Landmark Enfield gathering place Curly Portable’s Pub & Grub demolished

A landmark watering hole in Enfield was demolished this week.

“People are certainly sad to see it go,” Sandra Garden-Cole, who grew up in Enfield and now represents the area on East Hants municipal council, said of Curly Portable’s, the popular eating and drinking establishment known simply as Curly’s.

“It was a gathering place for families and they had live bands and all kinds of things to offer for a variety of age groups at the time it came on board.”

The popular business opened in 1984 in a converted funeral home on a corner lot at Highway 2 and White Road, some six kilometres north of the Halifax Stanfield International Airport and almost halfway between Halifax and Truro.

The building, owned by Jim Isenor who was born and raised in Enfield, was destroyed by fire in 1990 but the rebuilt iteration of Curly Portable’s Pub & Grub, an eventual 7,500-square-foot building, reopened six months later on the half-hectare lot.

The pub had been the “stomping ground for locals and travellers alike ever since,” according to an East Hants Chamber of Commerce commentary in awarding Isenor a business lifetime achievement award in 2015.

“Numerous business have come and gone on that particular site,” Garden-Cole said. “It was a funeral home and an old restaurant over the years but Curly’s has certainly been the most recent and at that time it was the only type of tavern in the area, before Shooters. It was a really welcome addition to the community.

“People are very disappointed to see it go. They were hoping that another business of that type might take its place, that someone would be willing to buy it and operate the same type of business.”

For Sale in 2019

A For Sale sign was hung up below the familiar Curly Portable’s signage along Highway 2 in the fall of 2019 but no buyer was found. 

The disappointment Garden-Cole referenced was evident in Facebook posts about the demolition.

Darlene Ashley wrote, “Always a great place to catch up with friends or grab a quick lunch during a work week. Oh, and many times I was there when they closed down on weekends, to get my kids and their friends home safely.”

From Sandra Bernadette Totten: “Thursday nights were hopping in my day. If you didn’t show by 9:30, you didn’t get in. The music, the dancing, the laughter. Some of the best times of my young adult life.”

Cindy Rose Renouf recalled in a Facebook post taking an arrested person back to the RCMP detachment in Enfield on one of those fabled Thursday nights.

“No backup available and there was a full-scale brawl in the parking lot of Curly’s as I was driving past. I flipped on my siren, jumped out on the hood of the police car, and started to shake my canister of pepper spray saying, ‘who else wants to go to jail.’ Me, all of five-foot-four and 120 pounds soaking wet! But the parking lot very quickly cleared.”

Darlene MacDonnell wrote that she met her husband Gerry at Curly’s 37 years ago on April 26, 1986.

“Love at first sight,” she wrote. “Lots of great memories made after that as well. So sad to see it torn down.” 

A gathering place

The 2015 Chamber of Commerce promotion said Isenor’s pub brought thousands of people together over the years, feeding and entertaining them. The pub was credited with employing hundreds of locals and providing a springboard for many local musicians.

The legend of Curly, no doubt gleaned from Isenor’s musings, was available in the menu and online. It weaved the fantastic story of Curly, a robust boy born around 1895 in the Rawdon Hills of Nova Scotia. 

An avid woodsman, Curly went on to invent and perfect the “triple-bitted axe,” with one-third more cutting area, along with other like-minded ventures.

Isenor sold the pub business run out of the building to his nephew, Brandon Horne, about nine years ago. 

Isenor and his company, Monk Mobile Corporation, made a couple of development applications to the municipality, the last of which pitched a potential mixed-used development on the site and an adjoining property that would support 18 townhouses and three multiplexes for a total of 198 dwelling units, with one multiplex having commercial space on the ground floor.

That application was submitted in November 2020 but despite a staff recommendation that it be approved, the proposal was refused by council at a Jan. 27, 2022, public hearing meeting.

It still remains likely that a development will go ahead at the site eventually.

Garden-Cole said residents “were really hoping” that the building would have been sold and reopened as the same type of business that had existed there.

“They are probably sad to see that it will probably go the development way,” she said.

“For the people who were around here through all the Curly’s days, very sad to see it go.”