Caroline Tanguay brought her son Noé to their favourite Montreal flower shop on a recent Wednesday afternoon, only to find the locale empty and abandoned. A pair of handwritten signs on the store window — one in French, one in English — informed them that the Mile End institution had moved.

Owner Tamey Lau has uprooted Dragon Flowers from the Bernard St. block it called home for more than four decades and reopened a few streets over and around the corner, on St-Laurent Blvd.

“It’s nice,” Tanguay said, surveying the new digs. “This store means a lot to me. I’ve been coming here for 20 years. When there are important moments — birthdays, difficult things — I always come and she asks, ‘What’s the occasion?’”

As Lau added some extra flowers to her purchase as a gift, Tanguay repeated a familiar refrain: Beyond being a haven for beautiful bouquets, the shop’s enduring appeal has everything to do with the woman who runs it.

Known throughout the area (and even on Google Maps) simply as Tamey, Lau is the flowery godmother of Mile End.

“It’s a relationship,” Tanguay said. “She’s an anchor, a person everyone loves here. We want to keep her forever.”

Lau has sold and gifted flowers to successive generations of Montrealers. Working from early morning to late at night — and for a time all through the night — she has forever been a beacon of goodwill and good cheer. And she has done it all as a single mom raising 14 children.

“Bernard St. helped me; it saved me,” said Lau, who........

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