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Campbell’s Corner Store offers convenience, baking and more in West Creston

For over two years, West Creston had no convenience store, but that changed when Michelle and Del Campbell opened Campbell’s Corner Store...
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Michelle and Del Campbell in their Nick’s Island Road store.

For two-and-a-half years, West Creston residents were without a convenience store — simply forgetting to stop at a grocery store could mean a several-kilometre round trip.

“You’d drive by, think ‘I forgot to get milk’, and go all the way back to town,” said Del.

But that changed in May 2013, when Michelle and Del Campbell opened Campbell’s Corner Store at the corner of Nick’s Island Road and Highway 3, filling a need in the community.

“People would go to West Creston meetings and say it needs a store,” said Michelle, who worked at the store during its previous incarnation as Mugwumps.

In addition to the canned goods, beverages, cereal and household items you’d expect from a convenience store, they offered seasonal produce in the summer — including organic produce from Brenda Bruns, asparagus and corn from Doug Sutcliffe, and strawberries from Phillip Lawrence — as well as Kootenay Meadows organic milk, Pickle Patch eggs, and Swan Valley Honey. From slightly farther afield are jerky from Cliff’s Meats in Kimberley, Dave’s Hot Pepper Jelly from Invermere.

Del and Michelle even bring in their own veggies, which aren’t certified organic, but “anything we bring in from our garden has had nothing used on it for 35 years,” said Del.

As if the selection of local products weren’t enough, they even took it a step further. Michelle has always wanted a restaurant, so she offers custom baking, breakfast, lunch and dinners-to-go at the store, which is open 6 a.m.-6 p.m.

“I have a theory about food: Food has to be sexy,” she said.

Taste is also important, as is variety — this week’s dinners-to-go included roast beef with mashed potatoes, and perogies with Italian sausage, with each dinner announced daily on the store’s Facebook page. One customer who comes in every day for dinner told Michelle, “You’re the best cook ever. I love all your food.”

“You cannot give him a bad meal,” she said.

When Michelle was nine, her mother taught her to cook, and prior to that, “I meddled,” she said. “I cooked when my mother wasn’t home and hid my experiments under my bed.”

She later taught her own children to cook, and it stuck with them — her oldest daughter was chef at Vancouver’s Pan Pacific Hotel for 10 years and now cooks for BC Ferries, while another daughter is a baker at Overwaitea Foods. And her oldest granddaughter is taking a culinary course at Vancouver Community College.

While food is a large part of the store’s focus, it caters to customers in other ways, too, such as with a lending library, which allows people to drop off read books in exchange for others.

“They bring them in and take them out by the bagful,” said Michelle.

It’s been a bit of a journey for Del and Michelle — they married in 1984, got divorced and married other people, then got divorced and remarried each other in the late 1990s — but they couldn’t be more pleased with the community’s support. The chairs and tables near the back are often full of their friends and neighbours.

“We joked one time about taking the groceries out and putting in chairs,” said Michelle.

“Basically, we’re here to have fun,” said Del. “Sometimes there are half a dozen people here, just laughing.”