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It was a sunny, but chilly afternoon on Feb. 13, 2023, when Desautels sat down to talk with the Cambridge Times, and a missing key ingredient had yet to arrive in time for Valentine’s Day. It was a scene out of the American dramedy series “The Bear,” which Desautels relayed with a chuckle, his staff refused to watch because “it’s too relatable.”

Like “The Bear” uncouthly underlines, the restaurant industry is full of financial stresses, so Desautels’ commitment to reconciliation may come across as naively altruistic to the callous Canadian restaurateur and entrepreneurial world. But Desautels disagrees.

“Incentive-wise, it’s just good business. Your guests and your staff will be more emotionally invested. You will have better engagement,” said Desautels, adding it’s also about staying ahead of the game.

“What does the Canadian culinary scene really mean?” he asked rhetorically, picking up from his father’s musings. To Desautels, the Canadian food landscape is not yet an open table for conversations on what the Canadian terroir offers.

That is, “unless you’re a fine dining restaurant, and we wanted to create something that’s more approachable,” he explained. This first exploration led to opening Borealis, where local food is celebrated.

But the question of what was Canadian food remained, namely “how can we tell the story of Canadian food, and whose right is it to tell that story?” said Desautels. He and his father were sure of one thing, though: “If we opened a restaurant that focused on Canadian cuisine, we needed to acknowledge the First Peoples.”

So, in 2015, he and his father sat with elders from the community to ask how best to name a restaurant that focused on food from the north, and represented the Indigenous Peoples in the region. They settled on Miijidaa, Ojibwe for let’s eat, a nod to bon appétit, which symbolized people coming together and sharing a meal, he explained.

With support from the local Indigenous community, they launched Guelph’s Miijidaa Café + Bistro, which presents northern food as a milieu of First Nations, French, English, Norsemen and Portuguese cuisine reimagined through dishes like elk scotch egg, three sisters salad, elk-and-pork tourtière and chorizo bowls.

To Desautels, it wasn’t enough to just open a restaurant: structurally, the company needed to acknowledge Indigenous Peoples. They consulted the 94 Calls to Action, and sought guidance from reconciliation thought leader Stephen Jackson, CEO of Anishnabeg Outreach (AO), who provided the company with training into the history and culture of Indigenous Peoples, including the legacy of residential schools, and statistics about the impact of assimilation and lack of reconciliation.

Through this journey, Desautels has become privy to things rarely discussed in the media, such as “the invisible barrier that stops Indigenous businesses from succeeding outside of their own community like lack of proper infrastructure or restrictive government rules,” he noted. The company has also engaged in land stewardship through green initiatives and community involvement.

Late 2022, the company helped weed and plant squash seeds at AO’s Reconciliation Garden, and turned the harvest into a dinner at Miijidaa, whose proceeds were donated to support AO’s Spirit Bundles program.

When asked how other employers could start with their own reconciliation journey, Desautels said, “it can be overwhelming and it can be uncomfortable, but can you pull a weed from the ground? Can you plant a seed? Start there, and see where it grows.”

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: This article is part of the series: Employment through Reconciliation, an ongoing conversation exploring reconciliation through the work of non-profit organization Anishnabeg Outreach. To inquire about Reconciliation training, visit .