In 1956 a two-storey brick block on Wallace Street got a new face. The Nanaimo architects McArravy & Barley drew up a modern front for the ground floor, clad in mosaic tile, and the four shops that had shared the space since 1912 became a single restaurant. The Diners' Rendezvous opened that year and stayed in the hands of one family, the Wongs, until 2000.
The building still carries the 1956 work. Its heritage listing treats the tiled front as part of what makes the place worth keeping, alongside the brick and pressed-metal cornice of the original.
The Brumpton Block, 1912
The City of Nanaimo's statement of significance, published on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, describes the Brumpton Block at 489 Wallace Street as a vernacular Edwardian commercial building designed and built in 1912 by local contractor James Green. The upper floor keeps its original appearance. The ground floor first held four separate storefronts with a central entry to the rooms above, and was later turned into one restaurant.
Two builders' reputations hang on the block. Green, the statement says, was active in Nanaimo in the 1920s and 1930s and is best remembered for Beban House. McArravy, a formally trained architect, designed City Hall and the Fitzwilliam Street library building among other landmarks. The city added the block to its community heritage register on October 7, 2002, and it reached the Canadian register on August 20, 2004.
One detail does not fit neatly. A 2014 News Bulletin story describes the Rendezvous as sitting "in a former bank at the foot of Wallace Street," while the heritage statement speaks only of storefronts. Neither source says which shops or businesses filled those four fronts before 1956, so the bank may have been one of them or may be a memory attached to the wrong building. The sources reviewed here do not settle it.
The heritage statement is plain about why the building matters beyond its brickwork. It is significant, the city wrote, "because of its association with the Wong family and the Diner's Rendezvous Restaurant," which for several decades from the mid-1950s "was one of the most popular restaurants in Nanaimo." It adds that the Wong family "were exceptionally active in community life."
From the Canton in Chinatown to Wallace Street
The Wongs came to Wallace Street from Chinatown. Gunner Wong's obituary names his parents as Wong Kee and Mah Sze, and his siblings as Henry, Chuck, John, Lila, Mamie, Ella and Nellie. His older brother Chuck's obituary says Chuck was born in Nanaimo and lived there all his life, that his father died when Chuck was 22, and that he carried on the family business, the Canton Restaurant, with help from his brothers.
The brothers also ran the Modern Café. Gunner's obituary lists both the Canton, "in Nanaimo's Chinatown," and the Modern Café among the restaurants he co-owned before the Rendezvous, and a News Bulletin profile after his death says he ran them with Henry and Chuck "until they opened the Diner's Rendezvous restaurant in 1956." The Modern Café building, at 221 Commercial Street, is on the heritage register in its own right. Built in 1910, it was refaced in a plain International style in the early 1950s, and its neon sign, put up in the mid-1940s, is one of the few survivors of the kind that once lit downtown Nanaimo.
The Chinatown the Canton belonged to did not last. The Nanaimo Art Gallery notes that the city's third Chinatown was destroyed by fire in 1960, a loss it says had a devastating effect on the community. Before that fire, Nanaimo's Chinatowns had occupied three sites since the 1860s. Counts differ there too: the gallery's 2026 exhibition text speaks of four Chinatowns beginning in the 1860s.
The Rendezvous years, 1956 to 2000
Gunner Wong was the restaurant's chef and co-owner, and his obituary describes the Diner's Rendezvous, open from 1956 to 2000, as one of the first full-service restaurants in downtown Nanaimo. Chuck Wong was president of Wong Bros. Enterprises Ltd., which owned and operated it "for over 40 years," according to his obituary. Gunner managed it until it closed and he retired.
His daughter, Janice Carless-Jones, told the News Bulletin in 2014 how the kitchen got its room. The building needed more interior space at the back, which meant blasting into a rock bluff behind it. "He had to get his blasting ticket, so he went to the course and got it," she said. "He let her rip, but he didn't put enough mattresses on so some of the rocks escaped and smashed a few windows, a car window and windows in a pharmacy that was on the corner."
Over the years, she said, hundreds of people worked at the Rendezvous, many of them young people in their first jobs. "Dad did everything," she said. "If he wanted to learn something, he'd go to night school and take some classes and get certified and off he went."
The family filled the front of house as well. Alice Wong, Gunner's wife of 62 years, was born in Armstrong to what her obituary calls the first Chinese family in that town, vegetable farmers. Once her six children were grown she worked at the Diners' Rendezvous as host and cashier, and later did administrative work for Mrs. Riches Restaurant and Grandma Walser's Red Pepper Products, which her obituary names as family businesses. Gunner, his own obituary adds, had helped build Mrs. Riches with his construction skills.
Chuck's record outside the kitchen was long. His obituary lists more than 40 years in the Gyro Club and membership in the Chinese Memorial Society, the Nanaimo Chinese Cultural Society and the Cathay Seniors Housing Society, among others. He was named Man of the Year by the Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce, and in 2002 received the Queen's Jubilee Medal and an honorary Doctor of Law from Malaspina University, and was made a Freeman of the City. He died on November 25, 2003, aged 84.
Betty Wong's watercolour
The quietest member of the family got her due in 2026. Betty Wong, Chuck's wife of 64 years, lived from 1917 to 2005, and a watercolour of hers showing Nanaimo's third Chinatown hung in Bleached by the Sun: Perspectives on Chinatown, at the Nanaimo Art Gallery from January 24 to March 22. The gallery describes it as painted "with the painterly care of an artist who lived there," washed in yellow under a blown-out sky.
Co-curator Imogene Lim told the News Bulletin that many visitors would know Betty Wong through her family's restaurant rather than her art. "Betty is probably the unsung hero of the family, because, as you know, men get the profile, the women don't," Lim said. The same exhibition included paintings by Jackie Wong on the Chinese miners killed in the 1887 No. 1 Mine explosion, who were recorded only by payroll number.
Art ran in the household. The couple's son Fred Gain Quong Wong, who died in 2004, is described in his obituary as a violinist, pianist and artist and a graduate of Trinity College of Music in London.
A second Rendezvous, with a stage
After 2000 the name returned. Peter Ertsos, who had spent 30 years in the restaurant trade, owned the Diners Rendezvous for about two and a half years before he closed it in August 2012. In his hands it was also a small concert room. News Bulletin listings show a touring company bringing a play called Chairs there in April 2011 and a mini indie festival with Wool on Wolves in September 2011, with $15 advance tickets. The paper's review of 2012 noted Alabama-born bluesman David Vest, Western Edge Theatre's staging of Greener Than Thou, and Shaun Verreault playing there that April. In the Bulletin's 2012 Best of the City results, it appeared beside The Queen's and The Cambie under best place for live bands.
It hosted causes too. In April 2012 an Evening at the Moulin Rouge at the "Wallace Street eatery" raised money for a new Nanaimo Community Hospice House, with $75 tickets on sale at the restaurant, 489 Wallace St.
The ending was blunt. Ertsos told the News Bulletin in August 2012 that rising transport costs had pushed up everything he bought, and that after the province's tougher drinking-and-driving rules his monthly liquor order fell from $4,000 to $800. A nine-kilogram box of tortilla chips, he said, had cost $18.76 in 2005 and now cost $36. The Modern Café and the Dancing Goat coffee shop had closed days before him. "I'm done," he said. "This was my 30th year in business and my final year. I'm never doing it again." The Downtown Nanaimo Business Improvement Association's general manager, Corry Hostetter, told the same reporter some owners were breaking records and called the closures possibly a coincidence.
After the restaurant
The address kept changing hands after the music stopped.
In February 2017 Western Edge Theatre held a fundraiser at Tandoori Junction, "located at 489 Wallace St.," in what its artistic director called "the cozy nightclub atmosphere of the Starlight Room."
In 2019 the building became an office. The Society for Equity, Inclusion and Advocacy, formed by merging the Nanaimo Women's Resource Society and Nanaimo Citizens Advocacy, chose 489 Wallace St. as its new home, with the landlord supplying the labour to build out what board member Susan Carlson called "an open floor." In January 2021 a warming centre for people experiencing homelessness opened there, funded through the United Way. That December the society suspended services and laid off its 10 paid staff after its board found a possible misappropriation of funds; the RCMP opened a criminal investigation, and the amount was not disclosed. Supportive housing for people leaving homelessness had come to north Nanaimo in February 2015, when Uplands Walk opened on Uplands Drive.
City Hall's own address is 455 Wallace Street, so if you walk the street looking for the old Rendezvous, the number to find is 489, a long brick front with its tiled ground floor still in place.
One small contradiction is still on the record. The heritage listing, last published in 2004, gives the building's current function as an eating or drinking establishment, a description that stopped matching the building once the society moved its offices in.
Questions
What was the Diners' Rendezvous?
It was a downtown Nanaimo restaurant at 489 Wallace Street, opened in 1956 by the Wong brothers. Gunner Wong's obituary calls it one of the first full-service restaurants downtown, and the city's heritage statement counts it among the most popular restaurants in Nanaimo for several decades.
Who owned the Diners' Rendezvous?
Wong Bros. Enterprises Ltd., with Chuck Wong as president and Gunner Wong as chef and co-owner. Gunner managed the restaurant until it closed in 2000. A later owner, Peter Ertsos, ran it as a restaurant and live music room for about two and a half years before closing it in August 2012.
When did the Diners' Rendezvous close?
The Wong family's restaurant closed in 2000, when Gunner Wong retired. The name came back under Peter Ertsos, who closed his version in August 2012, two weeks before a News Bulletin story on downtown restaurant closures.
What building was the Rendezvous in?
The Brumpton Block, a two-storey Edwardian commercial building put up in 1912 by contractor James Green. Its ground floor was rebuilt as a single restaurant in 1956, with mosaic tile on the front designed by McArravy & Barley.
Is the Brumpton Block a heritage building?
Yes. The City of Nanaimo added it to its community heritage register on October 7, 2002, and it was listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places on August 20, 2004. The listing protects the character of both the 1912 building and the 1956 restaurant front.
What restaurants did the Wong family run before the Rendezvous?
The Canton Restaurant in Nanaimo's Chinatown and the Modern Café on Commercial Street. Chuck Wong took over the Canton after his father died, with his brothers' help. Gunner Wong later helped build Mrs. Riches Restaurant, which Alice Wong's obituary also names as a family business.
Who was Betty Wong?
Betty Wong (1917 to 2005) was Chuck Wong's wife of 64 years and a painter. A watercolour of hers showing Nanaimo's third Chinatown hung in the Nanaimo Art Gallery's 2026 exhibition on the city's Chinatowns, where co-curator Imogene Lim described her as the family's unsung hero.
Did musicians play at the Diners' Rendezvous?
Yes, in its last years under Peter Ertsos. News Bulletin coverage from 2011 and 2012 mentions an indie festival with Wool on Wolves and shows by David Vest and Shaun Verreault, and the paper's 2012 Best of the City results named it among the best places for live bands.
What is at 489 Wallace Street now?
The sources reviewed do not give a current tenant. In 2017 the address was home to Tandoori Junction, and from 2019 it housed the Society for Equity, Inclusion and Advocacy, which ran a warming centre there in 2021 before suspending services in December of that year.
Why do some sources spell it Diner's Rendezvous?
There is no agreed spelling. The heritage register and Gunner Wong's obituary use Diner's Rendezvous, Chuck Wong's obituary uses Diners' Rendezvous, and News Bulletin stories from 2011 and 2012 drop the apostrophe.
Sources
- Brumpton Block, 489 Wallace Street, Nanaimo, Canada's Historic Places (Parks Canada), statement of significance from the City of Nanaimo, 2004-08-20
- Modern Cafe, 221 Commercial Street, Nanaimo, Canada's Historic Places (Parks Canada), statement of significance from the City of Nanaimo, 2005-10-04
- Hee Chuck L.L.D. Wong (obituary), Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2003-11-25
- Fred Gain Quong Wong (obituary), Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2004-06-17
- Gunn Hee (Gunner) Wong (obituary), Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2014-06-10
- Chapter closes in city's restaurant history, Nanaimo News Bulletin (Chris Bush), 2014-06-18
- Alice G.L. Wong (nee Lee) (obituary), Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2021-11-21
- Nanaimo's historic Chinatown artists' pieces see new light alongside contemporary works, Nanaimo News Bulletin (Jessica Durling), 2026-01-20
- Bleached by the Sun: Perspectives on Chinatown, Nanaimo Art Gallery, 2026
- Restaurants facing challenging times, Nanaimo News Bulletin (Toby Gorman), 2012-08-28
- Wool on Wolves focused on quality, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2011-09-16
- Theatre explores power balance, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2011-03-28
- Moulin Rouge night aids Hospice House, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2012-04-08
- Best of the City, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2012-06-26
- Arts alive with creativity, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2012-12-27
- Western Edge Theatre hosts sensuous fundraiser, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2017-02-21
- Monster Dash supports newly merged society in Nanaimo, Nanaimo News Bulletin (Chris Bush), 2019-10-24
- Warming centres for people experiencing homelessness open today in Nanaimo, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 2021-01-18
- Nanaimo non-profit lays off staff, shutters services after possible misappropriation of money, Nanaimo News Bulletin (Chris Bush), 2021-12-09
- Notice: appointment to the Nanaimo Port Authority board of directors (City Hall address), Nanaimo News Bulletin / City of Nanaimo, 2024-09-25
