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EMBRUN’S OWN GOURMET COOKING ACADEMY
ANDREW COPPOLINO andrewcoppolino@gmail.com
and fridges at the venue are ready-made meals including roughly 15 soups in rotation, shepherd’s pie, salmon dishes, pasta sauce, beef Bourguignon and a variety of baked goods, among others dishes. Tradition plays a role in her cooking, and Lapalme, who is also a certified holistic nutritionist, says her meat pies are very traditional, “very French Canadian.” “It’s Christmas time stuff,” she says. “But I make the meat pies year-round.” There is also a selection of bulk foods for purchase with customers bringing their own eco-friendly containers including nearly two dozen oils and vinegars (such as balsamics) and various grains, spices, cheeses and locally roasted coffee. Lapalme loves her electric smoker, too: she smokes scallops and duck, but smoked salmon is a favourite for both hot and cold smokes as well as candied. It’s then vacuum sealed and has a good shelf life, she says. “People come in just for our smoked salmon. It’s very tasty,” says Lapalme adding that her kitchen will be smoking spareribs this week and making an accompanying home-made barbecue sauce. Twice a week, Lapalme and staff prepare a full meal – soup, main course and dessert mGPSUIFMPDBM.FBMTPO8IFFMTPSHBOJ[BUJPO that delivers supper to elderly people and people with limited mobility. Just about everyone interested in food loves some sort of culinary equipment, and it’s another of Lapalme’s passions to offer a selection of kitchen tools as part of her retail line. As Lapalme describes it, she “really likes” good kitchen gadgets. The store also carries a number of per- sonal care products like soaps, shampoos and lotions.
For food-preneur Maryse Lapalme, it’s a classic story of vocation yielding the right of way to avocation when she changed lanes from her career as a Chartered Professional Accountant and into the kitchen working with food and teaching others about it. “It was probably around 2009,” says Lapalme, who says food and cooking is a true passion. “I decided I wanted a change, so I started the Academy.” -PDBUFEPO/PUSF%BNF4USFFUJO&NCSVO Académie du gourmet provides a wide range of foods, kitchen tools and services that, according to Lapalme, the community around her has embraced. Passion and demand have intersected. Lapalme says that 15 years ago, there was a gap in the range of healthier ready-made foods that were then available, noting, however, that there was mostly an abundant supply of deep-fried foods consumers could buy. But times changed and so did peoples’ awareness of the importance of a healthy diet. “It has gotten a lot better now, including at grocery stores, but we focus on making healthier foods and prepare our menu from scratch,” she says. The Academy’s meals-to-go, made weekly in the Academy’s kitchen and with a relatively small staff, feature local ingredients and avoid preservatives and additives whenever possible. Citing what she discovered was a “need” in the community for healthy and convenient ways to feed a busy family, in the freezers
Maryse Lapalme est passée du statut de comptable professionnelle agréée à celui de cuisinière et enseigne aux autres comment préparer des repas gastronomiques à la maison, comme le saumon confit illustré ci-dessus. (Andrew Coppolino)
Despite the word “academy” that is part of the business’s name, implying as it does a sense of institutional rigour and formality, it’s easy to tell that Lapalme’s approach to food and cooking is casual and accessible. When she talks about the Academy’s services, she does so as educational but also entertaining and engaging. “We are not a place where you come to get a title, or papers, or anything like that,” Lapalme says. “It’s for the fun of learning about cooking and food which is my passion.” And that leads to the instructional ele- ment: a good part of that passion around food derives from teaching: she gives demonstration classes for groups as large as 24 people and hands-on cooking classes for 12. On occasion, guest chefs from Ottawa visit to teach Thai or Italian cuisine. After a having given adult cooking classes and doing kids’ birthday parties, participants asked Lapalme about teaching kids some of the basics of the kitchen – it’s now a key component of her business that she’s been doing for about a decade.
“We start the classes for eight-year-olds. They come on Saturday for a two-hour class and start with knife skills. We make soups and move on to chicken cordon bleu. I have high school students helping us out.” Lapalme confesses that her love for food and making a variety of dishes for her cus- tomers – often from family recipes like her mother’s shepherd’s pie – is satisfying, but at the same time the classroom continues to inspire her. “I learned years later when I started this business that I really like to teach,” she says. 5PUBLFBQBHFGSPNB.BSUIB4UFXBSU cookbook, sharing knowledge is a “very good thing.” The traditions of culinary skills and local foodways being passed down to the next generation both connects people and contributes to community building. Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of “Farm to Table” and co-author of “Cooking with Shakespeare.” Follow him on Instagram @ andrewcoppolino.
UPDATED COMPENSATION GIVEN AFTER APPEAL IN 2017 EMBRUN DAIRY QUEEN ACCIDENT
GABRIELLE VINETTE gabrielle.vinette@eap.on.ca
A new appeal at the Ontario Court of Justice from a judgement back in 2017 compensated a then 16-year-old high school student with $40,000 plus a victim fine surcharge. In September 2017, a 16-year-old high school student, not named due to her age, got her hair tangled in a rotating spindle at the Embrun Dairy Queen restaurant, resulting in a spinal injury. Grisely details revealed in court docu- ments claimed she and another employee heard a loud cracking sound as they strug- gled to turn the machine off. Another employee went to retrieve the shift leader, who managed to untangle the employee’s hair from the spindle. She was stuck in the machine for seven minutes. The blender with the rotating spindle ori- ginally came with a plastic safety guard but was removed by the shift leader, which was “common practice” for some employees and shift leaders, according to court documents. During one of the high school student’s early shifts, she was told by one of her shift leaders that she was not required to use the guard. She said to have not received training about machine guarding or about occupational health and safety awareness in general. Dairy Queen has an employee handbook, but the student said she did not receive a copy, see the handbook in the
Une nouvelle amende de 40 000 $ a été imposée au Dairy Queen d’Embrun depuis qu’une employée de 16 ans s’est coincé les cheveux dans un mélangeur, lui causant des douleurs à court et à long terme, en 2017. (Dairy Queen, Google) workplace, nor did she see the operator’s manual for the machine.
was confined and failing to ensure the machine was guarded. Resulting in a fine of just $7,500. Heard in June 20 of this year, the Court of Appeal revisited a decision made. The initial argument made was that the restaurant “must be considered at the local level when the offence is a local offence” which places the fine range from $5,000 to $10,000. On the other hand, at the time, the Crown asked for a $75,000 fine, plus the victim fine surcharge. The justice of the peace sentenced a fine for $7,500. In 2024, the appeal court pointed out that
the judgement “erred in law in restricting its consideration of the size of the corporation to the location operation” and should instead fall under the fine range from $40,000 to $90,000. With the review, a fine of $40,000 plus a victim fine surcharge “is appropriate in the circumstances of this case to achieve the relevant sentencing objectives.” Both the Embrun Dairy Queen franchise as well as the PR firm that represents Dairy Queen chose not to comment for this story.
The accident caused the teenager to be hospitalized for two weeks, had to wear a neck brace, was on bedrest for “quite a while”, and received 18 months of physio- therapy. She also missed a semester of school, which she had to complete online. Two years after the accident, she says she still suffers long-term effects such as numbness, pain, headaches and certain limitations on her usual activities. In 2023, the Dairy Queen was charged with failing to ensure the employee’s hair
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