InFocus Magazine

The main street in Cumberland has changed somewhat since the inception of the town in the late 1800s, eczema when thousands of miners uprooted themselves, nurse from Britain primarily, to follow King Coal to the land of opportunity, Canada. Back then Cumberland was a boomtown and Courtenay’s population was dwarfed by that of the instant, industrial domain of Robert Dunsmuir—a miner who became a millionaire.

One feature of the Cumberland landscape that time hasn’t changed is the front of Frelone’s Grocery Store on Dunsmuir Avenue. It still retains the carved name in the stone lintel above the door, although the exotic turquoise paint is a recent innovation.

Frelone’s Grocery is now the home of Reel Films, the brainchild of Sara Turner, a 28-year-old entrepreneur who has launched into a new field of endeavor. Turner was looking for a new way to make a living after giving birth to her son, Cohen, now a year and a half. “I’d been working as a cook in tree-planting camps—which isn’t a lifestyle particularly conducive to parenting—for about seven years, and cooking had palled for me. I was actually studying traditional Chinese acupuncture just before Cohen’s birth, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but it’s also very intense. I wanted something that would allow me to parent Cohen in a more relaxed fashion.”

Turner’s brown eyes sparkle with enthusiasm and her elfin face lights up as she continues her tale. “I was sitting with my older sister, Jessie, last Christmas, throwing around business ideas, and that’s when the seed of a cinema first planted itself. I was mulling over my options, having moved from Victoria to Cumberland, and looking after Cohen most of the time. His dad, Mike, also works in a tree planting camp, so is gone for long periods of time.”

The history of Frelone’s Grocery seems to be an integral part of the building. “So many people come in to watch a movie and tell me, “Oh, I used to come here to listen to jazz, or they’ll say, ‘I had my first Chinese acupuncture treatment in here.’ It’s a fascinating part of running Reel Films. In fact, an elderly woman came in the other week and told me she used to buy candy here as a child.”

The original grocery store was built in 1935 by Louis Frelone, whose family ran the modest shop for many years. The next owners, Leo and Barbara LeBlanc, continued it as a grocery store until 1981. After that, Frelone’s Grocery had a variety of incarnations, including a motorcycle shop and a health food store. In the more recent past, it has been a weekend entertainment venue and an accountant’s office.

Interestingly enough, Frelone’s has come full circle in that once more it is a venue for movie watching. At another time it was also home to a film projector. Turner has been told that there used to be a large, hand cranked metal wheel projector that the cellulose film would run round. “Apparently the equipment had to be shut down in the middle of a film to stop it going up in flames caused by the friction of the cellulose film,” Turner says, laughing. “A fan had to be employed to cool everything down! At least I don’t have that worry—the current equipment is all digital!”

Turner confesses to not knowing anything about running a movie house at the time she had the initial idea. “I just thought the Comox Valley would support another movie venue, The Rialto being the lone movie house now, when there used to be three cinemas. It also seemed to me it would be a creative and satisfying thing to do.
“I wanted to show films that would be thought-provoking and stimulate discussion of ideas, rather than just fill people’s heads with mindless images of destruction and mayhem, which is much of the fare on offer from Hollywood these days. I also thought it would be fun!”

What followed was a huge learning curve for Turner, as well as lots of ‘sweat equity’. She took advantage of a program offered by Community Futures, which provides a three week business course for those eligible under the Employment Insurance umbrella. Participants have to present their business proposal, which if accepted, leads to basic living expenses being paid for 10 months. During this time, the business has to become self-supporting. Not an easy task, as statistics show that most businesses take a five year period to show a profit.

Turner is extremely grateful for the business courses. “I learned so much,” she says. “Things I didn’t have a clue about—advertising, accounting, internet use. It was hugely valuable, and now I run my business, and they deposit money into my account every month. I’m so grateful to live in a country that provides us with that kind of support. I like to see the money citizens pay to government being made available for our own uses.”

Turner’s aunt, who lives in New York, was also able to offer the fledgling movie mogul some sage advice. “My aunt had been involved in running film festivals, editing film and presenting tributes to actors no longer in the prime of their youth, so she had a wealth of experience. I wasn’t shy about phoning her to ask, ‘OK, what about this aspect’ or ‘how do I go about doing this?’”

With the idea and plan in plan, Turner set to with a will. She bought a huge piece of canvas and experimented painting it with strips of shades from white to dark grey, then showing film on top of it. She discovered the light grey shade brought out the color and contrast of the DVDs to their best. “I laid the canvas down on the floor and ran around with bare feet and a long roller and put about seven coats of paint down. It was quite the project!” That canvas was then pinned to the front wall of Frelone’s, in front of the bay window, where it takes up the whole wall. DVDs can be formatted to fit onto the canvas, which is actually slightly bigger than a typical film screen.

“The technical side was mind boggling, actually,” Turner says. “I didn’t realize I’d have to learn so much about it all. Fortunately, I was able to hire a friend who taught me the ropes.”

The next task was finding seats for the theatre—35 of them. “I felt a bit daunted to begin with. New theatre seats costs a fortune, and likewise old re-vamped seats. I had a limited amount of savings to spend, and was in a bit of a quandary. Then I thought of the wonderful old Palace Theatre, which was closed for renovations a couple of years ago, and the roof was set on fire accidentally. The water damage was such that the owners decided to demolish the whole place.

“I tracked down the man who had done the work, and asked him about the seats. ‘What happened to them,’ I asked. ‘They’re in my barn, waiting for you to buy them!’ he joked. I went out to see them and they were in a huge higgledy-piggledy pile in this hay barn, with cats sleeping on them. Some of them had been broken during removal and I had to sort through them to find the best. Once I got them bolted into the new, raised floor at Frelone’s then came the back-breaking job of cleaning them all.”

She laughs, remembering how hot it was at the time. “It was the beginning of the heat wave we had this summer. I had to steam clean them numerous times and there was as much water dripping off my face as coming out the machine. It was worth it though—after days and days of cleaning them and emptying out gallons of filthy, sooty water, they finally came up a rich crimson—it was thrilling. They give the air of elegance I wanted to create.”

That old time elegance is an important part of her vision for Reel Films. “People have used movies as a means of escape since their inception,” she says. “During the Depression, in the ’30s, movies were never more popular. Of course, it was a new technology then, plus there wasn’t the option of sitting in the seclusion of one’s own home to watch a movie.

“That feeling of being a part of a larger humanity is what I want to re-create. There’s a sense of having shared an experience with other people when the movie is on a big screen and in public. The difference between laughing at something on a home video, alone, or laughing with other people, is a subtle one, but I think it engenders a sense of sharing and belonging.”

Turner pauses before adding, “That’s part of my objective—to create a sense of community, to bring home the truth that we share this planet with others who are, basically, just like us. We might have different outward appearances, varying opinions and views, but those differences are superficial. I think what connects us as humans is deeper than what appears to separate us.”

Turner believes film can help a person come to terms with their own reality, and often put one’s life in a different perspective, bringing a sense of gratitude and clarity. “For many Canadians, it’s an eye opener to recognize that we have a highly privileged lifestyle here,” she says. “Some of us may not have much money, but we have tremendous everyday things, like clean water and air, which is often taken completely for granted. Film can take us into another person’s life and that gives us cause to reflect on our own.”

Choosing the films to be presented is the fun part of Turner’s job. “I watch a lot of movies,” she says with a smile. “I only present second-run movies, which means that they’ve already been round the circuit, like to The Rialto, and the other movie houses that are tied into a distributor. With a set up like mine, I actually choose which movies I want to present. One of the most popular up to now is Tootsie. That one drew a larger audience than others.”

Turner has a suggestion box for patrons to use. “I don’t want to only show movies I like,” she explains. “It’s an interesting part of running Reel Films—sharing ideas and suggestions with other small specialist movie house owners, and movie fans in general. Most of this dialogue happens over the internet, and there are sites that deal with alternative movies as well. When I’ve been in contact with someone who shares the pleasure I have had with a particular film, then I can pick their brains about others they’ve enjoyed, with the knowledge that I may like them too. Of course, I don’t have to like all the movies I show, either.”

She pauses. “It’s such a curious thing—a person of whom one is really fond and share a multitude of common likes and dislikes can recommend a movie, yet when you watch it, you don’t like it one bit—which again, doesn’t mean I won’t show it. Art is such a subjective, slippery preference.”

Her criteria for choosing films is broad. “It may be that a movie has a fabulous soundtrack, perhaps it has become a cult movie, and I want people to have the opportunity to explore what made it a cult movie. On Thursday nights I only show documentaries, and Sunday afternoons are for family films, so they’re more general.”

Recognizing that often hard-hitting documentaries can leave viewers feeling doomed, Turner consciously mixes lighter subject matter in the menu of film fare. “I recently screened Baraka, which is a highly watchable film that shows many aspects of humanity as well as the natural world, with images cleverly juxtaposed. Without using any dialogue, the film says a lot with its use of images and sound. I know that after some films the audience feels that they’ve been on a shared journey. That’s the feeling I want to engender.”

At the time Turner was applying for funding she took part in the annual World Community Film Festival, whose goals are similar to Turner’s. They want to educate and inspire people to become more politically active, in whatever way they chose. “At the time, I was still slightly unsure if I was doing the right thing,” says Turner. “I like to do things I’m good at, and this was uncharted territory, but being there, seeing those films that would never be available in Courtenay without a group to research alternative films, have the contacts with other communities that have already been presenting Film Festivals, and then obtain those films that are definitely not in the mainstream, really inspired me. Sensing how important it was to other people to share those experiences, have that new information about an event or an occurrence that otherwise we wouldn’t have had knowledge of, convinced me.

“It really solidified my intuitive feeling that when a group of people come together to share something, like watching a film, we’re subconsciously bound together in our experience,” adds Turner. “To begin with, all the people with their talents and skill who came together to create the movie in the first place, and then all the viewers watching it together, sharing that information combined with the visual experience. It feels really special and unifying, kind of sacred. It connects us to our human-ness. The more of that feeling that I can promote in my own way, the better I feel about what I’m doing, and the outcome of my efforts.”

Turner sees a huge difference between films and television. “I think most of what’s shown on TV is garbage,” she says bluntly. While she recognizes that many films are churned out to a target audience and follow a predictable format like many TV programs, she does think films are usually made with more intent. “And I don’t show run-of-the-mill dross at Reel Films,” she says. “There has to be something interesting or curious—some aspect that makes a film worth watching to begin with.”

When Reel Films had its very first showing, BC was sweltering in an unusual heat wave. “I opened at the end of July,” Turner says. “Everyone stared at me in amazement when I told them I was opening a cinema then. ‘Really? Who’s going to come? It’s belting hot, people want to be by the river or the ocean,’ my friends said. And it was hot! On the day of opening, the heat was so intense in Frelone’s, with the heavy curtains over the doors and windows and the high temperatures, I rushed off into town to try and get an air conditioner.”

Turner rolls her eyes and pulls a face at the memory, and adds, “Of course, I used it once and now it sits there taking up space!” Despite the heat, the opening of Reel Films was well supported by Turner’s friends, family and movie fans who turned out to watch Cinema Paradiso, an aptly chosen first film, as its subject is a boy whose dad runs a movie house.

A business entrepreneur with principles, Turner was recently put in an awkward position. “A family wanted to hire Frelone’s for a teenage birthday party, and show a teen movie. I cringed at the idea of showing this particular movie as it perpetuates a lot of unpleasant stereotypes, as far as I’m concerned. Particularly as to how young men and women need to be in order to be popular and fit in; the males are judged by their cars and the females by their bodies. I suggested that the girls might like to watch something else—with some trepidation I add, as I could have done with the money—but I just didn’t want to be part of perpetuating values I don’t hold. The girls were very curious as to why I didn’t like the movie, and more than interested to know what other movies were available. We had quite a long chat and they chose another movie which they thoroughly enjoyed, and I felt good about what I was doing.”

Turner is hoping more families and groups will be interested in renting Frelone’s space. “There’s someone who wants to screen Jazz on a Summer’s Day, which is a film from the ‘70s, in black and white, about the Newport Jazz Festival, and invite jazz fans; another idea is a live Stevie Wonder gig that his fans and admirers would enjoy. I really want the community to use this space.”

Despite the headaches of maintaining an old building—“The electrics are most unusual and needed some looking at”—plus the new reality of going from being a highly-paid seasonal worker to running a cinema that sometimes has five people, sometimes a full house, Turner is relishing her new endeavor.

She has developed her own recipe for home-popped popcorn and makes cookies and other treats for movie-goers. So delicious is her popcorn that many locals call in only for that! One Cumberland resident came into Frelone’s and said that he’d already seen the current film and his pregnant wife had asked him to come for Turner’s popcorn, which she was craving.

Delicious home-made goodies and movies chosen with intent sounds like a winning combination for Frelone’s latest makeover.

To find out what’s showing, log on to reelfilmsatfrelones.com or phone 250-336-0190.

Documentaries show on Thursday, general films Friday and Saturday and family movies on Sunday afternoons.

These days it’s quite possible to go out grocery shopping and for very few dollars you can score yourself a fresh-from-Hawaii pineapple that tastes like it just recently left a Maui plantation.

Angeline Street has no problem with our ability to do that, and she confesses that there are times she has a hankering for out-of-season strawberries and will make that purchase, knowing the strawberries didn’t originate here.  At the same time the philosophy and marketing belief she shares with her husband and business partner James is to encourage a local and healthful connection for your grocery marketing wants and needs.  The bonus is, the Streets provide access to localized shopping.

That’s partially what Brambles Market is all about, though it’s also more than that.  The ‘more’ part is for us, the consuming public, to be able to explore the wonders of our foodstuffs, their purchase and how much better the eating and family feeding experiences can be with a shift in long-held attitudes about convenience and access.

“Our mandate is it has to taste good, it has to support the economy, and it has to help the producers make a living,” says Angeline.

Brambles Market has just celebrated a year in business at its site in Downtown Courtenay, on 4th Street across from the Courtenay Museum.  Situated in a highly popular spot that boasts a rather European town square ambience—what with a popular coffee bar and café with its extensive patio, as well as a gelato purveyor—Brambles effectively completes the picture.

“We saw a need,” Angeline says quite simply of their inspiration for bringing Brambles into being.  With her long background in retail, and James’ training as a chef, food purveying seemed like a natural.  That, combined with their beliefs, was the guiding force behind their move into the former Island Inkjet site.

“What we had come to realize was that a lot of small producers couldn’t sell their meat and produce to the big supermarkets,” Angeline says.  “They had no outlet other than the Farmers’ Market, and not everybody goes to the market.  While the larger stores take some local produce, for example, that access has been diminishing.”

The other belief revolves around buying locally whenever possible, followed by items from elsewhere on Vancouver Island, and ultimately from the rest of the province.  She notes they had arrived at this local purchasing conclusion well before the now widely-embraced 100-mile-diet came into vogue.  At the same time, the renewed boost by the 100-mile philosophy was welcomed because it both raised public awareness and gave a nice boost to business.  It was a good bit of synchronicity, Angeline says.

“People have no idea about the array of local items that can be bought,” she says.  “Of course there are exceptions to this, and we’re certainly not fanatical about it.”

She notes that various fruits like bananas and oranges obviously don’t grow here. Likewise, if you are fond of rice and rice dishes, it has to be imported.  But, at the same time, people will automatically buy a certain brand of, say, flour, and be understandably oblivious to the fact that there is flour available—carried by Brambles—that is grown and milled on Vancouver Island.

“Part of our role is to provide access not just to the obvious items like fresh produce, but also to brands packaged on Vancouver Island,” she says.

While the current store is fine for their needs at the moment, Angeline says they would ultimately like to be bigger.

“We started the process five to six years ago,” she says.  “Once the book (The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon www.100milediet.org/book) came out, along with the TV show, we really started thinking seriously about it.  From there we had to find a place and financing for it.”

One of the motivations they wanted to satisfy with Brambles, she says, was to recognize that, as affectionately regarded as the Farmers’ Market is amongst Valley residents, it has its limitations.  There were gaps.  Brambles was designed to fill in those gaps.

“There are many other options beyond meat, bread and vegetables,” Angeline says.  “We can provide those in terms of products that originate locally or on the Island.  You want to buy frozen French fries?  We have those but they don’t come from McCain’s—they come from Victoria.  For a while we were offering, though sadly it’s no longer available, Worcestershire sauce from Saltspring Island.”

As far as competition goes, the opening of Brambles begs the question as to whether Edible Island doesn’t have that market sewn up locally.  Angeline says their direct competition isn’t actually Edible Island, but the Courtenay Thrifty Foods store.  In that context, she says, any chain supermarket gets a huge customer base because of not only the vast array of products available, but also due to shopper habits. It is those habits that Brambles wants to change.  And thus far they are succeeding nicely.

Human beings are creatures of habit, Angeline asserts, and contemporary householders are busy.  When they shop they think of it not as an experience for the most part, but a task to get over and done with.

“We shop by routine and rote,” she says.  “We buy the same things all the time.  It’s not necessarily brand-loyalty, but habit.  Something is familiar and we buy it yet again.  Not necessarily because we like it, but because it’s familiar.  What we want to do with Brambles is let the buying public know there is a wide world of options.  We want people to know they can buy items with healthful ingredients.  In terms of BC produced and packaged items we have stringent standards in the province and we don’t permit genetically modified items.  For products from elsewhere, such standards aren’t as stringent.”

Brambles’ produce all comes from organic growers, and local growers as much as possible in season.  Meanwhile, none of their meat has been adulterated with steroids or antibiotics.

Another area of motivation, adds James, is respect for local farmers and producers.  He is quick to assert that the agricultural community of the Comox Valley—one that is much more extensive than many residents realize—is a significant part of his heritage.

“My grandmother was a Piercy and they were among the pioneering farmers of the Comox Valley,” he says.  “I want the Comox Valley to respect and preserve what we have here, and one way we can do this is to buy their products.

“The Valley holds huge potential agricultural capacity,” James adds.  “The mainstream population of the Valley doesn’t know what we have here.  For example, we’ll go to a supermarket to buy peppers.  The peppers could have originated anywhere.  But, do people know we have a major pepper producer in the Comox Valley?  And those peppers are often cheaper than the ones from elsewhere, and much better.”

As they have to compete with the big chain stores, and that can be a daunting objective, it is essential that Brambles offers alternatives in order to retain and also expand its customer base.  James believes that their meat offerings cannot help but entice those who are seeking unadulterated quality.  Their sausages, for example, contain no binders or fillers.  That puts them well ahead of most commercial sausage brands which can actually contain such fillers as silicone dioxide—or sand, in other words.  Likewise many commercial chickens are injected with water, and the law permits up to 30 per cent water. Brambles’ chickens are 100 per cent actual chicken.

“Quite frankly our meat and poultry products are excellent,” James says.  “All the beef or pork comes from one animal that has been slaughtered locally, and we have a huge advantage of having an abattoir in the Comox Valley with Gunter’s.  What we have is delicious and unadulterated.”

In one respect what Angeline and James are offering at Brambles is nothing new.  This was the way marketing was carried out by everybody a few decades ago before chain stores established themselves and offered the conveniences they do.  At the same time, what Brambles is offering isn’t retro either.  That’s because all that is available must meet the scrupulous standards of the proprietors, as well as meeting stringent provincial codes. That wasn’t always the case in grandma’s day, not to mention the fact that marketing regulations were virtually nonexistent in days of yore.

So, what is this customer base that is seeking ground beef with which you can actually barbecue a hamburger and know the meat was just ground that day, on site, and finds its source in a single side of beef from a steer raised in the Comox Valley rather than perhaps multiple heads of cattle, slaughtered elsewhere with how long ago being anyone’s guess?

“Our beliefs go back long before the current ‘foodie’ trendiness,” Angeline says.  “What we are doing with the store is exactly the model we’ve had in mind for years.  Agreed there is a certain battle to sell a concept like this because most of society doesn’t buy in for reasons stated earlier.  At the same time, we have a definite customer base.”

While you might think that the bulk of Brambles’ trade would originate locally—and they assuredly have an ever-growing Comox Valley customer base—Angeline has also found it interesting how much the store appeals to newcomers, and especially those from larger centres like Vancouver and Calgary.

“They really buy into what we’re doing here,” she says.  “They want a certain standard of quality and service and that’s what we give them.  We actually had a call from some people from out of town wanting to buy a house here but also wanting to know what we had to offer in terms of what they had gotten used to in the city.”

That the Streets convey a combination of gratitude and support for their community goes without saying.  In the same context they are strong advocates for other localized businesses and believe that the public should give them all the support they can for fear of otherwise losing them.

In that sentiment they cite the case of the speculation around a large international chain restaurant considering setting up shop in the Comox Valley.

“The possibility made the front page of local newspapers and that’s really disheartening,” Angeline says.  “There’s a trickle-down effect with such places and people don’t seem to realize what happens to locally owned and operated restaurants when yet another big chain outlet comes to the community.”

Another service offered by Brambles lies in the realm of research of products, since, as Angeline explains, “We don’t always carry the full line of any particular product, but if you want to know anything about a particular product or whether other products are available from the company, we can call up the distributors and get you the information.”

She notes that to qualify as a BC product, the item must be at very least packaged in this province.  As there is no olive crop grown here, when you buy olive oil you are obviously getting something that originated elsewhere.  But, the olive oil can be bottled here—and some labels are—and hence becomes a BC product.

At the end of the day, what it comes down to is education, the Streets say.  It’s a matter of learning to appreciate what we’re eating both nutritionally and taste-wise.  “Eating for good taste and good nutrition has a lot of potential once you get into the swing of it,” Angeline says.  “Get into the habit of buying good food and preparing good and nutritious meals, and they can be done simply and quickly, you’ll never look back.

“And, with children, start them young,” she adds.   “If kids have a role in buying food they love being a part of it.”