Owners of Quebec City's oldest Chinese restaurant fear losing parking lot to safe injection site

The Wok 'n Roll  is Quebec City's oldest Chinese restaurant in what was once the capital's Chinatown.

But its owners are unhappy with the city's plans to build a safe injection site for the city's intravenous drug users on land the Wok 'n Roll now rents from the city and uses as a parking lot for its customers and tenants.

The restaurant is the last vestige of what once was the city's downtown Chinese quarter.

Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume has designated the land behind the Wok 'n Roll for the proposed safe injection site, with construction to be completed in 2020.

In an interview Thursday, co-owner Napoleon Woo said he believes that by revoking his access to the parking lot, the city is trying to push him out.

"I'm the last one."

Labeaume did not respond to repeated requests from CBC News for comment on Woo's allegation that his business would end up as collateral damage.

"We've been here for three generations," said Jaime-Kate Woo, his daughter and co-owner.

"We have rented this land [from the city] for 35 years," she said. "Thirty-five years of paying the taxes and snow removal."

This isn't the first time the family's restaurant, once called Woo House, has stood in the way of bigger plans.

Chinatown expropriated for expressway

In the 1960s, when Transport Quebec decided to build an expressway linking the capital's eastern suburbs with Upper Town, a large swath of the Saint-Roch district of the lower town was expropriated to build the towers supporting aerial overpasses.

Napoleon Woo feels the city is intent on erasing the last vestige of Quebec City's Chinatown.

The city denied him a permit to connect his business to the natural gas line running in front of the Wok 'n Roll, explaining there was a moratorium on digging up the street.

Woo appealed to the city's ombudsman, who ruled in his favour. But the city still would not budge.

Mayor Labeaume was originally opposed to having a safe injection site in Saint-Roch, seeing the city-centre zone as prime for development.

Nearby is the historic Gare du Palais railway station, the courthouse and the headquarters of Quebec's auto insurance board (SAAQ), as well as the École nationale de l'administration publique, a graduate school in the Université du Québec network.

Napoleon Woo added there are three daycare centres, a primary school, and a new YMCA under construction nearby.

His daughter, Jaime-Kate, said the area wouldn't be safe for drug users, with busy traffic on and off the expressway and on Charest Boul. potentially presenting a danger to impaired drug users.

Labeaume has said he is not surprised there is opposition from residents, but the city needs a safe injection site.

Proponents of the project say concerns should be addressed

Public health officials estimate there are about 900 intravenous drug users in the Quebec City region.

About 200 Saint-Roch residents and merchants came to the first public meeting about the proposed site last week, expressing more misgivings than praise for the idea, which has been under discussion in the city for a decade.

Marc De Koninck, the community services officer with the local health and social services agency (CIUSSS), said he is hopeful the consultations will convince opponents that a safe injection site will reduce deaths, making the plan worthwhile.

"The population doesn't always fully understand what's at stake," De Koninck said.

Pierre Frappier, who has advocated for a supervised injection site in Quebec City for nearly a decade, said the concerns of residents and merchants should be addressed.

"People who haven't been informed properly, who have fears it could generate [an increase] in crime, [an increase] in drug use, violence in the street — but that won't be the case," Frappier said.

Jaime-Kate Woo is not convinced, however.

She said in the past she often found syringes on the street, but there have been changes in Saint-Roch over the last 10 to 15 years and she now rarely sees drug needles.

"[The city thinks], 'Oh, we're not going to be like Vancouver and these big cities.' But it happened before. It's in our history, and it can happen again."