the summer, we stay with my parents on the island. It’s nice for my kids to be on the island like I was at their age. They can ride their bikes around and have a lot more independence than they would in our downtown house.

But, two years ago, the dream almost came crashing down. Early in the morning on March 17, 2024, I got a call from my mom. A neighbour had knocked on their door to tell them that the WIA clubhouse was on fire—and the café along with it. I thought it was a joke when she told me; it really didn’t sink in for a while. I went straight to the island, and when I arrived, the building was a pile of ashes. We still don’t know exactly what happened, but the best theory is that an overdriven staple holding wires to the building’s wooden beams had caused the blaze.

The fire was devastating. We had just refreshed the kitchen that winter. I’d done a paint job, put a new floor down and finished some other repairs less than two weeks beforehand. We had everything ready for the summer, our concert series lined up and all of our staffing done. It was hard to see this building that I’d poured so much of my life into improving just gone, along with the WIA, which was so central to the community. We got a wild outpouring of support from friends, family and customers—more emails and messages than I’d ever received. It was really touching, and it validated the work that we’d been doing, but it also hammered home what we had lost.

The day after the fire, Mayor Olivia Chow visited. My mom had worked at city hall with her in the ’90s, and Olivia has a long, enduring connection to the island: she and Jack got married here, and she continues to visit regularly. She asked my mom if we would be interested in setting up something temporary while we awaited the rebuild. We weren’t sure if the offer would actually materialize, but a day later, a staffer in her office called to talk about pursuing a temporary licence for a pop-up café. We said yes and went from there.

By August 1, 2024, we were able to set up a few small stalls to serve takeout on the patio, and we salvaged a bit of the summer season. We were just serving ice cream and coffee. It was kind of fun, like going back to the beginning. Throughout the summer, we built more little kiosks and got a kitchen set up. It was hard work, but progress was surprisingly fast. By the end of the summer, we were selling real food again. In the spring of 2025, we got our liquor licence back, and we eventually got up to the same level of service that we’d had before the fire, even without an actual building. We were also able to retain a lot of our senior staff, whose support and desire to come back to work were big factors in our decision to keep going.

The future of the café is still unclear. I think that, in the coming years, there will be opportunities for more restaurants on the island. We have a temporary lease from the city for the pop-up, which ends after the summer of 2027. The WIA has not been rebuilt yet, so we’re still waiting to see what the reconstruction plans are and whether they will include space for a new café. We would love to find a home in the new building, but at this point, I’m not sure we’ll be able to.

But going with the flow has been part of the Island Cafe ethos since the beginning. And while the future is uncertain, I have so many amazing memories. My parents and I took great pride in making our space inclusive and welcoming. It all feels worth it when you see kids and families enjoying themselves in an environment you’ve created. Our live concert series is also really special: watching people wander in from the sidewalk when they hear the music and stick around for the whole night, happy to have stumbled into this magical experience. Seeing people experience the magic of the island is definitely one of the best parts of the gig.