The restaurant and bar business is a very difficult one to succeed in. You have to find a specific demographic for your restaurant and cultivate a certain clientele. Now imagine you have been in business long enough to serve four generations! This is the reality of the Chateau Lafayette, the oldest bar in Ottawa, which has been run by the same family since the ‘60s. The building, in fact, predates both the family’s ownership of it and the town of Ottawa, as it can be traced all the way back to 1849. I sat down with Deek Labelle, general manager of the Laff, to discuss the building’s history and how it has stayed in business through all these decades.
History. Photo: Vasileios Tselios.
Apt613: Can you tell us a little bit about how the Laff has changed since you were working here as a young person?
DL: It’s changed a lot. When I first started working here, one of my first jobs was emptying ashtrays. That alone tells you how long ago that was. When my brother and I were really little, we worked in the bar in different facets. When the smoking bylaw did come in 2001, we purchased a Quiznos franchise. The Laff and the Quiznos shared the ground-floor space for 13 years. Then we closed the Quiznos and renovated the Laff in 2016, so it’s changed a lot.
The Laff family. Photo: Vasileios Tselios.
How did the smoking bylaw affect the business?
That was a very significant moment for Ottawa, in the alcohol industry. With our proximity to Quebec and them not changing the bylaw, our business had somewhere else to go. That activity of drinking and smoking all the time was ingrained in people, and it took a long time for that to change. It forced us to evolve into a different focus. People needed something to do with their hands, and this was before cell phones. So you saw the influx of board games and bar games, like darts and pool.
Your website mentions that in 1999 you guys made some big renovations. Can you tell us what those were and how they changed the bar?
Prior to 1999, the Laff had more of a tavern feeling. Taverns are usually two-sided; there was a side for gentlemen and a side for ladies and escorts. That law was only overturned in the late ‘70s; it took a long time for taverns to adapt and change their physical spaces. When we renovated in ‘99, we changed how everything works here. There was no bar so you couldn’t sit at a bar, so in ‘99 we put in a bar and we put in draft taps, [before] everything was bottled and packaged. Those were big changes for the bar.
Inside at the Laff. Photo: Vasileios Tselios.
You were the one to create the website and social media pages for the Laff. Was that a hard pitch to the older family members who were in charge?
Yes and no. Marketing practices changed a lot and I ended up going to Algonquin College and studying marketing. So I learned a lot about it and realized the gap in that area for the business. So when I started working here full-time, I started building them for the brand. It wasn’t a hard sell—they knew it was time for that to happen. They just had no idea how, or how much to spend on it, or how to measure the success of it.
The Laff’s cabinet of artifacts. Photo: Vasileios Tselios.
How have you managed to keep the Laff successful through all these changes?
We just try to be open for everyone. The first mention of the Laff [in local history books] was during the Stony Monday riots, a big brawl that took place out here on York Street. During the riot, people needed somewhere to go to seek refuge from the chaos, and the Laff, at the time called Grant’s Hotel, was named as a place where people sought refuge. It was born as a place of refuge, a place to shield yourself from the chaos of the outside world, and that’s what I want the Laff to be for people.
The Laff has remained, throughout all these years, exactly that—a place of refuge and a historically authentic piece of Ottawa. After our interview, I had the pleasure of seeing old postcards and bottles and tiles that have been found in the building through the years. The biggest artifact, though, both in size and in importance, is the neon sign outside the Laff. Hailed as the oldest neon sign in Ottawa, it is actually too big to hang over the street, according to current law. So it has stayed up there since 1936 and cannot be put back up once it’s taken down. It is so old that behind it in the paint there is a Bodega Hotel sign, the name of the Laff almost 100 years ago.
Ottawa’s oldest neon sign. Photo: Vasileios Tselios.
For a night of refuge from a busy life, the Laff has historically been there for the people of Ottawa. Steeped and proud in its history, the bar is ever-changing to keep up with modern times. So you never know what new thing might be happening at the Laff. An example offered by Deek is their new menu, which uses locally sourced ingredients to serve meals that are way above their previous standards. Who knows how else it might change in the future?
The Chateau Lafayette is located at 42 York St. and is open 365 days a year. For more information, visit their website.
.gif)
