Herb Lagois, founder of Lagois Design-Build-Renovate, has good early memories of a young Jason Moore, now co-owner of the Marlborough Pub in North Gower. 

Jason spent a lot of time hanging out at the Lagois family home when Jason and Herb’s son, Andrew, friends since Grade 5 at North Gower Public School, played hockey together. 

“Jason was just one of those guys you had to have on the team,” Herb says with a smile. “He’s a great person.”

The boys won a hockey championship together and to this day Jason hangs a banner from the ceiling of The Marlborough. His own son now plays hockey, and Lagois Design·Build·Renovate has supported the team. 

Another friend of Jason’s, Steve Moffatt, worked with him in their early teens at a grocery store and restaurant. They always said they’d start their own restaurant together. 

In 2007 they took the plunge and bought an old “greasy spoon” in the village of North Gower. It took three months of renovation: “We gutted it right down to the studs,” Jason says. 

They opened the brand-new Marlborough Pub on Roger Stevens Drive on the long weekend in August that year, thinking everyone would be away and they’d have some quiet time to get up and running. 

What they didn’t figure was that the people in the community, who had been watching the purchase of the old place and the renovations with great interest and anticipation, were just waiting for this moment. The place exploded with customers. The proud new owners were run off their feet.

Since then the business has become busier and busier every year. Jason says the pub attracts people “from everywhere”, and it helps that it is right on the route of so many cottagers coming and going.

Jason and Steve are active in the community in other ways. They’re in the midst of another Food Bank fundraising campaign. What customers add to their bill for the Food Bank is matched equally by the owners.

Before the pandemic, Jason and Steve chose local causes to raise money for. One year, for a seriously ill child in the community, they raised $26,000 for the family.

Next year they hope to go back to fundraising for local causes.

“Jason has always been super-supportive of our initiatives, too,” Herb says. “Whether it’s our golf tournament or Ride for ROSSS, you don’t even have to ask him. 

“The answer is always yes.”