TORBAY, N.L. — On a Friday evening at Mrs. Liddy’s in Torbay, you could learn a lot about folklore, the bar business, and the ups and downs of the economy if you listen closely enough to the patrons.
Mrs. Liddy’s, as spelled out on a chalkboard, holds fast to the claim of being the oldest bar in Newfoundland and Labrador — since 1853— and once claimed it was the oldest bar establishment in North America.
“And then the internet came along and ruined that,” said owner Glenn Stokes.
One time, he got a call from a bar owner in Massachusetts.
“He said, ‘Y’all claim to be the oldest bar in North America. What year do y’all date back to? We’ve been here since 1778,’” Stokes recounts with a fair stab at the American drawl.
“I said, ‘Well, y’all had Prohibition.’”
Its claim to being the oldest bar in the province doesn’t seem to have mustered much of an argument.
“That’s what’s been told,” Mayor Craig Scott told The Telegram Monday. “But like they say St. John’s is the oldest city in North America, is it really?”
“It’s always been referred to as the oldest bar. It’s been there for a long time,” said former mayor Ralph Tapper, who also participates in the Torbay Bay Arts Council hosted session held on the last Sunday of each month at Mrs. Liddy’s.
Stokes bought the bar eight years ago this spring and did extensive renovations, including heritage yellow Cape Cod siding on the exterior.
The interior of the bar shows the signs of having been renovated many times over its lifespan dating back to 1853.
“Some people come in and say, ‘I didn’t think it would look this modern,’” Stokes said Friday.
Still the building shows its age in the solid beams and the well-worn floor behind the bar.
The sheeting inside the walls was tongue and groove so thick, “I don’t think trees grow that big here anymore,” said Stokes. “You wouldn’t be able to get it at Kent, anyway.”
Stokes has taken on the role of a storyteller, recounting the bar’s history — though there’s no official documentation that’s been passed on to him.
The banter is fast and friendly. Even before a reporter walks through the door, a group of “Mrs. Liddy’s b’ys,” as they later jokingly refer to themselves, calls out, “All the good ones are taken.”
As Stokes shows off his preserved codfish, holding it with plastic-gloved hands, he declares it came with the bar, and is probably the oldest cod in the province, and then quips, “No wonder my Screech-ins aren’t that popular.”
Stokes has a story about how he came to own Mrs. Liddy’s as well. He studied golf management and was working in China as the golf operations manager at the Mission Hills golf course resort, home to 10,000 employees and 500,000 rounds of golf a year.
But back in the late 1990s, while in between jobs, he’d done some bartending shifts at Mrs. Liddy’s while living in the community.
When he decided he wanted a change and wanted to move his family back to Canada, he returned to Torbay and learned Mrs. Liddy’s was for sale.
Stokes said when he told his wife, Chen, that on a phone call — she was still in China clewing things up — he was a bit taken aback that she was open to buying a bar. They leased it for a year first and, since taking it over, have added an escape-room business above the bar — Breakout NL.
Banks, he said, are pretty tough when it comes to financing a bar business, but “here we are.”
With a backdrop of popular music from decades past — Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” and crowd favourite Queen, Stokes explains the mini history of Mrs. Liddy’s as he knows it, with roots dating back to Lord Amherst landing on the beach in Torbay in 1762 — Mrs. Liddy’s has an across-road-view of the water — and the resulting land grants to certain Torbay families, the eventual marriage of Mary Morrey to William Liddy, and the bar’s early days as a horse-and-buggy honeymoon destination for couples from St. John’s, as there were rooms above the bar.
Longtime bar matron Mrs. Liddy died in 1970, but her image still presides over the room — above the pool table and where her sitting room is said to have been.
The bar also claimed it had the first phone in Torbay and vicinity, but it’s said that patrons had to buy a drink or two before they could use it.
The existence of any phone at the time was a big deal. As Stokes would tell it, a man named James Gosse, in the early1900s, showed up one day dressed in his Sunday best and when fellow patrons inquired why he was in his finery, he replied, “I’m expecting a phone call from St. John’s.”
Along with his rendition of Ted Russell’s “The Smokeroom on the Kyle,” Stokes kept the historical humour coming, including the one about the fisherman from Petty Harbour who went to Torbay to get his bait when the caplin were rolling. His family thought he must have driven to Port aux Basques, as apparently he was gone a long time and was found to have spent a few days at Mrs. Liddy’s.
January and February can be a slow time in the bar business, Stokes said, as they are in many other sectors during the post-Christmas season. Trivia and chase the ace nights, as well as the monthly Sunday folk music event involving local musicians, are some of the things Stokes has pursued to keep it steady. It also sells basic pub food like wings.
The escape room business — where teams have an hour to break out of a locked room — was Chen’s idea, and is going well, he said.
Talk with some of the regulars and you’ll get a solid sense of the economic ebb and flow of the Avalon. There’s the guy who came home and started a business he’d done well with in Ontario. During the oil boom it was on bust with the housing development. Now it’s slowing down, but still things are OK.
Or there’s Will Fleming, who trained as a welder and showed up at a local plant to try for a job in the 1970s and turned right around again.
“There were 60 to 70 other welders there,” he recalled. “I wouldn’t get a look in.”
He went to Alberta in 1978, put his resume in four places and three called right away looking for him.
“And you couldn’t buy a job down here,” he said.
Fleming said he moved back to Torbay when his father died, but loved Alberta and all the places he could go from there.
Why did he stay in Torbay then, one might naturally ask?
“This is home,” he replied.
The b’ys, as they called themselves, chimed in from time to time, marvelling at the new mural on the wall by the picture window overlooking the water, raving about the clean bathrooms, the fact that the once infamous brawls in the decades before Stokes took over have slowed down to a scuffle every now and again.
“Show her the upstairs,” they say to Stokes, exclaiming their own pride over the renovations.
Talk turns to whether or not Mrs. Liddy’s ghost walks the premises. Stokes said some staff have been afraid, but he’s spent many nights there alone without a glimpse. Then again, things go inexplicably missing from time to time and show up again.
One isn’t sure if Stokes isn’t spinning a tale on that one.
He muses over new slogans for the bar, which is a haven for East Coast Trail hikers in the summer — some thirsty, some looking for a place to get in out of the rain.
“Mrs. Liddy’s, a good place to dry out — your rain gear,” he suggests.
Mrs. Liddy’s has outlasted several other bars in the vicinity — The Satellite Lounge in Shoe Cove, the Club Commodore in Torbay and, up the line toward town, Cole’s Lounge and the Piperstock, the patrons point out.
As Stokes inquires when the story will run, there’s a spontaneous rendition of “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone.”
“And I’ll buy five copies for my mother,” chimes in Stokes.
Tending bar at Mrs. Liddy’s
When I called Glenn Stokes about doing a story on Mrs. Liddy’s in Torbay, I said I wanted to try my hand at bartending in what’s claimed to be the oldest bar in Newfoundland and Labrador.
On my arrival Friday, Stokes said he wanted to teach me how to make a Caesar, his speciality.
I’m not even sure if I’ve ever tasted one — I’m an occasional beer and wine drinker only.
But I was game to give it a try.
Can’t be that hard, eh?
“Roll up your sleeves is the first thing,” said the genial Stokes.
And so, he brought out two glasses and some citrus slices, and I proceeded to try to follow his lead of rolling the glass in Caesar spices.
But I couldn’t quite get the twist of the wrist, so the rim of my glass looked pathetically bare.
Next was the ice, a shot of Vodka — his was the heel of the bottle so it got more of a splash — Worcestershire sauce and Clamato juice, a dash of pepper.
Customers Justin Bragg and David Cole graciously agreed to taste test the drinks.
Bragg got my concoction and, with a cheers, they clinked glasses and posed for a photo.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Really good,” Bragg replied.
I think he was just being nice.
