Tweed fire hits bar workers hard

Fire engulfs Tweedsmuir building in Tweed on Wednesday March 10.
Photo credit Balamuraly Sivananthan

By Rhythm Rathi

BELLEVILLE – It has been a little over a week since the devastating fire at the historic Tweedsmuir building in downtown Tweed. But Balamuraly Sivananthan still wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about what he witnessed that morning.

Sivananthan, 47, from Belleville, was the manager and chef at the Tall Boy’s Family Restaurant which operated inside the building.

On March 10th, he received a call at 6 a.m.  from the alarm company alerting him that the smoke alarm in the restaurant was set off.

He reached the building about 45 minutes after the call to check what was wrong and could not believe his eyes.

Sivananthan says that when he got there he could see black smoke all over the place. He then saw flames coming out from the bar section and the third floor of the building.

“This is the first time something like this happened in my life. It will take me a long time to forget,” he said.

He added, section by section everything was dropping down from the building.

“I could do nothing! I had no support it was just me,” Sivananthan said. 

And the loss was personal too.

“It was a huge loss for me… I am a chef… I lost my long-term collection of menus in the fire.”

Charlie Rodgers, from Madoc was the bartender at Tall Boy’s. Rodgers said the business had been slow and was closed for a while due to COVID-19.

“I was supposed to be the bar manager once we reopened but then this happened,” said Rodgers.

“It definitely was shocking that your job would be taken away like that,” he said.

“The same thing happened last March when the coronavirus happened. Overnight many people lost their job, kind of, in the same manner. It happened to me last March, so this reminds me of that,” Rodgers added.

Rodgers was laid off from his former job as a result of the pandemic and was hired at Tall Boy’s in September. He is upset about the fact that the restaurant is no more and he is currently unemployed. One of his friends sent him the news and he was shocked to see the sudden change that happened in his life.

“I haven’t gone to see it yet. It might make me more sad when I go there,” he said.

Larry Genereaux, who lives up the street from the Tweedsmuir, heard the fire trucks that morning. He went to see what happened and found the building burning.

“Normally it is pretty quiet… but the street was busy that day. There was a whole bunch of people on the street,” he said.

“Everybody was sad that this place was burning down… it wasn’t a very nice day that’s for sure,” said Genereaux.

He says he is very sad about the fact that he will not be able to visit the bar anymore. Genereaux has been a regular customer of the Tweedsmuir bar for more than 35 years and has seen four owners own the building over the years.

“I am 57 years old … I was drinking at that bar at 17,” said Genereaux.

He said, there were times when the building had live music, poetry nights, patio parties, pool tournaments and 50-50 draw nights. He used to visit the place with his family and actively perform on the stage on poetry nights.

“There are people from the States that come down, there are people from Toronto that come down. They liked it because they like the people that were here,” said Genereaux.

“It will never be the same. Even if they rebuild something there it will still never be the Tweedsmuir. It will be something else it won’t be the same.”