On one of his final nights at the Kennedy House, Maurice “Moe” Basque approaches a familiar table carrying two coffee pots. The group has kept the same reservation, on the same night of the week, for years. Moe pours as if following a choreography only he knows—regular, then decaf—switching without looking, skipping the cups that never take refills, landing each pour exactly where it belongs.
A joke comes his way. He lets it sit, then answers it—dry, precise—and the table erupts. Moe smiles and completes the circuit. This is usually the point where he would drift on to the next table. Instead, he stops.
“I’ll miss moments like this,” he says candidly. “It’s been an honour and a privilege to serve you.”
A small ripple of applause moves through the dining room. Across the table, a woman fights back tears.
“It’s the end of an era, Moe,” she says.
For Moe, moments like these have always been the work itself.
He arrived in St. Andrews from his hometown of Bathurst in the fall of 1994 to study hotel and restaurant management at New Brunswick Community College. Like many who come for a season and stay for a lifetime, he was taken quickly—with the town, the people, the maritime beauty of the peninsula.
“By the time I finished my second year,” he told The Courier, “I had fallen in love with St. Andrews.”
That affection became a career spent in many of the town’s best-known hospitality rooms—from Water Street mainstays to the world-famous Algonquin Resort—before bringing him back to the Kennedy House in 2007. He began in the kitchen, then moved out front, where his ease with people emerged as his greatest gift.
“I’ve worked in practically every place in this town,” Moe said. “But once I moved out front at the Kennedy, I stayed.”
Built in 1881, the Kennedy House has gone by several names—the Commodore Inn and the Shiretown Inn among them—before returning to its original one. Under the stewardship of owner Dominique Berlenger, who took over in 2022, the building has been carefully renewed, preserving its character while easing it into a new era. The walls are lined with historic photographs that trace the town’s long memory.
Moe sometimes gestures toward a 19th-century image of the Kennedy House while chatting with guests. If you look closely enough, he jokes, you can spot him—already at work.
“There have been six owners here,” he says, as if the observation isn’t entirely theoretical. “I’ve worked for three.”
Regulars ask for Moe by name. Visitors return, hoping he’ll be there. His favourite time to work is winter, when the pace slows and tables stay longer than planned.
Behind the scenes, the bonds run just as deep.
“My relationship with my co-workers is what I’ll miss most,” Moe said. “You sweat together. You see each other at your best and your worst. That creates something.”
He speaks just as warmly of Berlenger. “In my 36 years, Dominique was the best boss I ever had,” he said. “He understood what made the Kennedy special—and knew how to carry it forward.”
Moe may be stepping off the floor, but he isn’t leaving St. Andrews. He will continue selling advertising for The Courier and CHCO-TV, staying connected to the community he knows so well—a community he is now inseparable from.
In a town admired for its architecture, its ocean views, and its long history, it is often people like Moe—present, perceptive, unmistakably themselves—who quietly turn a place into somewhere people feel they belong.
