Dec 15, 2010

Roncesvalles shops launch food and film festBy Trish CrawfordTheStar.com

The Old Country Gift Shop on Roncesvalles Ave. is a little shop where time stands still.

Children, just as in times past, are encouraged to fill their small baskets with chocolate treats from Germany, France, Switzerland and Holland.

“Isn’t this better than shopping at Loblaws for meat?” says owner Helga Schuliakewich, laughing. Her family has run the store for 49 years.

The shelves are filled with colourful foil-covered chocolates — there are Santas, bells, snowmen and tiny decorations with string attached to hang on the tree.

“They are hollow,” she says. “You don’t eat chocolate the way you eat bread. It’s a delicacy, a treat.”

Over the years, the German owners have seen successive waves of European immigration on Roncey. Schuliakewich cites newcomers from Poland and Czechoslovakia, her point being that “we all eat the same sauerkraut and potatoes.”

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