The Baker’s Dozen

The Baker’s Dozen shouldn’t be special.

It’s run-down, the plaster on the walls is cracked, the mirrors, cloudy with age, the signage either yellowed or sun-bleached.

Probably the newest addition to the coffee shop are three LCD menu screens. Someone has set the background to cute-sy, cartoon-y memes of Spongebob and Winnie The Pooh. In fact, one even bears a “Gif-Maker.com” watermark.

The Baker’s Dozen is the kind of franchise that’s been disenfranchised. In the sense that it no longer seems to have a governing body. Wikipedia says there was, at one time, at least 100, though another estimate says maybe there’s 35 or 36. Further down, the article admits, people say there’s still one in Oshawa, Ont.

This one will exist for two more days, and then it will blink out of existence and then it will be up to the store in Oshawa to hold onto the Baker’s Dozen’s good name. Titans like Tim Hortons and McDonald’s have all but eliminated these smaller chains.

If this store is any indication of the final store, you can get a cling-wrapped egg salad, a Jamaican patty, and sometimes a cinnamon bun all from one location.

In the hour I’ve sat in the coffee shop, chipping away at a corn muffin and coffee, almost all of the patrons have required a cane.

Even Van Ma, the owner and operator of the franchise hobbles around behind the counter. After decades of standing behind this counter, she says, her joints are grinding together when moves. I feel terrible ordering anything from her because it will require her to shuffle painstakingly around.

Originally from Singapore, Ma raised her children in Georgetown, Ontario. Almost everyone calls her ‘Mama’ and she calls everyone ‘baby.’

As a man limps into the aging shop, he inquires about the soup of the day.

“You won’t like it,” Mama says without hesitation.

The patron adjusts his glasses and consults the signboard potato and bacon soup, she’s right.

He doesn’t even have to ask, Mama places a coffee and a plate with buttered white toast on the counter for him.

A younger man enters and she tells him she’s sold out of cinnamon buns before he can ask. She’s got apple fritters though, he likes those.

At the end of the week, Friday the 13th, Mama is retiring.

She’ll spend a few weeks in Singapore visiting family members she hasn’t seen for 40 years, and then she’ll come back to Canada, back to Georgetown.