The owner of the Main Grill and Ale House is describing Monday as “an emotional day” after it was announced Kingsville and Leamington would be moving into Stage 2 of the province's reopening framework beginning Tuesday morning.
Heather Brown says it’s been a long road to this point and she's hoping it's not too little too late for the dozens of businesses that have been waiting to reopen.
Brown is thanking mayors Hilda MacDonald and Nelson Santos for pushing hard on behalf of their municipalities.
"Thank you to everybody who worked so diligently and hard to get us to where we need to be,” says Brown. “We were kind of feeling a little bit left out in the past little bit since part of our county was able to open and we were unfortunately not, but we understood there was a reason and we needed to get past that."
Brown says this is just the beginning of getting back to normal.
"The emotions were running pretty high because we were excited and we want to keep persevering and doing the right thing,” she says. “We want to stand behind everybody and make sure that we are all in this together. That has been our goal from the very beginning. It's good news and we're happy. We're beyond happy."
Brown says it's great news, but they weren't getting their hopes up.
"We were pretty sad last week. So many people had written letters. We kind of were hoping, but the scary part of that is that as soon as you hope you don't want to be disappointed. So now we're ready and willing and raring to go."
Kingsville and Leamington were the last two towns in the province stuck at Stage 1 due to a high number of COVID-19 cases in the agri-farm sector.
The rest of Windsor-Essex moved to Stage 2 on June 25.
— With files from AM800's Rob Hindi