NORQUAY, Sask. – The Whistle Stop customers dine on roast beef and cream pie in booths lining deep cubbyholes that once housed coal for the Canadian National Railway trains that stopped here.
The east-central Saskatchewan restaurant’s specialty of Thai chicken salad is passed through a kitchen window where agents once sold tickets to waiting train passengers.
Outside, the rectangular shape and multiple peaks of a prairie train station are still evident, despite a green fenced patio in front that overlooks the town’s main street.
Donna Toffan invested $100,000 and transformed the tattered 95-year-old train station into a diner 22 years ago, with her business partners.
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Toffan, her mother Pat Chernoff and her uncle Lloyd Davison tackled a building makeover, patching floors and hauling used stoves and cooking gear in a cattle truck.
“I still get excited even now when we get a new pot,” chuckled Toffan.
She used the existing living quarters as a home for 17 years for her husband and two children before moving to the farm at Hyas.
Chernoff and Davison commute from Pelly, where Davison served as the credit union manager.
Inside, the dining room that once stored freight bound for the trains now contains tables and chairs; the cash register, chocolate bars and cookies sit where the ticket office was, a kitchen occupies the former waiting room and a video rental room has taken over the station master’s living room.
The upstairs is vacant but is being considered for a bed and breakfast or perhaps for massage therapy.
A chorus of laughs erupts from a group of men sitting in one corner of the restaurant enjoying a supper meal. They come here to grab a bite when in town to run errands and pick up supplies.
“We’re running out of options; there’s not too many places to come to,” said Danbury farmer Don Krywy, of Norquay’s shrinking number of dining establishments. “My other option is to stay at home,” he joked.
Bev Tower of Norquay finds the café staff friendly, the food good and prices reasonable, citing the Sunday smorgasbord as good value.
Longtime restaurateur Chernoff operated an ice cream business before joining this enterprise. The ice cream venture gave Toffan summer employment before her nurse’s training and marriage. Toffan hopes the diner might provide similar opportunities for her children one day and allow the family to remain in their home town.
“I want my kids to come back. I want to be close to my kids and my grandkids,” said Toffan, who shelved nursing to launch The Whistle Stop.
The Norquay station had been moved off the CN property and turned around to face the street. The town had hoped it might be used for a library or business.
The train once stopped here twice a week during the years when the town housed a number of cafes, stores and other services. The agriculture-based community had shrunk from its heyday, but the partners still saw its business potential.
“Norquay was a big coffee stop,” said Chernoff, who admitted a full service restaurant was a big risk at a time when people went home for their meals.
“We had to teach people that it was OK to eat out for lunch,” said Toffan.
They started with a waitress and a cook in the business that now includes several of each.
Cook Kathy Kelbough, busy making salads and sauces and cutting vegetables in the kitchen, has been here 14 years.
“The owners keep me here. My bosses are good to work for, not only as a boss, but as a friend,” she said.
The business has hired more than 100 staff over the years, providing full-time and casual employment.
That includes Toffan’s daughter Jessica, 19, who has been helping and hanging out here since the age of five. She will begin a course in hotel management later this year.
Changing times are reflected in the restaurant’s business, which now services increasing numbers of young families and senior citizens eating out.
Business in a small town waxes and wanes with the local economy, said Toffan, noting, “if farmers are doing well, everybody does well.”
The deck, added three years ago to extend seating, offers a place for smokers no longer allowed by law to light up inside and for impromptu concerts with Toffan and friends on summer evenings.
Toffan regularly entertains when home, so she sees the restaurant like a second home.
“I wanted to make this a place for people to meet. It’s like they’re visiting us in our home. We love what we do and it shows.”
Dishes from lasagna and hamburgers to muffins and sour cream raisin pies are created on site. Toffan, a journeyman commercial cook, rarely uses recipes, instead adding “a little of this and that” as required.
“We wouldn’t serve anything we wouldn’t eat ourselves,” said Chernoff.
The secret to longevity in a restaurant, which sports the motto of “good food, good times,” is in continuously mapping area trends and demographics.
“We want to charge what the market will bear,” said Toffan.
The restaurant needs to cater to the large numbers of seniors in the area, and it offers take-out menus, home delivery and smaller portions for smaller appetites. Prices must be competitive, doors must remain open each day from morning to night and supplies should be bought locally.
“When Costco starts eating here, I’ll start shopping there,” she said of the large wholesale grocery store.
They open early for a number of locals and travelling work crews, offer a bottomless cup of coffee for $1.25 and cater to an area within a 160 kilometre radius.
Information pitstop
A number of farmers arrive regularly to swap stories, network, find out the best contracts for canola or hear of upcoming auction sales. During Christmas, hundreds gather here for free coffee and squares.
Toffan arrives by 5:30 a.m. to prepare breakfast and rarely leaves before 6 p.m., fitting restaurant work around bookkeeping, calving and other chores on the farm.
Lunch is the bread and butter of the restaurant, which also caters for local businesses and functions. This day, Toffan delivered chili for 75 to a local elevator.
Many customers wander in to remember past days, seeking out a host of train artifacts scattered throughout and a smattering of photographs of local sports heroes like Norquay native and curler Shannon Kleibrink.
“I think a lot of people come in because of the nostalgia,” she said.
