Mabel Marjorie "Mabe" Bechtel

Other Events:

• Name: Mabe Bechtel
• Name: Mabe Morrison
• Name: Mabel Marjorie "Mabe" Morrison
• Name: Mabel Marjorie "Mabe" Weist
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-23103
• Residence: 1972, Bridgeport (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

Demise about Diner

Petro-Canada edict spells Doom for tiny restaurant

By Greg Crone Record staff

If there's a neighbourhood Diner in heaven, it must look like Mabe's Place

Bacon sizzling on the grill. Cigarette smoke hangs lazily in the air. The pattern on the yellowed linoleum floor is worn clear through in front of the grill. The chipped arborite counter is slippery, buffed over the years by countless elbows.

The food is good and plain; grilled cheese sandwiches, french fries, burgers and the like. Best of all, breakfast is served all day. If you're a little short, no problem. You can put it on your tab. Catch you on pay-day.

But Mabe's Place, next to the Granite Club at 243 Park Street. In Kitchener, is soon to be just a memory. At the end of April, it's coffee maker will stop making brew, it's deep fryer will be drained of oil and its grill will go forever cold.

Petro-Canada is closing 1,000 of gas stations across the country, including the one at Park and Agnes streets that also been home to Mabe's for as long, it seems, as anyone can remember.

"I was shocked really", said Paul Fleming, who along with partner Marlene Schmidt, has owned Mabe' for the last five years. "One day you got a job at the end of April, you don't. Big business is just eating up the little guy"

The restaurant called Mabel's lunch for years. When the owner Maple Morrison, retired and sold the business, the restaurant was briefly known as The Cottage, Fleming and Schmidt bought the business with a $15,000 loan and renamed Mabe's :unch that loan has just been paid off "Now it's too bad goodbye."

The dream of owning their own business ended with a two line letter from Petro-Canada, informing them their lease is terminated and requesting that they vacate the premises by April 30 leaving it in proper repair and clean condition."

Fleming said he was told to take anything he wants because Petro-Canada plans to level the site. They don't want any competitors reopening a place., what the government doing they we supposed to be creating jobs not taking them away.

It hurts, said Yusuf Saleh, who has been manager of the gas station for 4 years. "I don't really know what I'm going to do."

Saleh noted that the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire plant across the street is scheduled to close. Seagram's Distillery is gone and a nearby Domtar plant closed two years ago. "This whole street will be like a ghost Street."

Fleming believes he could have stayed open even with the Uniroyal Goodrich plant closing. Mabe's is one of those few places people on welfare can afford to eat, he said cigarettes and lottery tickets will always sell and children come in after school to buy candy.

"I'm going to miss the place" said longtime customer Lloyd Hewitt, who was sitting on the narrow counter, nursing a coffee. "They used to say Petro-Canada stood for Pierre Elliott Trudeau rips off Canada. Now it's that mulrooney. He's trying to close up the country."

"It's a dying breed" said Fleming, 32 of his restaurant "I used to come in here when I was a kid to buy candy. That's when you could buy candy without paying the GST. That's when a double bubble with a penny, not $0.05. Now even the comic aren't in colur."

For now it's business as usual at Mabe's. Fleming said he doesn't know what it do when it closes.

"I don't know, maybe I'll go on welfare like the rest of the customers I am between a rock and a hard place with the economy the way it is."

Nothing will beat owning his own business. "It's the independence." There's something wrong, you know what's wrong when your in charge. Did not taking crap from somebody else."

Fleming has started a petition calling on Petro-Canada to change its mind he is already collected 2000 signatures, but he doesn't have much hope when you're up against people like that, they don't care. Whenever you pick up paper, something's closed. It's a scary

Kitchener-Waterloo Record

Mabel — Lloyd Arthur "Trix" Morrison. Lloyd (son of John Morrison and Lavina M. Keller) was born 3 Jan 1913, Owen Sound, Grey Co., Ontario, Canada; died 1961; was buried , Woodland Cem., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Mabel married John Weist 7 Oct 1933, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. John was born 1906, Guelph City, Wellington Co., Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]