Fire at Sooke strip mall leaves businesses closed on Boxing Day<\/p>\n
Published 11:50 am Friday, December 26, 2025<\/p>\n
Several Sooke businesses will be closed on Boxing Day after a blaze tore through a strip mall in the early morning of Friday, Dec. 26.<\/p>\n
Photos taken by a Sooke News Mirror reporter show the ruined facade of Barb\u2019s Barber Shop at Cedar Grove Centre. The neighbouring Happy Village restaurant also suffered some exterior damage.<\/p>\n
According to Barb Vix, owner of Barb\u2019s Barber Shop \u2013 which has been at that location for 40 years \u2013 the fire started at around 2:30 a.m. after a bench outside caught fire, though no cause has been confirmed.<\/p>\n
\u201c[First responders] were here in record timing. When they got the call, they said that they didn\u2019t have much hope because of the age of this building. But they were here right away. It is an old building. It\u2019s the first mall in Sooke. It\u2019s the original mall,\u201d said Vix.<\/p>\n
She said most of the damage was concentrated on the exterior of the building, though a pipe was damaged, causing some flooding inside. She plans to salvage the front door, as it\u2019s original to the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fire department is fantastic. The RCMP out here is so helpful. Nobody speculates, everybody says it exactly the way it is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The community also came out to help and show support in the morning, Vix added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very helpful with the people that showed up, you know. I help up the community so the community helps,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
As of 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 26, almost every business in the mall was closed other than Cafe Vosino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fire at Sooke strip mall leaves businesses closed on Boxing Day Published 11:50 am Friday, December 26, 2025…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,879,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-370723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}