Three years after Timmins lost the Shania Twain Centre to make way for the Hollinger Open Pit Mine Project, a small, little known shrine, located in a small downtown parkette dedicated to the Timmins born singer quietly re-opened this summer as a patio for Vicky D’Amours Bakery and Coffee Warehouse after owner Mark Soucie purchased it from the CIBC bank.
“It is good for us - we have access to a beautiful parkette with seating and it gives us more of a café feeling that people experience in much larger cities,” Soucie said. “I think it makes Timmins kind of unique.”
The parkette and monument were dedicated on August 12, 1996 and predate the Shania Twain Centre, which opened in 2001 and was closed to the public in 2013 before being demolished in December, 2014.
However, for several years the parkette, owned during that time by the CIBC, had been fenced in and locked up because it was being used for undesirable activities such as drinking and drug use – a problem that also was a factor that led to the redesign and rededication of Kobzar Park in the summer of 2015 to the west.
All that has changed now that Soucie has opened a patio for customers of his bakery-café. Now they can have their coffee and cake by the Shania Twain shrine.
“We hit it lucky that the park, which was owned by the bank, was right next door to us,” Soucie added.
The patio will also be opened into October as Soucie has purchased 10 heaters to warm up the patio after fall arrives.
“We are hoping that we can extend it to early October and longer, “Soucie said.
Right now the patio is open for customers of both Vicky D’Amours Bakery and the Coffee Warehouse. Lunch, light meals and pastries are served during the day with a lunch grill set up to serve the noon lunch crowd on the patio as well as in the bakery and coffee house.
Shortly, Soucie will be adding dinner service as well.
“People use it everyday and they love it,” Soucie said. “They have their coffee and it gives them that feeling like you are in another world.”
Waitress Shaylah Costello from Vicky D’Amours loves the fact she now works at a place that has a monument to Shania Twain – yes she is a fan.
Costello said her favourite Shania Twain song is That Don’t Impress Me Much.
On December 2, 2014 the Shania Twain Centre which had been built as a tribute to the Timmins raised singer and a tourist attraction for the city was torn down to make way for the resumption of gold mining at the adjacent Hollinger Mine.
An open pit mine is now operating there and the Shania Twain Centre is nothing more than a memory. Shania Twain Drive a road way leading to the centre is now blocked to traffic and is used in the winter by snowmobilers but closed to cars year around.
The three-foot-high monument contains the words: “Shania Twain – Downtown Timmins recognizes Shania Twain as the #1 ambassador of Timmins in the world of country music – August 12, 1996.”
It also has Shania Twain’s hand prints set in cement in case you want to see if you measure up to the singer’s hand size.
Shaylah Costello, the waitress from Vicky D’Amours placed her hands on Shania Twain’s cement-casted hand prints.
“Wow, my hands are the same size as Shania’s,” Shaylah remarked.
Thanks to the reopening of the Shania Twain Parkette as a patio for Vicky D’Amours Bakery and the Coffee Warehouse fans of Shania Twain, both Timmins residents and visitors to Timmins, now can have their morning coffee or afternoon tea with Shania in the “City with the heart of gold.”
The other place to go in Timmins after you have had your coffee or tea at Vicky D’Amours and the Coffee Warehouse is the Timmins Public Library where a permanent display case featuring Shania Twain’s famous white jacket and black flared pants as well as framed news pages marking the advancements in her career can be viewed by the entrance of the Library Building on Second Avenue.
