He was there every day, the moment the restaurant opened, for as many as 15 years.
Wayne Wilson's interminable patronage made it feel like he was part of the staff at Clearwater's Painted Turtle Restaurant. Indeed, staff came to view the affable Vavenby man as part of their family.
"He was the first customer every day, he was here by 8 a.m. if not before that," Marlo Rhodes, front of house manager with the restaurant, told The Clearwater Times.
Wilson even had his own table at the Painted Turtle, located inside where nobody else is allowed to sit.
When Wilson passed away on Sept. 4, three days before his 79th birthday, it was a blow not only to his family, but to the folks at the restaurant, who paid tribute to him on social media.
In the Sept. 6 post, the Painted Turtle shared a photo of Wilson's table, complete with reserved signage and a note that reads: "In loving memory of Wayne."
"Your table is still and will always be here with great memories together," the post reads.
For two weeks after his death, Wilson's table remained reserved — a temporary monument to a man who would "walk in like he owned the place," joked Rhodes, and tell her "Hi honey, I'm home" as he came in.
"He could talk to anybody," Rhodes added.
"Our customers are everything to us, we try to treat them that way," she added. "Sometimes there's that special one that sticks out in your mind."
As for Wilson's usual order, Rhodes said she wasn't sure about breakfast, but if he came back for lunch it was usually a grilled cheese and soup. If he came later in the afternoon, pasta was his staple.
Wilson's daughter, Bobbi-Jean Esslemont, told The Clearwater Times that the restaurant staff's feeling that they had a family member in her father went both ways.
"He adored everybody that worked there. They were so, so nice to him and treated him like family — well, better than family," she said.
Wilson was a boilermaker by trade and worked with a union up until he retired. He was a hard worker, said Esslemont. He travelled the world with his work and lived life fully.
"He just did what he wanted to do, and then he found Vavenby and this became his home, and he was accepted here," she said.
It should be noted that Vavenby is a 25-minute drive to the Painted Turtle in Clearwater, which shows how dedicated Wilson was to visiting his favourite haunt every day.
The daily drive was worth it; the Painted Turtle, looking out on Dutch Lake, was Wilson's little piece of tranquility.
"He always would tell me about the restaurant on the lake where he would just go and have peace and serenity, looking out at the loons and the turtles, and the ladies knew exactly what he wanted, and he just found peace there," Esslemont said. "He loved to just sit there and have his morning coffee, and sometimes sit with other people and sometimes not."
Wilson had a passion for classic cars. He restored and built old hot rods from scratch. What appeared to his daughter to be nothing more than scrap metal were in fact projects waiting to be turned into carefully refined vehicles by Wilson's steady hands and impressive car knowledge.
He grew up in Nanaimo and was with the Dukes Car Club there. In Vavenby, he was involved in the Cruisin' Clearwater car show and would bring out his 1927 Roadster to events.
Ryan Mackenzie, founder of Cruisin' Clearwater, said Wilson was a fervent supporter of the car show and attended many of its activities.
"He was always a happy guy and would never have anything bad to say about a guy," Mackenzie said of Wilson.
Cruisin' Clearwater organized a tribute for Wilson a week after his death. Around 20 vehicles gathered at the Clearwater Tim Hortons and met Wilson's family before cruising to the Painted Turtle, where they all signed a tablecloth in Wilson's honour.
Before that, they made sure to "peel rubber" in front of Wilson's house — something his daughter said he would have loved.
Wilson seemed to leave a positive impression on the people he met, even the electrician who was working on his house the day he died.
Shanna Boyes was that electrician. She's the one who called 911 and performed CPR until paramedics arrived.
"Sadly he never responded to the CPR," Boyes said. "I knew him from around town and he was a great, friendly, nice guy."
Esslemont said the hardest part of saying goodbye to her father was thinking of how much he loved his granddaughter and great granddaughters.
"The week before he had passed, he came to Alberta and he said he wasn't doing very well, and he said it was really important that he spend time with his girls, and that's what we did," she said. "He got to spend his last moments laughing with his girls, and he loved them to bits."
