Elida Peers | Contributed
It started as an military hut at the Second World War army training camp at Otter Point, brought into the village at the war’s end. A family named Osborne brought it to the village centre, opening a little cafe called Sooke Coffee Shop. As a 14-year-old, I watched the haul take place in 1946.
Sooke had very few places to eat at that time.
“It was about the only place in Sooke where you could get something to eat, so we all hung around there,” Ray Vowles recalls.
Of course, there was the renowned Sooke Harbour House, but that was hardly a place where hungry fishermen and loggers would drop in for a meal. The legendary Mom’s Café was not built until 1963.
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Today, the original army hut, propped up on concrete blocks, has seen many additions and renovations in its almost seven decades of existence. Recent news announcements indicate a four-storey mixed-use development is planned on this important corner property at the intersection of Townsend and Sooke Roads. This aerial view shows how the property looked some 30 years ago when it was Sooke Village Restaurant, run by Fred Muis.
When Kay Osborne ran the original Sooke Coffee Shop, so many people dropped in to sample the pies that she had to call her sister Phyllis, the matron at Lytton Pioneer Hospital in the Fraser Canyon, to come and help. One of those pie customers was veteran logger Byron Johnson, and the retired nurse became Mrs Johnson.
Subsequent owners were the Mudryks, and then Ray Price and his wife Marjorie came from Victoria to run the coffee shop, with Marjorie specializing in afternoon teas. Soon, it became the place to hold tea party showers for the many new brides and weddings. Interestingly, the Prices had a small suite at the rear of the restaurant, which was rented out. Their son Trevor recalls that one tenant was RCMP member Bob Appleby, who married Vera Banner. After Marjorie Price retired, she gifted her china teacups to the museum.
Next, the enterprise became a Chinese restaurant, which, in the mid-1980s, was expanded and run by a partnership of Bill and Sandy Pedneault and Bob and Linda Anderson.
The partners sold to Fred and Ginette Mui, whose famous Chinese cuisine brought lineups well into the 1990s. Muis sold to King Village, and the next name we saw was Mai Mai’s, with a Thai menu before returning to Chinese food. Currently, the site operates as India Delight Bistro & Bar.
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Elida Peers is the historian of the Sooke Region Museum. Email historian@sookeregionmuseum.com.