Family garden paradise

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This article was published 14/08/2022 (1119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: if you want to be the captain of a National Hockey League team, you need to shop like the captain of a National Hockey League team.

Last September, a woman with an infant in her arms was standing in front of the cash register at Jardins St-Léon Gardens, a fresh-air market at 419 St. Mary’s Rd., when she suddenly realized she had left home without her wallet, and was unable to pay for the items in her shopping cart. The couple directly behind her in line twigged into what was occurring and, despite her insisting otherwise, announced it was all good, they would happily cover the cost of her groceries.

The beneficiary tweeted about the kind deed later that day, to which somebody — who pointed out his daughter works at St-Léon — responded that the Good Samaritans-in-question were none other than Winnipeg Jets forward Blake Wheeler and his wife, Sam.

“I wasn’t here at the time but as soon as I saw all these tweets going back and forth, I was like, ‘How wonderful,’” says Colin Rémillard, 27, who, along with his brother Luc, 29, sister Janelle, 31, and cousin Daniel Rémillard, 40, succeeded his parents Denis and Lise as owners of Jardins St-Léon Gardens six years ago.

“We’ve been told a lot of other professional athletes come here but the thing is, none of us are what you’d exactly call sporty people,” Luc pipes in, seated at a table alongside his family members in a boardroom tucked inside a storage facility directly adjacent to their al fresco retail space.

“Heck, the entire Jets team could be shopping here right now and the four of us wouldn’t have a clue.”

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Jardins St-Léon Gardens turned 30 in 2020, a milestone that wasn’t overly feted owing to restrictions associated with you-know-what. The Rémillards are “pumped” to be fully operational again this summer, but admit the relief they are feeling is tempered by a tremendous loss.

Scores of longtime customers reached out to Janelle, Luc and Colin after their father Denis’s obituary ran in January, to let them know how much they’d enjoyed getting to know their dad through the years, and would miss seeing him at the store, where he continued to pitch in as needed during his so-called retirement.

As much as they were looking forward to reopening in May, Colin says they were apprehensive because of how much the business makes them think of their father. Would they be breaking down every day? They weren’t entirely sure.

“Thankfully, it’s been surprisingly joyful,” interjects Janelle, who, like her brothers and cousin, is sporting the official company “uniform,” a forest-green St-Léon hoodie and shorts. “After he passed, it was such a long, drawn-out winter with all the snow and everything, that by the time spring finally arrived, there just seemed to be this freshness in the air. Yes, we’re reminded of him daily, but they’re nice reminders of his life’s work and legacy.”

The legacy she refers to began in 1979. Denis, whom Colin describes as a “city kid who wanted to be a country kid,” moved to St. Léon at age 26, and promptly erected a greenhouse on a four-acre plot of land as a youth project. Lise, his future wife, was doing her master’s degree in counselling at the University of Manitoba when she heard about the goings-on in St. Léon, situated 150 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg. Hoping to get some hands-on experience, she ventured there to ask about volunteer opportunities and, as her daughter puts it in a sing-song voice, “fell in love.”

By 1985, one greenhouse had turned into five, the farm had expanded to 50 acres, and the now-married couple was making ends meet by selling an assortment of fresh produce out of the back of a pickup truck in neighbouring communities and, come the weekend, a parking lot in St. Boniface. The way Luc understands the story, things were going along swimmingly until a severe drought in the late ’80s caused a small lake his parents relied on for irrigation purposes to dry up, which in turn forced them to sell their property, and auction off every last piece of equipment.

They moved back to Winnipeg a short time later and established Jardins St-Léon Gardens at its present site, by relying on relationships they’d built with various Manitoba farmers to supply them with lettuce, carrots, peas, and so on.

After 25 years at the helm, Denis and Lise approached Colin, Luc, Janelle and Daniel, all of whom started working there in their teens, in the spring of 2015, to see if they would be interested in taking over. Definitely, came their answer, and that season essentially served as a trial run.

“They were still the owners, and I remember a bit of panic setting in when they announced they were taking two weeks off to drive to B.C. — their first summer vacation in what would have been forever — and basically handed us the keys to the car,” Daniel says with a chuckle. During that year the four worked on a shareholder’s agreement, clearly defining what each one’s role would be, before officially taking over in January 2016.

One of the first things the new owners did when they reopened later that year was move away from the market’s former split personality. For years, it had operated strictly as a garden centre for the first month or so, before morphing into a grocery store by June. Now, customers are able pick up a loaf of bread or head of cabbage on Day 1, along with annuals and perennials.

Additionally, they began affording grocery items other than produce more floor space. They took over right around the time “buy local” was becoming a catch phrase, Colin says, and felt it was important to make room for premium, Manitoba-produced items such as Smak Dab mustard, Happy Dance hummus and St. Pierre tourtière, to name a few.

“A bit of both,” answers Luc when asked if they approached makers, offering to peddle their product, or whether entrepreneurs were pitching to them. “Sometimes we’d spot something interesting on Instagram and make a call. Other times, we’d get an email asking how to get this or that into our store. Seriously, if you’d arrived 20 minutes earlier today, this table would have been full of bath balms somebody dropped off for us to sample.”

What has also proven successful is the association they have developed with other established businesses, such as Hildegard’s Bakery on Portage Avenue and Hudson Bagels on Sherbrook Street. They regularly sell out of both spots’ goods, and the respective managers tell them it works both ways; how they appreciate their wares getting exposure in a different part of town, which often leads to new customers tracking them down, to pay a visit in person.

One thing that has remained is the market’s strong, francophone roots. There are currently 70 staff on the payroll, all of whom are fluently bilingual, says Janelle, a mother of one. (That soundtrack you’re tapping your toes to, while you’re waiting to pay for your fiddleheads and wild-foraged blueberries? It’s chock-full of francophone artists from Quebec and Manitoba.)

“It differentiates us, I think, but it’s also enjoyable to work in, what is for us, our first language,” Colin says. “At the same time, it’s a homage to our parents, and the community of St. Léon.”

And while they hear it all the time, how enjoyable it must be to have half the year off — they generally close just after the Thanksgiving Day long weekend — that isn’t really the case, they nod in agreement.

Things obviously slow down, and they are able to take a winter getaway if they so choose, Luc says, but by mid- to late-February, they are back at it, testing new products, discerning what worked and didn’t work the previous season and making preparations for the summer ahead.

Their hard work and dedication has definitely paid off. Colin reports that sales have more than doubled since 2016, though they are hesitant to take all the credit.

“Everything we have we owe to our parents, who started St-Léon from nothing, basically,” he says.

“He’s 100 per cent right,” Janelle says, laughingly adding there’s a photo of her somewhere, sleeping in a bassinet behind the cash register at seven days old.

“Our parents set us up for success and our only job, pretty much, has been not to screw it up.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric restaurants and businesses.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca