May 5, 2021
Close to home: Stories of neighbourhood businesses in the COVID economy are conversations with six business owners in the St. Clair West community, in midtown Toronto. Part one was published a year ago this week.
Like so many things in the last 14 months, the conversations with Cocoa Latte, The Rushton, Ecoexistence, Playfulminds, Philosophy and Koko & Co were scheduled, cancelled, rescheduled, cancelled and rescheduled. Naïvely or optimistically, C-A wanted everyone to have a happy story to tell – that their businesses were fully open, but the pandemic just doesn’t work this way.
Though the conversations are with six really different businesses, what’s universal are their strong feelings of accountability to a supportive community, and a real yearning to get back to serving them the way they know best.