Nickel Belt News Volume Volume 58 59 Number • Issue 2711
Friday, 2018 Friday,March July 5,16, 2019
Thompson, Manitoba Thompson, Manitoba
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New owner takes Robin’s Donuts reins from Anand family three years after immigrating to Canada BY IAN GRAHAM
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
The Robin’s Donuts franchise in Thompson has a new owner for the first time since it was established 17 years ago. Kamal Swarnkar took over the franchise from the Anand family June 29 and is excited to own a business after immigrating to Canada from India just under three years ago. “It’s unbelievable,” said Swankar, who worked for Giant Tiger when he first arrived in Thompson before moving up to an office job at the Burntwood Hotel and then to TD Canada Trust. “I’m very excited to handle the business in Canada.” An accountant in India, Swarnkar is very familiar with business ownership, as both his father and brother owned their own businesses in India. He says he is thankful to Robin’s Donuts for offering him the chance to own a franchise, given that he doesn’t have a long track record in Canada. “I’m a newcomer,” says Swarnkar. “They believe in me, my words. People are lined up for Robin’s franchises. They chose me.” Swarnkar takes over from Hetesh Handa and his wife Neetu who operated the two locations on Mystery Lake Road and at the Thompson Airport since the Anand family
left town. Handa began working at Robin’s when former owner-operator Troy Anand, who died in 2012 and in whose memory a Thompson Chamber of Commerce annual scholarship is handed out, was still the boss. “Troy treated this business like a kid,” said Handa, who is moving to Edmonton at the end of July after 14 years in Thompson and hopes to open a cake, ice cream and coffee business there. “We tried to do the same thing as he was doing before. The experience [of running Robin’s] is great. The experience boosted my confidence. Thanks to lots of people but I can’t say all the names here. Thanks to the whole community for supporting us and we feel proud to have served it.” Robin’s Donuts regional manager Greg Chaykowski was in Thompson to provide assistance during the handover and says Swarnkar is taking over a business with a very solid foundation since Troy Anand was aggressive in marketing and community involvement since opening Thompson’s Robin’s Donuts in 2002 and “looked outside the edges of the donut box.” “He went above and beyond,” said Chawykowski. “We are very grateful to Troy and
Book a way to preserve and pass on memories of growing up in Churchill
Nickel Belt News photo by Ian Graham New Thompson Robin’s Donuts owner-operator Kamal Swarnkar, right, and Robin’s Donuts regional manager Greg Chaykowski, left, on June 28, the day before Swarnkar took over the restaurant’s operations from the Anand family, who had owned the franchise since it was established in 2002. Dolly, Vik [Hetesh] and his wife Neetu for their time and experience in building the Thompson business for our chain. We are very proud of our 100 per cent Canadian owned and operated heritage as well as this franchise being owned and operated by people living in Thompson.” The Thompson locations
will be getting some exterior and interior upgrades as well as having some new products coming down the line in the near future, but Chaykowski said the most important thing for the new owner will be to ensure that Robin’s remains “a home away from home” for customers. He also said that the previous owners’
example is a good one to follow. “He understands the legacy of Troy,” said Chaykowski. “Definitely that’s something he’ll want to uphold.” Swarnkar’s wife Pinki will operate the business with him, along with his brother who is arriving in Thompson soon and his daughter while she is on
summer holidays from high school. “Good customer service is the biggest challenge,” says Swarnkar, who hopes his first experience as an entrepreneur in Canada will be a success and believes that Robin’s has a solid blueprint to ensure that it will. “If I go with their diagram, it will be a success.”
Rollover kills erratic driver 50 kilometres south of Thompson, police say
Addictions Foundation of Manitoba northern director Gisele deMeulles has written a book about her experiences growing up, mostly in Churchill. BY IAN GRAHAM
to write things that you have to figure out. It’s pretty clear Though she’s now written when I get through.” a book about her experienDeMeulles said she wrote ces growing up in Churchill, her book, titled Whispers in Addictions Foundation of the Wind: Stories from the A 30-year-old Winnipeg man died in a single Manitoba northern director North - Life in Churchill for vehicle rollover on Highway 6 about 50 kilometres Gisele deMeulles said writ- a couple of reasons. south of Thompson July 2, RCMP say. ing wasn’t something she “I just sort of thought, Thompson RCMP responded to a report of an always thought she would you know what, this hisblack truck speeding and swerving in and out of do. tory, this stuff that’s in my traffic around 1:45 p.m. While en route, officers “In my youth I never head, it’s going to be gone were advised that a single vehicle rollover had felt good at writing,” she if I don’t write it down,” she occurred. said. “But when I moved said. “My kids are not goInvestigation determined the truck was travelto Thompson to get into ing to get it if I don’t do it ling south when it went off the road and rolled the school of social work, and it’s something I’ve alseveral times. The driver was the only occupant at that point I had to write ways wanted my mom to and RCMP said it does not appear he was wearing for university and realized, do. My mom’s an elder and a seatbelt at the time the truck rolled. Thompson ‘Holy, I’m not bad at this, she’s an artist, she’s got so RCMP and a forensic collision reconstructionist right?’ I certainly developed many wonderful stories becontinue to investigate. a lot of skill in university cause she always tells her RCMP and the highways department reported and came out of there with stories at Parks Canada in around 3 p.m. July 2 that the highway was closed a very strong skill in my Churchill and I’ve always between Paint Lake and Pisew Falls as a result of writing and confidence in hounded her, ‘Please, just a car collision. my writing. I write very put it on tape, I will write it clear and that’s it. It’s there. for you because your story Some people say it’s kind of is going to be lost,’ and she’s blunt or direct. I don’t tend never done it and I thought, EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
‘Oh, I’m just as bad, right?’ I have all these stories and I need to capture them for my grandchildren really because they will be lost if I don’t.” She also has a reputation as a storyteller herself. “I had such a varied history and I would tell people stories and they would go, ‘That’s not true, is it?’ I’d go, ‘Yeah it’s true.’ They’d go, ‘You didn’t do all that, did you? You’ve got to be really old.’ I was like, ‘No, actually I did all that before I was 27,’ and they went ‘What?’” Looking back, some of those experiences are things she might not do again. “I did some pretty bizarre stuff like fuel hauls into the high Arctic at -35,” said deMeulles. “It didn’t dawn on me until after. That was a very dangerous thing to do. Being on a plane full of fuel
was not a very safe thing to do but I jumped at it. I thought that was exciting until the plane landed and they started throwing the fuel off and I realized, ‘Holy cats, I was probably sitting on a bomb.’” Another thing that spurred her on was the hard times facing Churchill since the Hudson Bay Railway suspended operations north of Gillam last spring. “It used to be a really thriving large community and it’s just dwindled down to such a small population now,” deMeulles says. Though she’s not there any longer, her parents and her sister and other family members still are. “My cousin owns the hardware store there,” she says. Because of that, deMeulles finds it hard to
Nickel Belt News photo by Ian Graham
swallow when people say that Churchill residents should just find somewhere easier to live. “To say, ‘Those people choose to live there. They should just leave,’ is quite simplistic. It’s quite disrespectful. If we were in the same boat in another area I think we would scream about that so why don’t they have the option to do that? I think right now they’re feeling like they’re pawns in a political game and that’s really sad for them because I think the people of Churchill really want to thrive. They’ve built their worlds there. How would we feel if someone came to you and said, ‘I’m sorry, you have to leave your home community and we’re going to displace you somewhere else and all your loved ones and your history is gone?’”
For all the harsh weather and the dangers of polar bears, deMeulles said if it had been viable she would have moved back to Churchill in a heartbeat. “I miss the shoreline, I miss the rock, I miss the polar bears even though they’re very dangerous and I really miss the Hudson Bay,” she says. “When I go back home, standing on the Hudson Bay looking out on the bay, it just gives you an incredible sense. You feel so small and you feel great.” Now that she’s got one book under her belt, deMeulles says she may try to produce another. “I have another book in me,” she says. “It’s a darker story, more about personal growth and struggles. Maybe in the next five years it’s something I’ll focus on doing.”