Memory Lane

A walk through Halifax past Steve-O-Reno's

May 30, 2026

I ate my Egg-O-Reno so quickly that I had to ask the woman next to me if I could take a picture of her sandwich which had been packed up for take-a-way. She too was enjoying her last moment at this location and said, why yes! of course. I’ll unwrap it for your picture.

The air was warm and hazy on Sunday night, so James and I decided to walk the 45 minutes home after eating out with friends. We headed south on Gottingen, west on Almond, then south on Agricola, taking in a city unfurling after a long winter. Flowers in window boxes, maple leaves, patios, beer gardens, and cyclists were out in full force. We stopped at the corner of West and Agricola to look up at our first apartment on the top floor of a slate blue Victorian home. I remembered how the sun would stream through the south facing kitchen, how the fire station was visible out of the corner of our bedroom window, and how the wooden floors were as glossy as a bowling alley. We loved it.

Along one side of the living room and curving up the other was a brown pleather sectional sofa that I found at a second-hand furniture store. The owner said it came from an airport lounge, likely around the time that pleather was at its peak. I was working for a film company at the time, driving around in a rented cube van full of film equipment while location scouting, prop scavenging and coffee fetching. I paid $50 a section and piled as many as I could into that van. James and I carried each section up the back stairs to our attic apartment and filled the living room with pleather. Friends spent many nights crashing on that sectional, sometimes a few at the same time. It was surprisingly comfortable, my friend Jill told me, except when the heat of the morning summer sun would warm the pleather and she’d have to peel her face from its surface.

Jill and I met for breakfast a few days a week that year on West Street, always at Steve-O-Reno’s across the street from the production office where I worked. Steve Armbruster was an American, a surfer, and a lover of coffee. He brought espresso-based drinks and coffee culture to Halifax at a time when drip coffee at home or Tim Hortons on the road was the norm.

Back then the Steve-O-Reno’s aesthetic was glass bricks, floral murals painted on mustard walls, black and burgundy linoleum flooring, smoothies made with lots of pineapple and egg sandwiches called Egg-O-Reno’s with alfalfa sprouts and thinly sliced red onions. We’d sit in the corner on a church pew next to the other regulars - the elderly man with the bow tie, the couple who worked downtown, the architecture students with their thick black glasses, the man in a fedora who sold roses - a community of people choosing to start their day in the burr of coffee grinders and the din of conversation. Our order was always the same: toasted bagel with cream cheese, strawberry jam on the side and coffee with cream and sugar. Basically a strawberry cheesecake for breakfast, as Jill would say. The windows would fog on rainy days, and when it was sunny and warm, we’d balance on metal chairs along the sidewalk. On weekends we’d gather with more friends to sort out jobs, new cities, relationships and heartaches. A year later James and I would move to London, but Steve’s remained our touchstone when home, the fixed meeting spot, our regular.

Steve died in January of 2017, and the café was purchased by the father / daughter team Maria and Tom Rose. This weekend Steve’s is moving around the corner to where Zwicker’s Gallery used to be. I worked at Zwicker’s for a few years while at university. I know this building, with its white bricks and burgundy awning, its three floors, the warrens of rooms lined with art, the framing workshop in the back, and the grey gallery cat who slept on the mahogany chair in the office. The building is yellow now, and soon it will be a café.

We walked past Steve’s on our way home that night. By then the sun was setting and a chill had wrapped around us. We moved closer together and headed the few blocks further to our home on Morris Street. This is what happens when you end up living in the city where you grew up - a walk is never just a walk, it’s memory lane.

I went to Steve’s for lunch yesterday with Jill and our friend Lynne. We sat on a church pew under the wallpaper that Maria put up shortly after she took over the place. We watched as people ordered a Egg-O-Reno, one last time before it moves around the corner to its new location. The place is more feminine now, more refined, but the same seed oatcakes are sitting behind the glass, the smoothie selection is written in chalk on the board above the cash, and glass bricks add a touch of light. We no longer order bagels with cream cheese and jam; it’s all about the Egg-O-Reno now, this time with baby spinach instead of alfalfa and an English muffin slicked with Dijon. We’re growing up.