The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Easygoing by nature, Greg East becomes uncharacteristically serious when he talks about Johnny's Confectionary. For East, a lifelong resident with a penchant for nostalgia, the loss of the store's legendary coffee bar, first in 2007 and again earlier this year, bordered on tragic. 'The Johnny's clientele, going back over the decades, a lot of them became like family to each other,' he says. 'And when Johnny's closed each time, it was like the breakup of a family.' Now East is part of a club that will give the timeless Johnny's tradition one more shot at survival in an ever-changing society. Say hello to the Johnny's Social Club. The group will consist of dues-paying members aiming to keep Johnny's alive not as a for-profit venture, but as a cooperative. The plan is to reopen the coffee bar area on Sept. 4, with the owners of the building offering free rent for the first month to help the club get off its feet. At the club's barely-advertised inaugural meeting on Monday, 20 coffee drinkers turned out and showed a level of interest that filled East with hope. See 'Positive...'on pg.6 Continued from pg.1 'I have a very positive feeling that it's going to work,' says East, who organized the meeting. 'It may not be a totally smooth road to make it work, but after (the meeting) I have every reason for optimism that this is going to work.' But East, who co-owns the familiar Johnny's building on Green St., will be staying out of many key decisions on how the club operates. Instead, matters such as hours of operation and whether live entertainment will be scheduled on certain days will be handled by the yet-to-be-formed club executive. 'We're going to try it for a month and see how that goes and then go from there,' says Ruth Rose, a former Johnny's patron who attended Monday's meeting. Rose says there has been talk of giving each member a key to the coffee shop, but such details have not been finalized. 'There's a lot of wrinkles to be ironed out,' she says. In order for the reborn Johnny's to succeed, Rose says, members must be willing to put in the requisite effort. 'I don't see why it wouldn't work, but it just depends on the people,' she says. Johnny's place in local history dates back to the 1940s. Property records show that store founder Johnny Boychuk, a stalky, hardworking entrepreneur, took out a permit for the building in 1947. In the ensuing decades, the store's coffee bar became a veritable institution, a sort-of real life 'Cheers' where everybody knew your name. Countless tall tales and gossip originated at the coffee bar, where men and women would sit for hours on swivel stools chatting it up and feeding their java addiction. So legendary was the coffee bar that in 2000 CBC featured it in a segment for its Hockey Day in Canada telecast, billing it before a nationwide audience as the place to go to learn what's happening in town. Johnny's sat empty for three years after its initial closure in 2007, the victim of increased competition and a dwindling customer and population base. In 2010, East and friend Mark Rowe bought the building, dividing it into three sections available for lease. The middle section, around the old coffee bar, became The Coffee Shop on Green Street, a bid to rekindle the magic and financial success of Johnny's. It didn't quite work out that way, as the shop recently closed, once again leaving the Johnny's coffee crowd homeless. So what will make the third time a charm for this Flin Flon fixture? 'It doesn't have to make a profit _ it just has to basically pay its freight for the rent,' says East. East envisions the new Johnny's as a place where 'everybody feels comfortable,' where folks bring checker boards and decks of cards to enjoy an afternoon or evening. He hopes for about 50 members, roughly the capacity of the facility, and expects a waiting list will be necessary as word of the club spreads through word-of-mouth and advertising. Rose, who had been a Johnny's and The Coffee Shop patron since the mid-1980s, knows the coffee bar holds a special place in many hearts. 'It's always been there and it's always been a place where everyone gathered,' she says. 'If you wanted to see anyone, the first place you thought of going was Johnny's because you might see them there.' The Johnny's Social Club may well be the last chance for the legacy of Johnny's to remain a part of Flin Flon rather than the stuff of memories. The importance of this effort is not lost on East. '(Johnny's) is a piece of Flin Flon history that, once it's gone completely, it will be gone completely,' he says. But failure is hardly on East's mind at this point. 'If I was a betting person, I would bet on the Johnny's Social Club being around for many years once it gets going,' he says.
