Like any good research rabbit hole, it all started with a single photograph. This evocative image of a man walking past an alley along East Georgia was taken in 1960 by CBC Vancouver contract photographer, Franz Lindner. I discovered it over 15 years ago, while I was working on a preservation project at the CBC Archives. The window sign for Sarah’s Café intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more. So, that is what I did.

This historic area of the city (Hogan’s Alley/Strathcona/Chinatown) is full of tales of strong women who had their own businesses: Rosa Pryor, Vie Moore, and Leona Risby, to name a few. Well, here is the story of another: Sarah Cassell.

Around 1956, Sarah’s Café opened at 218 E. Georgia in a three-storey wood frame building built fifty years earlier (in 1906). Cassell is listed in the city directory as the proprietor. She operates her cafe at this location, serving “Full Course Meals & De-Luxe Hamburgers”, until around 1962/63. However, this is not where Cassell’s story in Vancouver begins. It starts a few years prior, around the corner at the Stratford Hotel.

The Stratford Grill (619 Gore) was a street-level restaurant in the base of the Stratford Hotel (at the corner of Gore and Keefer). From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Stratford Hotel was a popular temporary home to loggers and other workingmen during the off-season. It should also be noted that for some time during the 20th Century, the Stratford was one of only two hotels in Vancouver that admitted Black guests.

According to the 1951 City Directory, the proprietor of the Stratford Grill was James M. Cassell. At the time of her death in 1989, Sarah Cassell’s death certificate lists him as her husband. Intriguingly, this is the only time that James appears in Vancouver directories. He does not appear to be living in Vancouver past 1951 nor before 1951, for that matter. James Cassell is also not mentioned in Sarah’s obituary in the Vancouver Sun. The following year (1952), ‘Mrs. Sarah Cassell’ is listed as the proprietor of the Stratford Grill, and she stays as such until 1956 when she opens her eponymous Sarah’s Cafe on Georgia Street.

Sarah Cassell was born Sarah Jane White on January 10, 1910, in Tuitts village on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. How and where she spent the first 40 years of her life is unknown. Sarah arrived in Vancouver in 1949, and started in the local restaurant business about a year later. Her obituary states that she ran Sarah’s Café from 1951 to 1984. So it is likely she was running the Stratford Café along with James Cassell, and then took over the entire business after he dropped out of the picture.

Forced out of their home at 703 Dunlevy Street in 1961, when their block was demolished to make way for the MacLean Park housing complex, Sarah and her son, David White (a CPR Porter) moved into the apartment above a restaurant called Valery’s Chicken & Steak House, located at 241 Union Street.

Valery’s Chicken and Steak House, run by a woman named Valery Nichia, was in operation for about 12 years. (A bit of an enigma, Nichia’s life is yet another interesting story!) After Valery’s closed in 1962, Sarah bought the building and moved Sarah’s Café business in, where it remained for the next 22 years.

Sarah ran her café as a one-person operation: she took the orders and prepared the food, all to a soundtrack of county music playing on the radio (CKWX). The only other person seen helping out occasionally in the cafe was her son, David, who at that time was working for the Post Office.

Elwin Xie, who grew up on Union Street in the 1960s and 70s, and whose family-owned and operated Union Laundry (274 Union St.) remembers Sarah as a kind woman who would always ask after his mother. Sarah would get her cafe linens laundered at Union Laundry. Elwin said he was often tasked with picking up or dropping off laundry for Sarah’s Café.

Elwin told me that his first experience with Western food (specifically, French fries) was at Sarah’s Café. He recalled it was a real treat to eat there, as it was a big change from his mother’s Chinese home cooking. After his father’s (Harry Yuen) laundry business was expropriated and torn down to make way for the new Georgia Viaduct, Elwin still had contact with Sarah. He assisted her during her move from Union Street to Bill Hennessey Place housing on Jackson Street in 1984, at the same time Sarah closed her café business at the age of 74 after suffering a heart attack.

Like Elwin, Randy and Albert Clark grew up in the neighbourhood in the 1960s. When Albert was 16 years of age, his family relocated to Vancouver from San Francisco in the summer of 1965. He and his family lived in the house directly across the street from Sarah’s Café. Their grandmother, Vie Moore, ran Vie’s Chicken and Steak House at 209 Union Street. (Their mother, Adelene Clark, ran the restaurant after Vie died in 1975). Albert remembers Sarah fondly, especially for the advice she offered him. He used to walk across the street to visit and talk with Sarah while she was working. “Sarah was a wealth of information [that] I appreciated and needed as a young Black male new to Canada and the Community.”

Vie’s operated in the evening, while Sarah’s Café was strictly a daytime venture. Randy said, “Whenever we wanted french fries during the daytime prior to the restaurant being open in the evening, we went across the street to get them from Sarah’s…For us kids, it was the hamburgers (they were quite big and finger-licking good) and fries. How convenient it was for us to get our fill (satisfied!) right after school and almost any time during the summer. It was a great place and obviously was impacted also by the transition of the new viaduct coming into this area.”

I am sure Randy was right in saying that Sarah must have been greatly affected by the stress of seeing her neighbourhood being (literally) ripped apart, starting with her displacement due to the McLean Park Housing development, through to the construction of the viaduct. It takes a strong person to continue carrying on amid chaos and division. And that is exactly what Sarah did, running her business into the 1980s.

In a 1976 Province newspaper feature on Sarah, she revealed to journalist Nicole Strickland, that “business dropped since that bridge over there came in”, referring to the viaduct across the street. “It’s the parking — there really isn’t any. There used to be houses over where that park is now, and I had lots of customers from the houses. I still get my regulars, though…my boys. We’re just like a family now; I enjoy cooking for my boys.”

Several years ago, I wrote about Sarah and her café on my blog. In addition to Elwin, Randy, and Albert, several others commented on that post sharing their own Sarah’s Café stories. Here are a few:

Maxine Bass, whose father, Sam Bass, owned the first London Drugs store at the corner of Main & Union, shared that she “spent many an hour at Sarah’s Café”, adding that Sarah “was a warm and wonderful person”.

“My father, Maurice, used to co-own the Marble Arch and, when I was child, he would sometimes take me to Sarah’s Café for breakfast or lunch. He knew Sarah well as they were good friends. I remember Sarah’s distinct voice and her jovial laugh. She was a really loving and caring lady,” says Roland St Cyr.

“I was a homeless youth in the early 80’s and frequented Sarah’s Café,” says Ruth Lambert. “She was so welcoming when many other businesses weren’t and I will always have fond memories of her.”

Gregory Lee, who used to work at Chow Bros. Produce on the 200 block of Union Street in the mid-1970s, commented that he ate at Sarah’s Café regularly, saying, “Although I did not know her personally, she was a very nice lady and a great cook.”

Since Sarah’s business operated during the daytime, it didn’t attract the lively nighttime crowd that a place like Vie’s did. Therefore, there are no larger-than-life tales of famous people coming in for one of her burgers and some fries. It just wasn’t that kind of place. Sarah’s Café was the place in the neighbourhood where, as Randy Clark said, you got your “daytime fries” and simple café fare (like spareribs on rice, fried chicken, corned beef, and bacon and eggs) served with a big smile. The lack of “pizazz” in Sarah’s life means her story has been lost in the current narrative of Hogan’s Alley. This is not only a shame but also an oversight. Sarah’s story is just as worthy of commemoration as any other story from the rich history of this neighbourhood.

Sarah Cassell was clearly a kind and friendly woman, who worked hard, was independent, strong and resilient. She was a mother to two children (David and Christine), as well as a grandmother and a great-grandmother. She also had many friends and loyal customers, both young and old, with some of them (her “boys”) even calling her “Mom”. Her long-running café served the residents of this working-class neighbourhood and those that worked in the area during the day, including the police, truckers and nearby warehouse workers. (And perhaps even, for a time, the construction workers building the viaduct across the street?)

Do you ever wish you could travel back in time? If I had the gift of time travel, I would go back and hang out with Sarah at her café. I evcen know exactly what I would order: a deluxe cheeseburger with a side of fries, followed by a slice of pie. Of course, the bonhomie would be free.

Post Script: I first wrote about Sarah Cassell and her restaurant on my blog, Vanalogue, in 2013, and then again in 2017. This version is an updated adaptation of those posts and includes some of the comments and reminisces of Sarah’s Café that readers have graciously made over the years.