Petal to the metal Valentine’s Day frantic for each of the last 62 years at Roy’s Florist By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Feb. 14, 2022 Last Modified: 7:46 AM CST Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022 Updates

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This article was published 13/02/2022 (949 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Each year, at the midway point in February, men walk into Roy’s Florist, catching their breath and wishing they’d arrived sooner to buy their bouquets. They’ve had all year to plan: Valentine’s Day always falls on the same date. Not the 13th, and not the 15th. It’s the 14th, and it’s one of the most hectic days of the year for a business that sells love in the form of floral arrangements.

“Flowers,” a harried man in his fifties said as he approached the counter at about 11:30 a.m on Valentine’s Day. “I need flowers.”

“I am very behind,” said another man in a similar rush.

“I completely forgot it was Valentine’s Day,” said yet another, waiting for his roses to be gathered and wrapped. “Birthdays, anniversaries, anything with a day, I forget.”

Designer Terri Holroyd, who has worked at the shop for over 30 years, expected this. “It’s always a last-minute holiday,” she says. But for the little old shop, it’s an event that takes months of preparation.

Hundreds of phone calls are made to the shop in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day: customers looking for one red rose, or a dozen, or on a few occasions, 99.

Unlike some customers, the shop can’t afford to procrastinate: much of the ordering for February happens in November. And while many longtime customers know better than to wait — they circle the date and their orders are in long before the big day arrives — the stragglers still dial Roy’s or waltz in on the 14th, looking for something pretty and pink.

Frazzled lovers have been doing the same thing each Valentine’s Day since 1960, when the neon sign outside Roy’s first flickered.

“You will not find a better location to open a flower shop.”–Ron Kaita

The location was perfect to brothers Roy and Ronnie Kaita: right across the street from the Winnipeg General Hospital and the Women’s Pavilion, where hundreds of babies were born each month, not to mention in a standalone building that thousands of people drove or walked past each day.

Formerly the Stork restaurant, the Kaitas knew they were on to something good in the two-storey shop on Notre Dame.

“You will not find a better location to open a flower shop,” says Ron, now 91.

And when it came time to find a name, it wasn’t too difficult, Ron says: in Japanese culture, the older brother, in this case Roy, gets that honour, and his name went up on the neon sign facing Notre Dame, a classic design that still greets customers to this day.

The road to opening the flower shop was indirect: Enpay “Roy” Kaita was born in 1924 in Pitt Meadows, B.C., where the Japanese-Canadian community was booming between the Fraser River and the Golden Ears mountains. The Kaitas, along with many other families, farmed berries and vegetables, and owned an orchard about 40 or 50 acres big.

But after building up the local agricultural industry, Japanese-Canadian farmers such as Takaji and Sue Kaita — Roy and Ron’s parents — had it all taken away after Canada declared war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The declaration worsened already widespread discrimination and was fed by — and led to — an unfounded fear that Japanese Canadians would act against Canada’s interests.

This led to the forced removal of Japanese Canadians from the West Coast, including both issei (first-generation) and nissei (second-generation) Canadians on the basis of “military necessity.”

In February 1942, over 21,000 Japanese Canadians were ordered to leave the “protected area” and move at least 160 kilometres inland from the coast, with the federal government imposing restrictions such as the right to search without a warrant, curfews, and the confiscation of cameras, cars, and firearms.

The federal government seized their property: around 12,000 fishing boats were sold off to mostly white fishermen, while the federal government confiscated thousands of acres of agricultural property and equipment, auctioning them off at a low price while keeping the profit, according to the Legislative Assembly of B.C.

Some families, to stay together, agreed to work on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba, where there were labour shortages. It wasn’t until 1988 that the federal government acknowledged and apologized for these discriminatory injustices.

From Pitt Meadows, the Kaitas went east, eventually arriving in Winnipeg at the old immigration hall on Main Street, where they were hired by a local farmer to work on his farm in Oakville, recalls Ron Kaita, who was not yet a teenager.

Soon, the family worked at the Tully sugar beet farm, while Roy chopped pulpwood in Ontario during the winter to increase his earnings. Meanwhile, Ron went to St. John’s High School in Winnipeg, where he was the only Japanese student. All the while, they experienced discrimination.

In 1945, the family purchased a farm in West St. Paul, where they grew fruit and vegetables and — perhaps most importantly to the story of Roy’s Florist — gladiolas. They set up a roadside veggie stand on the highway, and later, at a downtown farmer’s market in Winnipeg. The great flood of 1950 delivered a significant blow to the family farm, Ron recalls.

In 1960, seeking a more solid base of retail operations, they came to Notre Dame and opened Roy’s Florist, which started out selling fruits and vegetables too, but later focused on the petal pushing, with Roy, his wife Yoriko (Judy) and his growing family living above the shop in its early days.

Ronnie was mainly the counter-man, while Roy was renowned for his design skills, with a natural eye for floral arrangement. Budding masters of their craft, they wore green jackets, serving the bustling diasporic communities of the West End, while catering to the clientele at the hospital, including those celebrating the birth of newborn babies and those grieving the loss of loved ones.

It was important work, and some customers dating back to the 1960s continue insisting on Roy’s Florist and Roy’s Florist only.

The shop has enjoyed a remarkable run: more than 60 years of independent operation that has sustained even after a fire destroyed the shop in March 2009. Holroyd said when that happened, the biggest concern was getting their orders out to waiting customers.

When the shop reopened nine months later, Ron’s son Michael Kaita, who ran the store with his wife Cathy, was celebratory. “We got to build a dream flower shop from the ground up,” he told the Free Press. The neon sign stayed up.

But of course, Enpay “Roy” Kaita is no longer there. He retired in 1988 and died in 2016 at the age of 91, after lending his name and handiwork to one of Winnipeg’s most enduring businesses. Ron retired several years ago, though still remains closely connected to the shop.

For a few years, his son and daughter-in-law owned the shop, but they sold the business.

Despite those changes, the shop is and always will be called Roy’s, says the new owner, Debby Chan, who shopped at Roy’s as a university student in the 1980s.

Chan worked for decades as a human resources executive in Hong Kong before returning to Winnipeg to be closer to her parents.

In the spring of 2019, her mother passed away, and she came to the flower shop to purchase an arrangement. Shortly afterward, she purchased the business.

“It was a snap decision,” she says. But not one she regrets: working with flowers is one of the most peaceful careers one can have; it is less a job than a passion.

But the passion is a business, and it’s rarely busier than in the first few weeks of February. On the Wednesday before Valentine’s Day, about 1,200 roses arrived at Roy’s, while Chan and Holroyd made all the arrangements, floral and otherwise. Chan asked a few tulips to please bloom. “They listen if you treat them nicely.”

David Nishimura, a longtime employee, walked into the shop, still prone to popping in. How long did he work there before retiring in July 2019? “Too long,” he deadpans. About 33 years, for those counting.

He carried with him a box of wine, knowing the craziness of red hearts, red roses, and candy that was coming. “Good luck this week, Debby. You’re going to need it.”

On Valentine’s Day, the shop was filled with ringing phones and chiming doorbells. Chan and Holroyd moved around the shop with athletic grace, climbing atop the counter to reach vases, processing transactions, and assembling arrangements based on what often was very little information. “She likes purple,” or “Yellow is her favourite.”

Holroyd is a seasoned pro: she begins three conversations at once while finishing three others. She runs to the back room and returns to the counter before a customer knows what he’s looking for, and when she greets him at the fridge, she is not out of breath. “I’ll put that together for you right away.”

She has always dealt with stragglers and late planners, but has a forgiving spirit: her boyfriend once sent her flowers to Roy’s from another shop. Holroyd put them in the fridge and sold them, and has been married to the sender for over 20 years.

Holroyd never buys flowers because she works with them all day. Chan bought flowers to bring to her mother’s grave. And Ron Kaita spent the morning of Valentine’s Day at his condo making colourful flowers out of paper for his wife, Lily.

“These will last forever,” he said.

If they’re lucky, the flowers will last as long as, or even longer than, Roy’s Florist.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.mb.ca