People don’t understand when you have your own business, it’s a lot of headaches.” During the first 10 years, he said, he took no holidays. The restaurant business is very, very tough.

I feel happy, because I won’t have any responsibilities.

“The food is the big thing,” he said, of the 40-year appeal. The restaurant is closing after 41 years in business. A woman (name not given) makes egg rolls by hand at the family owned Wong’s Palace restaurant. So he immediately got on the phone to his parents to let them know. “I saw the notice and just couldn’t believe it,” said Willmott, of the impending closure.

He’s been coming here since he was a boy. Wong’s Palace has that old school feel: pink tablecloths, light shades shaped like pagodas, bright red pillars, an aquarium with flat-shaped fish, peacock and flower motifs, waiters with vests and bow ties, and a separate takeout side, where we find Dan Willmott, about to haul away a brown, stapled bag. “From the bottom to the top, my whole life.” It goes without saying that Wayner, who quit school after Grade 6, worked to the bone, doing everything from cooking, serving, cleaning and schmoozing. 5 with a glass of wine and only sit at one of three tables. She and husband Jack, 81, have been coming to the Palace since it opened - so long, they first started coming with other spouses. Now what am I going to do?” asked Polly Moran, 76, as she left the restaurant after lunch one day this week, giving Wong a hug.

He did something with his life alright: he built something people loved - Wong’s Palace, which is closing on Friday after 40 years as a landmark restaurant on the western end of Carling Avenue, next to the Stardust Motel. On a wall where he works, there are photos of Wong and his wife Doreen with a prime minister (Brian Mulroney), and mayors (Marion Dewar, Jim Durrell, Ben Franklin) and police chiefs (Arthur Rice, Brian Ford, Gus Wersch) and memorabilia from service clubs (Lions, Knights of Pythias, Knockers Club) where he quietly donated energy and money.Īnd a framed picture of a dignified couple, the ones who took a tag from a thin, anxious boy in a Manitoba airport, and raised him, he says, “like a king.” Wayner Wong is retiring and closing his family owned Wong’s Palace restaurant after 41 years in business. Now he’s 78 and retiring, a widower with five children, nearing the end of his story.

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