Postcards connect cafe family

The cafe at the NOTL Community Centre has become more than a place to grab a latte and a muffin for those needing sustenance after pickleball or working out at the gym. It is more than a spot to read a newly borrowed book. It is even more than a weekly table of lively mahjong players.

Sweets & Swirls Cafe is family.

Erinn Lockard is owner of Sweets & Swirls, and she is also keeper of the postcards that many people send her way, tying NOTL residents even closer to their community.

She has been receiving postcards from family, friends and now patrons of the cafe since she opened 11 years ago. “Someone mentioned they were going on vacation, and I said, ‘send me a postcard,’ and they did,” she said.

Lockard is now in possession of over 500 postcards which used to be mounted on the wall but have been moved to a postcard binder and on the two-sided board near the cafe counter. The most recent postcards are kept on the counter so everyone can read and enjoy them.

Some are addressed to Lockard, others “to my lovely ladies” and still others simply to “Sweets.”

Lockard receives postcards from anyone she can “talk into sending me one, and now I tell them, don't mail them because sometimes they get lost in the mail.”  She referenced a postcard that took one year to arrive from Jamaica and another which didn’t arrive for so long that the sender recreated a San Diego duplicate postcard.

One of her very first postcards was mailed from someone who sailed the Queen Mary. She has others from Australia, Sierra Leone, Egypt, and Patagonia. She has every province and territory covered except for Saskatchewan. “Not many people are offering to go out there,” joked Lockard.

Some postcards arrive inexplicably blank. Others have one word per family member describing what they feel about the locale. But many tell a story.

“It's nice because sometimes people will send one describing a walk on the beach and how it’s changed from the last time they were there,” said Lockard.

A Japanese postcard from a family who came to NOTL on sabbatical tells a story of the sender’s mom who lives near the village pictured. “Now they're again on sabbatical, and they're in Japan, and they sent a postcard with a picture of themselves.”

Another family travelled to Poland in the summer of 2014. John writes, “I was successful in finding my place of birth in a small village, Koleczkowo,” near Gdansk. “Which I just think is pretty darn awesome,” added Lockard.

She even sent a postcard herself to the cafe from her trip to the Diefenbunker, Canada’s Cold War Museum in Ottawa.

There is inspiration in the postcards, said Lockhard. “We don't really get away too much, but if I'm going to, I can sit back and I can go through the postcards and go, ‘okay, these are the places I have to hit up.’” She noted that even though she is less likely to travel to some of the colder sites, they are all enticing.

“I really love a postcard,” said Lockard.