Before the Café Opens

Before the café opened, CCM Montréal was already there to listen and to serve.

I first met the CCM team in May 2025 on a busy workday. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. I was on call, but my schedule was accommodated. Somebody noticed that I had been working all morning and brought me lunch. That mattered to me.

From the beginning, their posture was not about explaining what they were building, but about listening. They wanted to hear my story, what CommunauThé was, and what we were hoping to create. That posture stayed consistent over time.

Our first CommunauThé event at CCM, took place before the café had opened. Volunteers brought Yeung Chow fried rice and Singapore noodles from a community member’s shop in Chinatown. The flavours were immediately familiar in a way I had forgotten. Eating together between rehearsals felt like an unexpected gift as we moved around the space.

I worked closely with Watson Wu and only later realised that he was volunteering his time alongside a full-time job elsewhere. He was available whenever we needed help with logistics, without drawing attention to himself. During a planning meeting for our second event with CCM, he took us out for dinner at a restaurant of our choice. He did not eat. Only afterward did he mention that he had just flown back from Hong Kong and was still jet-lagged. I paused at that moment, noticing how service was offered by centering others.

As the events continued, we were welcomed into the space and supported in how we used it. Watching this unfold brought back a memory I had not expected.

An earlier place

In April 2016, I first got connected to a Hong Kong milk tea shop on College and Spadina in Toronto called Crimson Teas. The milk tea was rich and made in the traditional way, the kind I grew up drinking. Philip Chan, the owner, loved to talk about tea, especially pu’er cha, and he approached it with curiosity and care.

Philip opened Crimson Teas to serve tea, but also to serve people. He remembered names and stories, noticed when someone needed food, and offered encouragement when it was needed. If a group needed the space in the evening, he would close the shop and let them use it. Art shows were held there, student groups met there, and conversations often carried late into the night.

I spent time there during its early days, sitting with students and helping with outreach. With its red walls, wooden tables, and stump chairs, it felt like a second home for students and young creatives looking for connection in the city. The walls were filled with artwork created by friends of the shop and young artists connected to it. The space changed as new work came and went. It felt shared rather than curated.

During that same season, I volunteered with a student support effort during Frosh Week, and Philip provided milk tea for the volunteers. It showed his concern for the people doing the work and for the students they were helping. Eventually, life carried me in other directions, and I left Toronto.

In December 2025, I stopped by the shop after years away. Philip remembered me and my story more clearly than I did. It was a cold day, and without hesitation, he offered me a steaming bowl of black tea noodle soup with vegetables and fried egg, along with milk tea. I had come only to say hello, not expecting to be fed.

As he spoke about what he was now experimenting with, I recognised the same presence that had shaped me years earlier. In that moment, memories from years earlier felt close again.

Becoming part of it

In January 2026, I began stopping by CCM more regularly, at first simply because I needed a place to work. I would sit with my laptop for a few hours at a time, and over time I got to know the volunteers who were preparing the café and began to follow the process more closely.

My involvement grew gradually and without any formal role. Through ongoing conversations, both online and in person, I found myself contributing to the menu, pricing, and visual direction, as well as how the café might translate into the Montréal context. Other moments happened in person, often unexpectedly, when I would notice something, raise a question, or suggest an idea that would then be taken up and discussed further.

Around that time, the café was still being referred to by another name that was meant to stay close to the meaning of 腳蹤 (footprints) across languages, but it did not quite settle. In one of our conversations, I proposed the name Café le Chemin. It was simple, and it carried the sense of movement and direction that had been there from the beginning. The name was taken up by the committee and, in time, adopted.

The Chinese name remained 腳蹤, drawn from the image in Isaiah of the feet that bring good news. Placed alongside each other, the two names seemed to complete the thought. One speaks of footsteps. The other of a path.

In the weeks that followed, I would stop by every so often and began to notice the name appearing in the space. First on a draft, then on the window decal, and later in the photos they would send over WhatsApp, where the logo was printed on drinks and on aprons. Something that had been spoken in passing was now taking form.

On Wednesday, April 1, 2026, I dropped by again in the morning, intending simply to spend some time there and to speak with Watson about a portes ouvertes we were hoping to organise in May. As we were talking, Jessica Phung walked in carrying a box of decorations. She had come from France, taking two weeks away from a busy role in hospitality to help prepare the café for its opening.

Jessica began the morning with a volunteer training session. She walked through the practical aspects of running the café, including the register, the workflow, and the rhythm of service, but what stood out was the way she spoke about posture. There was careful attention given to how to clean, how to notice, how to receive people, and how to carry oneself in the space. The reminder was clear and repeated in different ways. This was more than a café. It was a place for connection, for community, and for conversations that might not otherwise happen.

As the volunteers began to role play their responsibilities, I ordered an iced Hong Kong milk tea to try. By midday, we were tasting through the menu together. There was fruit sando, smoked salmon, a vegetable sandwich, pistachio croffles, and several drinks that were still being refined, including chai, turmeric, taro, and matcha. We talked, tasted, and exchanged feedback, and I offered suggestions on plating and presentation as the menu was still being refined.

At the same time, I took photos for their social media, as the café was still in the process of establishing its online presence through Google, Instagram, and Facebook. People moved in and out of the space throughout the day, installing equipment, adjusting details, and preparing for the opening.

There was a constant sense of movement, but also a shared anticipation that was difficult to name and easy to recognise.

At one point, I noticed a curtain set up toward the back of the space, which was a more developed version of one we had set up together to extend the space for our CommunauThé performances. Seeing it there, now fully integrated into the café, was an unexpected moment of joy.

 

On the eve of opening

On April 4, 2026, Café le Chemin will open its doors.

Years earlier, in a milk tea shop in Toronto's Chinatown, I had first learned that a café could be more than a place to buy a drink. It could be a place where people gathered, created, and were known, and that experience continued to shape me long after I left.

Standing here now, I realised I was watching something similar come to life again, but this time from within it. Often through small and unplanned moments, I found myself contributing to what this space would become, and seeing those contributions carried forward.

For some, Café le Chemin will be a place in the Plateau to enjoy a croffle with Hong Kong milk tea. For others, it may become something more. For me, it already has.