We live in the Garneau

Laurent was Métis. He had fought with Louis Riel in the Red River Rebellion and the authorities didn’t appreciate the buffalo hunter’s ideas. They put him in prison.

Upon his release, Laurent Garneau launched his career as an Edmonton entrepreneur. He sold wood, coal, land, fur, and food. He played the violin and organized parties for a community that was changing every few months — a mixture of First Nations and Métis, traders, and settlers. He and his wife, Eleanor, were the social and cultural leaders on the south side of the river.

They were, in short, model Edmontonians.

Garneau is Edmonton in miniature: third and fourth generation Canadians live with new arrivals from around the world in single-family homes, in condos, and in towers. The university increases the neighbourhood population during the day. It’s a truly urban community, with grocery stores, restaurants, cafés, a cinema, and retail outlets on both sides of 109th Street.

The better the neighbourhood, the more difficult the parking. In Garneau, parking is difficult. Increasingly, it is a destination for cyclists, for pedestrians, and for runners. The LRT connections make it simple.

Garneau was missing a place to buy bread.

Abel Shiferaw is, like Eleanor & Laurent Garneau, an entrepreneur who arrived in Edmonton to build something extraordinary. He began his career in Garneau as Restaurateur But he wanted to launch something of his own. He bought Sugarbowl, one of the oldest and best-loved places to eat and drink in Edmonton, in 1996. Two years later, he co-founded Savoy on Whyte Avenue — at that time the most stylish, most adventurous place to eat and drink in Edmonton.

Sugarbowl is not just a café. It’s an institution. Abel brought a modern energy to the café while protecting the historical integrity of the brick-lined space. While it’s quintessentially Edmonton, Sugarbowl has the warm atmosphere of a European bistro. Its clientele today is a healthy mixture of young and old, students and professors, electricians and lawyers, neighbourhood families, and tourists.

The three-storey building to the west of Sugarbowl, and the final piece in the Garneau hub, has been empty for more than a decade. Abel, who purchased it in 2008, always had a dream of bringing another staple of the European neighbourhood to Edmonton: a bakery.

If you start with good bread, inspired by French pain au levain, and you follow a community tradition inspired by the founders of Garneau, where does that take you?

Eleanor & Laurent

On his holidays, Abel fell in love again and again with the Parisian café and bistro, the boulangerie-patisserie, the rotisserie-charcuterie. His favourite places were both neighbourhood meeting places and destinations for everyone in the city: go in to buy bread or pastries or chocolates or charcuterie, a roast chicken, drink a coffee or a glass of wine, say hello to friends and neighbours. He loved the look and feel of the classic French storefronts, right down to the blue wooden doors, yellow accent, and the awning.

While the building itself went up in the 1990s, Abel wanted to reach back into history. He wanted to add old-fashioned beauty to the space, inside and out. He wanted to honour the special nature of Garneau. We all know the name “Garneau” but few us know the stories, or even the first names, of the founders: Eleanor and Laurent.