PDF - Vespers By The Sea

July 21, 2006 - The Glace Bay Gleaner - Page 5
Vespers By The Sea
By John McNeil
A resort-style inn? In
Glace Bay?
Vespers By The Sea
Bed and Breakfast Inn
opened five years ago in an
elegant old building that
had housed the Sisters of
Charity convent on Eleventh Street. Each of the
Inn’s eight rooms and one
suite is named after a local mining colliery and the
window of each room faces in the direction of that
colliery. Some highlights
include the Passchendale
Suite with a king-sized
canopy bed, fireplace,
and seating area; and the
Donkin room, which has
a panoramic view of the
ocean and an elegant sixfoot antique bathtub.
Manager Joyce Rowe
says the most interesting
part of her job is getting
to meet so many different people. “We’ve had
people stay here from all
over the world – Australia,
New Zealand, Germany,
Lebanon, and Pakistan.
Most of our international
guests come to visit the
Miners’ Museum,” Joyce
says. “That seems to be
the biggest attraction, followed by the Savoy Theatre when there’s an event
happening.”
“We’ve had people stay here from
all over the world – Australia, New
Zealand, Germany, Lebanon, and
Pakistan. Most of our international
guests come to visit the Miners’
Museum,”
Manager, Joyce Rowe
A recent trend bringing increasing numbers of
people to Vespers is the
study of family history.
Often, people will stay at
Vespers and go out for the
day researching genealogy. “People come to look
into their family history;
often they have ancestors buried here. Or some
people will stay here and
go out for the day visiting
different places. They stay
here, leave in the morning
to do a day trip around the
Cabot Trail, and then return in the evening.”
Meeting so many
interesting people has
given Joyce a few stories
that easily could have been
episodes of Fawlty Towers. One of her amusing
anecdotes is about the very
first guests Vespers welcomed when they opened
five years ago. “They
were very nice people who
had come to Cape Breton
to bring their mother’s
ashes home. They carried
the urn around with them
throughout their stay and
even brought it down to
the dinner table with them
while they dined.” On another occasion, a stalker
showed up demanding to see
a certain Cape Breton celebrity and had to be escorted away by police, all
without disrupting any of
the guests. “Oh, there are
some stories,” Joyce says.
In addition to housing
individual guests, Vespers
also accepts bookings for
weddings, anniversaries,
and receptions. “A lot of
guests have their wedding
right here in the building,”
says Joyce. “We have a
honeymoon suite and usually the bride and bridesmaids will use that to get
ready for the wedding.”
And because the building used to be a convent,
the chapel area, which is
now regularly used as a
reception hall, can easily
be converted back into a
chapel for the actual ceremony.
Joyce points out that
these are challenging times
for the hospitality industry. “There are a number
of factors – the
strength of the
Canadian dollar, the cost
to tourists
gasofor
line, and the cost to us for
heating oil. The hotel tax
would be adding another
cost,” Joyce says of the
recently-proposed provincial marketing levy, “and
increasing cost for the
guests is not going to help
our business.”
While Vespers is a
bed and breakfast inn, the
facility has many of the
features you would expect
to find in a rural resort.
Professional and business
associations often use Vespers for conferences and
retreats. “A group of pharmaceutical professionals
stayed with us recently,
and next week we’ll be
welcoming a group of
motorcycle enthusiasts,”
Joyce says.
Vespers will be extremely busy throughout
the summer and into the
fall, with the Celtic Colours festival running
until the end of October.
Anyone looking for more
information should call
ahead to make an appointment – Joyce Rowe at
842-3511.
Photo by John McNeil
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