Seamless eviction

After more than 10 years of patronage to her landlord, Carolyn Loder, learned from a note slipped under her door during her lunch break, she has been evicted.

Carolyn, the owner of Joe's Sewing Shop, said she was shocked by the eviction and the lack of courtesy she was shown. The sewing shop the 69-year-old has at the Gallery shopping complex is much more than a business.

"This sewing shop is my life really, it's the reason I get up in the morning," she said with emotion in her voice. "After my husband died, a little over 10 years ago, I opened this up and called it after him."

Her husband, had a small engine repair business in the Wabush Industrial Park and Carolyn had a space in that building where she would do her sewing and sell some fabrics. They had lots of friends and, even though their three sons were living elsewhere, they consider Labrador West their home. Life was good, right up until Joe was diagnosed with cancer.

"They [doctors] had told me he'd live five or six months but he [husband] told me he wouldn't live that long," Carolyn recalled. "A month from the day we found out he had cancer, he was dead."

It was a very difficult time for Carolyn, their three sons were not living in Labrador, but rather than move back to Ontario (her native home), she opted to stay after her husband's death; she had friends and the place had grown on her.

She decided to open up a sewing shop and found space in the Gallery to do that. She signed a lease the first year, but given her age, opted out for the remaining years. She thrived in her sewing shop and it became a recovery tool for her grief, a social outlet and it kept her connected to her late husband.

"Joe's friends would often drop by and have a chat to me about him," she smiled as she explained. "They'd tell me how much they missed him, tell me stories. It was like my sewing shop was keeping his memory alive, in way this little shop kind of took his place."

Sewing is more of a hobby than it is a business for Carolyn. She spends six days a week there, doing alterations for her customers and chatting her friends who drop by.

"I had no plans to give it up," she said. "This keeps me young and I enjoy it."

Her customers, she said, are very upset over her eviction, mostly because she offers a service that is personal.

"Like if someone has to go out of town in a hurry for a death or something," she explained. "Many times people will come and say they need a dress pants hemmed before their flight, I put everything else to one side and do my best to get it done. I am good to my customers because they are good to me."

Aside from a random warning from someone last year about another tenant in the complex wanting to squeeze the sewing shop out in order to expand, Carolyn didn't see or hear anything else that made her suspicious of what came March 27.

"The {property manager} came into the restaurant where I was eating lunch with my friend and told me she had slipped a letter under the door of my shop," said Carolyn. "I didn't know what it was but when I got back and read it, I couldn't believe it. I was hurt and I guess angry that I couldn't have been told or warned. I was told I had to get out by April 30."

The cold and officious notice was not what the senior businesswoman expected; a conversation beforehand, she said, would have been much kinder way to deliver the news.

"I was really hurt and shocked because I had no warning," she said of the news. "I think too how it was done, she could have come back at 1:15-because my sign said I would be back then-and passed it to me and said 'I'm sorry.' I mean this [business] is my reason for living here, it's my reason to get up and get out everyday and now it's gone."

She was offered an alternate space in the building but, according to Carolyn, it was nowhere close to what she required.

"It was a little space between the tax business and the stairs," she commented. "It was much too small and it didn't even have a window; a dungeon is what I called it."

She did look around town for another location, but with the boom in the local economy, very little space was available and what was available required too much work to clean up and redecorate.

"At my age, I can't get into that," she said. "I will just clear it out and take some time to think about things."

Carolyn said she will take the summer to relax and decide on what her future plans will be. As much as she loves living in Labrador, there is little now to anchor her.

"I have three boys, one living in Australia, one in Halifax and the other is in Ottawa," she said. "I may moved to NS or Ontario, but right now I don't know. I didn't have a big lot of time to think about everything yet and I have been very upset."

In the meantime, she is putting a 25 per cent discount on her fabrics; what doesn't sell will be packed up. She hasn't ruled out opening up shop in another province.

She said she'd miss the little haven she found in her shop. She will miss the connection with her late husband and she will miss the time with clients/friends while she was sewing.

"I have some [clients] I've been sewing for now about 30 years... yes my dear," she said with emotion. "But a lot of my friends are dying off now too, some have moved away. I guess right now, I feel like I am in limbo. I am not sure what I will do."