Couple struggles to tear down business

What once was a thriving community store is now a financial and unsightly millstone around the necks of Ray and Gail Taylor.

As spring yields to summer, Ray Taylor can still remember the days when tourists pulled into his Dumfries parking lot along the Trans-Canada Highway, lured by the smell of hot pizza by the slice or the need for snacks or a pop.

With the post office and liquor agency store, locals were always in and out of the business and next door, the popular Moonlight Motel and Restaurant with its homemade rolls and meringue-piled-high pies.

Now, Taylor is trying to pull down the old hardware-cum-convenience store by hand to save money because the opening of the new four-lane Trans-Canada Highway in 2006 killed the business.

"It was very much a going concern. Right up until they opened the highway, and the difficult part of the highway business was that they opened it the first of November and that meant that I had to spend an entire winter here to find out if there was going to be any summer business whatsoever. By the time that came and went, it was too late. We lost our shirt," he said.

"Had they opened the highway in the spring and we operated it through the summer, we would have known what we were up against and we could have done something about it.

"We had to take out a personal loan to get out of the business ... Then I had to go in December and take out more money to tear the damn thing down."

Although he's got visual impairments, Taylor has been going to the store every day to remove as much of the building as he can before he has to bring in a dozer to finish the job. He's been removing the building's insulation, pulling out the old plastic vapor barrier and salvaging anything he can before the building is torn down. If he strips the rubber from the building's copper wiring, he might be able to get $3 a pound for it.

"This was a great little pizza business," he said in the tiny kitchen area where the cupboards are streaked with muddy water lines and mould where a hole in the roof has let water in to do its damage.

"It's sad, sad, sad," he said as he stands in the partially stripped building. "It's been a heartache."

The Taylors would like to sell their home with its view of the St. John River, but three different real estate agents have told them the old store has to go if they're to have any chance of selling their house.

Ray's General Store, formerly called Rae's, was established in the late 1920s. It was bought by Perley and Clara Rae in 1931.

The Taylors took over the business in 1988 and Taylor said he gave up selling pig and horse feed and secured the liquor store agency.

Taylor still blames the government for closing the road near Longs Creek for close to two years, which crippled the highway's use even as a scenic tourist route.

"Had they left that alone, we might have survived," he said.

The couple had hoped to create a nest egg for their son.

"It was always my hope to build the business for him and he would have had something that would be worth something. He's out in Alberta now along with everybody else," Taylor said.

"I'll tell you the thing that's always bugged me more than anything else is that there was never, never any consultation whatsoever. They just came along and had a meeting down at Kings Landing one day and said here's what we're doing."

Nearby, business at the Moonlight Restaurant slowed to the point where it's only open during the summer and Taylor predicts it's likely that long-standing business in the community may end up going the same way as his store before long.

Ironically, the new Trans-Canada Highway has turned the former two-lane stretch of roadway through Dumfries into a quiet rural road and that has driven some city dwellers to the area to build houses along the banks of the St. John River. Most of the new suburbanites, however, are used to travelling to Fredericton to work and shop.