A downtown Oakville restaurateur already struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic says he plans to fight what he sees as an unreasonable enforcement of Covid regulations by Halton Public Health.
On December 23, 2020, George Couto, the owner of Seasons Restaurant, was fined $1760 in two tickets for violations of the Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Halton Region has only issued six such tickets to Oakville restaurants according to an emailed statement from Halton Public Health. Enforcement is done in response to complaints.
The first ticket for $880 was issued for an infraction on December 18 when Couto says a table of customers lingered over coffee for fifteen minutes past the 10 p.m. mandated close. The second ticket for the same amount was issued for exceeding the 10-person capacity limit for a few minutes on December 19 as one table of diners was leaving and another table was arriving. “These people were paying their bill and leaving as these other four people were coming in, and I wasn’t going to turn them away because I need the business,” Couto explains.
Both times, a pair of bylaw officers showed up to tell him he was in violation, and to take pictures, but he says he didn’t know he was being charged until December 23.
“This was a very aggressive approach,” Couto says. “I could understand, like if I had 35 people in here and the capacity was 10, but I was just in a transition as four people were leaving and four people were coming in.”
“I’ve been here for 23 years, and we all, as restaurant people in downtown Oakville have been very cooperative with restaurant restrictions. What we were asked for, we did.”
For Couto, what hurt more than the actual fines was the fact a pedestrian walking by singled out his restaurant to complain to authorities. “Someone on Lakeshore, a resident, had to call bylaw to say, ‘I think I counted 13 people in the restaurant instead of only 10.’ That’s what it came down to. From outside the restaurant, you can’t tell there are two staff sitting in the restaurant who are allowed to be there, who don’t count towards the limit.”
According to a spokesperson for Halton Region enforcement officers aim to educate first before fining. In an email statement from Halton Public Health, officers “work with owners and operators to ensure they are educated on current public health prevention and transmission of COVID-19 recommendations. If necessary, the inspector will issue a ticket.”
For Couto’s part, he’d have liked authorities to have communicated better and show a little more understanding. "It took me two and a half weeks to explain to them I have more than the one restaurant here that I am utilizing."
“Look, I’m 57-years-old and the last thing I want to do is put a mortgage on my house to keep the business going, but that is what I’ve had to do this year. I’ve been lucky enough to have friends lend us money to keep going, but I have to pay everyone back eventually and how can I do that with a 10-person limit on an 6,000-square-foot establishment licensed for 260 people?”
The fines were a disheartening cap off to a terrible year.
In March, Couto had to close two of his other restaurants, Corks and Maluca -- casualties to almost four years of construction in downtown Oakville, and then the pandemic restrictions. He has had to lay off more than 30 staff, keeping his remaining restaurants Seasons and Brü going on a skeleton crew of five.
On September 30, Couto lost his wife and business partner Tammy Couto just six days after receiving a devastating diagnosis. The lower back pain troubling her earlier in the month was not sciatica as she had thought but cancer that had spread everywhere in her body.
In the fall and early winter, the front of Seasons Restaurant became a memorial as clients and community members dropped flowers and cards to show support. In her obituary, Tammy was remembered as a tireless host and philanthropist who had a special way of making everyone feel welcomed. A few months before she passed, the Rotary Club had honoured the couple with the Paul Harris Fellowship for their activities supporting local charities like the Fare Share Food Bank, the United Way, the Princess Margaret Hospital Cancer Centre, the Oakville Community Foundation and the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, among others.
As a way of honouring his late wife’s generous spirit, Couto has been running a food drive for Kerr Street Community Services outside his restaurant since Christmas Eve, while the filmmaker Tony Hall is running a concurrent online fundraiser for the mission as a way of supporting his friend’s desire to raise $10,000 in the month of January.
“He’s a philanthropic soul," Hall says. "He could use a leg up right now. Despite this most recent shut down, Seasons continues to collect food for families in crisis at a time where food banks are needing it most.”
Couto says despite everything, his spirits have been buoyed by the community response. “Everyone’s lost something or someone this past year. It’s amazing how many people have come in to say I lost my sister or my mother. It’s not just the business and community (the pandemic) is affecting. It’s affecting people’s personal lives.”