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PENINSULA PENINSULA NEWS NEWS REVIEW REVIEW -- Friday, Friday, December December 6, 6, 2013 2013
Peninsula News in brief Holmes earns award
SIDNEY — Local philanthropist, Michele Holmes, owner and managing broker of Holmes Realty Ltd. based in Sidney is the recipient of the Honorary Humanitarian award presented by the Canadian Wheelchair Foundation. Holmes, through her boutique real estate firm, has donated more than seven hundred wheelchairs to the foundation which supports mobility challenged recipients around the world.
— Submitted
Coins campaign rolls on
SIDNEY — The Peninsula News Review’s Coins for Kids effort continues this month. The PNR is taking in readers’ pennies and other coins and with the help of Saanich Peninsula Secret Santas, who will roll them up and donating them to the Toys for Tots campaign.
— News staff
Paquette family marks 50 years Sidney family celebrating a half-century in business with the promise of more to come Steven Heywood News staff
With humble beginnings as local pub owners, the Paquette family of Sidney has become one of the community’s prominent business owners whose holdings have grown to include nearly a whole block of the downtown core. The Paquettes were honoured this year with a Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce Crystal Award for a lifetime of achievement. This year also marked their 50th anniversary of being in business in Sidney — and the family is looking forward to many more years to come. Denis Paquette heads the family business these days and has been active in the community and in local politics for years. As owner of the Sidney Waterfront Inn and Suites, Denis has been visible of late in his ongoing battle with the Town of Sidney over the direction of traffic on Beacon Avenue. That aside, Denis has fond memories of his father, Roland, and his family coming to Sidney via Saskatchewan and Port Alberni. “My dad was raised in Saskatchewan and after the Second World War, moved to Port Alberni,” Denis recalls. There, Roland worked in the Somass Pub for a short time, before uprooting the family and heading back to Saskatchewan to build up a large Ford dealership. “Dad got Western Canada’s leading sale award three years in a row,” says Denis. “That was in a town of 300 people.” Roland, he explained, had built up the dealership to include farm machinery, fuel distribution and more. After working hard there, Denis says his dad got the itch to move back to Vancouver Island, sold the dealership and came to Sidney in 1958.
Submitted photo
Roland and Denis Paquette, with Roland’s daughter Roselyn McDermid were honoured recently for their lifetime of work on Sidney’s waterfront. He would eventually buy the Sidney Waterfront Inn in around 1963, which in those days had 19 rooms, a pub and a cocktail lounge. “The beer business was really strong then,” Denis says. Denis started in the pub in 1974, working his way through the family business — including time on the taps. “The beer business was so strong, we could sell 6,000 glasses, 10 barrels, in a night at times. It was unbelievable, but it came about on good service, good staff and good ambiance.” Denis adds it was a double-edged sword, of course. With the beer sales came
Submitted photo
Roland Paquette inspects the Crystal Award given for his family’s lifetime achievements on the Saanich Peninsula from the local chamber of commerce.
complaints from hotel guests about all the noise at night from the pub. With the pub making so much money at the time, however, he said it was a tough balancing act. The pub would close by the early 1990s, however, and the family would focus on the hotel. They still held onto the cocktail lounge, Denis says, and embarked on a plan to create suites at the hotel. “We expanded over the years,” Denis says. “We added on a dining room in the mid-’80s and things were going really good.” Please see: Paquette family, page 11
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