Before they opened their restaurant Jon and Tracey loved to take road trips through rural BC. They also loved dining out. Unfortunately the two passions were hard to combine back then. Dining in small town BC wasn't what it could be. ‘Northern Exposure' fantasies led them to believe it didn't need to be that way. "When we found Nelson we knew we'd found our Twin Peaks", says Langille, whatever that means.

Others throughout the province have made similar moves to bring innovative quality dining to their towns. Witness Olive Oyl's in Rossland, The Strand in Invermere, and de Montreuil in Kelowna.  

Nelson is one of the most surprising towns in Canada. Its dense early century architecture, anchored between gorgeous mountains and the west arm of Kootenay Lake is populated with a cosmopolitan mix of generations-old families, urban émigrés, international spies and freewheelin' franklins. A perfect place they thought to plant their idea of a perfect restaurant.

"It's turned out to be everything we hoped it would be, and then some", says Scanlan about her life and business in Nelson. Quite a comment considering that both her and Langille have lived and worked in some of the most interesting and beautiful places in the world.

Before Nelson and the All Seasons Café, Jon and Tracey had been honing their wine and food knowledge for a couple of years at some of the more innovative and influential restaurants of Victoria, especially Herald Street Caffe.

Before that they were a couple of n'er-do-well backpacking restaurant shmoes who had enjoyed several years abroad with extended stints in England (Tracey's native land), Australia, Asia, and the Caribbean where they met in 1991.

To All Seasons Café they bring a little bit of their favourite places in the world; The Crows Nest on Grand Cayman Island, BJ's in Sydney Australia, Café Santa Fe in Todo Santos Mexico, La Coupee in London, Michaels in Bristol, Café Santropole in Montreal.