Princeton couple return to town, reopen grandparents' store
Marjorie and Drew Quinton owned the general store in Princeton for 20 years, but their grandchild is aiming for 35.
About seventy years after the Princeton Variety Store opened in the small outport community, Rob Quinton and his partner, Beth Clarke, have returned to town and revived it. It passed through various owners, and was shut down for a few years, but now the building on Princeton's main street is back in the family.
"My grandfather put a lot of effort, probably, into starting it. And for me to take over, it's very rewarding," said Quinton. "Sometimes it's surreal."
Beth's Variety is breathing new life into Princeton and residents say they're thrilled to see it open again. The community went without a store for about two years when it's predecessor closed for good.
"I feel like Newfoundland, especially the outport places, are made up of these small stores," said Clarke, who fronts the store's cash register each day. "It's so important, and when it goes and there's no one there — I mean there's only 70-odd of us here, who's going to do it?"
"It could just stay empty forever, and that piece of history is gone, forever."
Clarke figures the population in Princeton, on the Bonavista Peninsula, is about 75 people. It's a place too small for government estimates. Without a town hall, her store serves as a bit of a social gathering point for Princeton's aging residents — part corner store, part coffee shop, part grocer.
It's the type of place where young girls can run in and ask for a bandaid for their scratched knees.
"People get to run into each other, they get to have a catch-up with each other," said Clarke. "Or somebody might be going through something, and they can give their condolences...or it's a place where you can put up a poster, gather people in, raise money.So it's super imporrtant."
No place like home
It was always in Robert Quinton's plan to return to Princeton.
He and Clarke met while they were both working in Alberta, but he was upfront with his intention.
"From the day I met him, he told me that he was going to go back to Newfoundland. And he wanted to know where I stood," Clarke described. "I was fine with it."
To Clarke, who was born in Burlington, Ontario, Princeton is special: A place with a lot of history, families with deep roots, where "everybody's known each other for all of time, and everybody loves each other, and everybody is looking out for each other."
"It's wonderful."
"I think family, friends, and just nice people brought me back. It's where I grew up," Quinton adds.
The couple started building their home in Princeton on trips back to Newfoundland, and, after they finished, their thoughts turned to Princeton's then-empty variety store.
"It was always a topic," said Clarke, who said everybody missed the store, and it would come up in conversation.
"It sort of became a thought that maybe we could open it, and we could do this."
One day at a time
According to Clarke, the store presented a great opportunity for her and her partner to stay in the community, and avoid having to commute back and forth to Alberta.
The community support the couple has received since formally reopening the store in December has been outstanding, she said.
"It means a lot, a great deal to everybody," said Fernie Moss, a Princeton resident.
"It's a beautiful place ... and everybody in the communities all around, Summerville, Plate Cove and everywhere, they're delighted to have the store reopened again ... this is a part of our family, in here, too."
Clarke says she and Quinton run the store without any need to make a lot of money — what's coming in now is more than enough. She says the support from the community, and the feeling of working on something you love, is more than satisfactory.
"It really does make me happy ... My goal is 35 [more] years."
