I had lunch at the Tomahawk Restaurant with my friend Bill Allman last week.
A North Van resident, Bill first came here with his grandmother in 1969 when he was just a wee little lad, and he still drops by at least once, sometimes twice a week.
Chuck Chamberlain, the second-generation owner – his dad Chick founded the Tomahawk in the 1920s – drops by our table to say hello.
I start with the elephant in the room. Is the Tomahawk for sale?
Well it is and it’s not. And Chuck is clearly tired of people asking. He says he has no plans to shutter his restaurant which turns one hundred next year – and he will be around to celebrate that. He’s less clear about his plans to sell his property, which reporter Nick Laba noted earlier this month is being advertised as an “ideally situated redevelopment site currently operating as a restaurant.” It has a $6.5 million price tag.
Chuck took over the business from his father in the 1970s but says his kids won’t be doing the same. His son is a pilot with Air Canada and his daughter is a manager with Harrods of London.
Part restaurant and part museum and art gallery, the building is filled with wood carvings, masks, large and small totem poles, woven cedar baskets, hatchets, pots and drums. Some of the items date back to the Depression, when Chick traded food for handicrafts, or just sold food to struggling families priced to cover his costs.
That close relationship with First Nations continues.
Bill says the restaurant is often up to two-thirds full of people mostly from Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, the nearby Squamish Nation.
“It’s their community restaurant. It’s also our community restaurant,” he says. “This is such a perfect example of a bridge between the founding culture and the developing culture. To ignore its heritage value because you’re simply too unskilled to see that bridge, that’s a real shame because that’s how you build a community.”
I ask Chuck which piece of art or artifact is his favourite, and he says he can’t choose – he loves them all. Most date back to when his dad Chick owned the restaurant, and he’s added to the collection over the years.
There is a large and beautiful Thunderbird wood carving that sits in the centre of the restaurant. Chuck tells me that it was given to his father at the second Tomahawk location – the one which sat right across the road in what’s now the Norgate Shopping Centre strip mall on Marine Drive.
That restaurant had Vancouver’s first drive-in, and the Thunderbird replaced a tomahawk that hung on the outside of the restaurant and served as a street number, in the days before there was a need for one.
The 14 stools that line the counter are also from the restaurant’s second location.
The first was a small coffee shop operation started up by Chick and his brother in the early 1920s in what’s now Heywood Park.
The two totem poles out front that tower over the restaurant were carved by Chief Mathias Joe for the official opening of the Lions Gate Bridge in May 1939. They originally stood at each side of Capilano Road connected by an arch with a double-headed serpent. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth drove under the arch after the official opening of the bridge.
After the ceremony, Marie Capilano, wife of Chief Mathias Joe, insisted that the totems should go to Chick for his restaurant. They were restored a few years ago by the Chief’s grandson, says Chuck.
Our lunch arrives. I ordered the grilled cheese and fries, while Bill is having the Sunrise Special Breakfast with Yukon-style bacon. Two eggs over easy, hash browns, and toast with jam.
The Tomahawk also celebrates its Indigenous connections with burgers named after chiefs Joe Capilano, Simon Baker, August Jack and others. Then there’s the Thunderbird, the Potlatch and the Pow Wow burgers.
And Chuck confirms the local lore. Yes, rock star and former North Van high school student Bryan Adams washed dishes here in the ’70s.
Eve Lazarus is a North Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»resident and author. Her latest book is Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland [email protected]
An earlier version of this story had an incorrect name in the black and white photo outside the restaurant.
