A part of my childhood has just died…

A few blocks from our house in Vancouver was an old chocolate shop called Lee’s Candies. The shop was founded in the 1950s, and became a time-capsule of that era, with unchanged décor, moulds and scales from the 1920s, and an equally-ancient cash register that went “ka-ching!” in that satisfyingly old-fashioned way. The chocolates were made by hand, fresh every day, and were sold strictly by weight, not per piece.

The proprietor of the shop, in contrast, was an anachronism: Valeria, cheery with a plummy British accent, heavy Goth makeup and Morticia Addams hair, looking every inch like someone who would never be caught dead in a candy store. But she had worked in the store for years, learning the trade of the chocolate-maker, and eventually took over from the retiring owner, George Tedlock.

Many a time I would stop there after school and pick up a few squares of my favourite, mint truffle—better than any chocolate bar, but still cheap enough, even for a high school student.

Valeria barely eked out a living: she refused to modernize the store (I guess she really is Goth!), and cheerfully admitted that she probably made less than minimum wage. But she hung on, and became a neighbourhood institution.

Yesterday a four-alarm fire gutted three stores along the 4300 block of 10th Ave., and now Lee’s Candies is just a smouldering pile of rubble. I’m not sure that Valeria has the resources to start up again—new rents alone would be astronomical—and I know that developers are foaming at the mouth to raze those buildings and build condos. When there’s so much money at stake, I guess the fate of a little chocolate shop doesn’t really matter much—except to all the kids and adults who left messages of condolence attached to the chainlink fence around the storefront ruins.

Happier days…