Thea Boyanowsky glances out the second-floor window of what was the customs house and post office on George Street in Annapolis Royal, N.S. Outside, the market square is busy as vendors greet shoppers at the weekly Wednesday artisan market. As Thea recounts the process of renovating this historic building—how she and her husband incorporated the salvaged pine from an old textile building in Yarmouth into the main floor café, or found a unique cabinet from another old post office for the dining room in the second floor apartment, how they named every room (for example, The Poet’s Room tucked in a corner of the third floor) or how her brother restored the beautiful windows throughout—she shares her joy for every detail and for the community she, her husband, and their son now call home.

Thea was born just outside of Halifax, where her father then worked at Dalhousie University. At the age of four, her family relocated to North Vancouver, B.C., but Nova Scotia had made a deep impression on her. Her journey back has been a serendipitous love story.

The story takes a giant leap to Montreal where, as a university student, she met Sam Anson, her downstairs neighbour. “Sam became my boyfriend,” she says with a smile. “And one reading week, he invited me back to Bear River where his mother and stepfather had a farm. We took the train to Saint John and then the ferry to Digby where they picked us up. It was beautiful and snowy, and they took us to this cabin they had just built. We walked across a frozen pond, and it was all so romantic.”

“I fell in love with him, his parents, the province,” she says. After completing degrees in Montreal, they moved to Los Angeles where Sam had spent part of his childhood, but they would visit Bear River and neighbouring Annapolis Royal as much as possible. “It wasn’t until we had a child,” she says, “when we thought maybe we don’t want to live in a big city and maybe we don’t want to live on the west coast anymore.”

The longing for this place coincided with a desire for a career shift. In California, Thea had worked in film, commercial production and public radio but was ready to start something new. “I wanted a brick and mortar business,” she says. “I had had these sort of ephemeral jobs where what you create sort of disappears and I wanted to build something.”  

Her mom had just moved to Annapolis Royal. “We were visiting,” Thea says, “and we walked out on the boardwalk. The sun was beginning to set and the basin it just lights up. It’s like a bowl of light and the way it captures the light. I fell in love with the landscape. Growing up in Vancouver I was used to the mountains blocking out the light. I love the light here.”

Standing on the small second floor balcony, with its views of the basin and surrounding hills, she shares how she and Sam became the owners of this building. When it came up for sale, Thea and Sam were curious. The owner loved the building, had put a new roof on, but had to sell. Thea and Sam considered it and reconsidered it. It would be a big endeavour. “Finally, in 2018, we said to each other we both had a very strong vision of what we wanted to create here,” Thea explains, “so we said ‘let’s just do it’ and our son was four at the time.” Over the next two years they renovated and in June of 2020, they opened the café. “We started selling out of the little half-door at the other entrance when you couldn’t have a sit-down café, but because we were an essential service because we sold bread so we started that way, with an amazing baker who did the bread and pastry.” 

Arch & Po

200 St George St, Annapolis Royal, N.S.

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@archandpo

This piece can be found in Spring 2025, Edible Maritimes #14