Now Open: Capilano Herbal Apothecary

The new Capilano Herbal Apothecary is a matrilineal enterprise.

This sweet new tea café is run by two Squamish First Nation mother-daughter pairs, Cease and Senaqwila Wyss and Michelle and Paisley Nahanee, who, between them, contribute diverse areas of expertise to the business, from graphic design to foraging. (Credit where it’s due: two pairs of grandmothers also provided décor in the form of hand-sewn seating cushions made from repurposed Cowichan sweaters. Lovely.) Cease, an educator and expert in herbal medicine, has been gathering traditional indigenous herbs for more than 20 years, and carefully blends local wild raspberry leaf, stinging nettle, clover and more into fortifying teas you can buy hot or iced (on opening weekend 1,200-plus cups were sold, temporarily depleting the shop’s stock of the sweet rose hip and peppermint Spring Tonic blend—though we recommend the garnet-red hawthorn-infused Love Me blend, too). Capilano also serves homemade sodas in rotating flavours like rose petal lemonade and chamomile ginger ale and is Vancouver’s only purveyor of Zapatista coffee, proceeds from which support food sovereignty in southeastern Mexico.

With contemporary indigenous food plus a line of healing homemade herbal tinctures on the docket for summer, this soulful cafe is set to flourish. —Adrienne Matei

Capilano Herbal Apothecary, 1875 Powell St., Vancouver, 604-336-2567, www.thecapilano.com