Four weeks after a bomb scare in her building, Iroquois Falls restaurant owner Elyse Comé is still badly shaken.
Comé and her husband Rob own North 141 Restaurant. They live in one of the apartments in their building and rent out the other two.
On Thursday, August 1st, one of the two tenants in one of the units told her there might be a bomb in it. She called 9-1-1 and provincial police shut down part of the downtown core – which includes several houses – for most of the evening. She says they haven’t told her yet whether charges have been laid.
Comé says she won’t open the restaurant until September 13th, figuring she’ll have adequately dealt with several feelings by then.
“Scared, nervous, I can’t even explain,” she says, haltingly. “Unsafe in my home, not anything that I ever thought I would experience.”
Comé says she’ll never rent out the apartments again, either.
The tenant was seven months behind on rent payments, and she unloads on the Landlord and Tenant Board for delays in evicting him.
“The system is unfair and allows innocent hardworking to get ran through the coals with the laws that are in place, so I just prefer not to deal with it anymore.”
The law does allow for a background check, but Comé says “it’s easy to lie”.
