Back in the spring of 2015, as we were beginning to plan our move back East, back to where Adam grew up, back to the land of open skies and ocean air, Adam had a vision for what our new pub would be. He came to me with a gleam in his eye and said he wanted to buy a few huge slabs of wood from his friend Jim Ozychuck who owns a saw mill just outside Golden, BC. I listened as he excitedly described how it would look and explained that growing up in Amherst he’d never seen huge trees until he moved out west. He said he just knew that a bar top made of a single slab of wood would offer something completely unique and new in Nova Scotia. While I shared his excitement I argued that spending $1,700 on raw pieces of wood then dragging them nearly 5,000km across Canada seemed like a gamble given that we had no idea where we would open our new pub or what the configuration of the space would be. He received my concerns but brushed them aside with a gentle smile. He is someone who spends very little time in the world of ‘what if’ and much of his time trusting his gut and doing what lights him up. About this, he just knew, and there was simply no convincing him that it was a bad idea.
A few months later, as we packed up our house and settled plans to get ourselves and our belongings across Canada, he drove out of town to pick up the slabs. What he returned with was, in my humble opinion, fairly unimpressive and took up a substantial amount of room in the small cargo trailer we bought for the move. Again my concerns were raised and the tiny bubble of fear rose up once more. Again, he looked at me with excitement and said ‘they are perfect! The bartop is going to be amazing!”. I trusted him and watched as he loaded our beds, kitchen table and chairs, dressers, suitcases, boxes, bins and my wedding dress on top of the wood. It didn’t all fit. Somethings were sold, some donated, some left behind, but the slabs were never in danger. He had a vision and was sticking to it.
On Sunday October 19th, we said our teary good byes to the place that we called home for 12 years, the place where our boys were born and where we ran our first business, then we piled into the truck and drove on into the future.
http://www.facebook.com/millstonepublichouse
We invite you to come into the pub and check out the beautiful bar top that came out of these slabs of wood. They really turned out beautifully.
