Bygone St. Boniface restaurant remembered at Winnipeg documentary festival

The story of eight siblings and their experiences at a restaurant in the heart of industrial St. Boniface is airing this weekend.

El Toro is a documentaryabout its namesake restaurant, a St. Boniface-area truck stop diner, nestled between Canada Packers and the Union Stockyards in the 1960s and 70s.

The restaurant was owned by filmmaker Danielle Sturk's grandparents. In the documentary, Sturk details the experiences of the family'seight children.

"The film is really an effort at reconstructing it through memories, through the audio stories of my aunts and uncles," Sturksaid.

"It recounts their experiences and many times, they have the same experiences told from different points of view."

While the restaurant is no more, it was recreated through film and animation to help tell the story of the DeGagn family's life, and El Toro's role as a hub to the family and in the community, Sturksaid.

The 45-minute documentary was recorded over multiple years, Sturksaid, and has nine chapters. One of them tells the story of the blizzard of 1966, which swept across swaths of North America.

"A few [people] were caught in the restaurant over night and had to sleep on tables," Sturk said.

She said during the blizzard, her family provided for the community by cookingfor people who were stuck in the surrounding area.

The documentary is part of Winnipeg's annual documentary film festival,Gimme Some Truth.

El Toro airs Sunday at Cinematheque. The first showingat 7 p.m. is sold out.Itspopularityhas prompted a second screening, which followsat 8:30 p.m.

with files from Radio-Canada