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Diaries of a Lodge Owner
In 2009, sheet metal mechanic, Steve Niedzwiecki, turned his passions into reality using steadfast belief in himself and his vision by investing everything in a once-obscure run-down Canadian fishing lodge.
After ten years, the now-former lodge owner and co-host of The Fish'n Canada Show is here to share stories of inspiration, relationships and the many struggles that turned his monumental gamble into one of the most legendary lodges in the country.
From anglers to entrepreneurs, athletes to conservationists; you never know who is going to stop by the lodge.
Diaries of a Lodge Owner
Episode 110: The Hidden Seasons of Lodge Life
Ever wondered what happens at your favorite fishing lodge when the boats are stored and the last guest drives away? The magic of those perfect summer days on the water doesn't materialize from thin air—it's crafted through months of behind-the-scenes work during what lodge owners call "the hidden seasons."
The rhythmic cycle of lodge ownership follows a pattern invisible to most guests. As Thanksgiving marks the season's end, an emotional reset begins alongside the monumental task of winterizing an entire island property. Family and returning staff gather for one final celebration before tackling deep cleaning, plumbing shutdown, and protective measures against the harsh northern winter. These closing rituals—washing every Hudson's Bay blanket, disassembling washing machine solenoids, and covering screened porches—create some of the most cherished memories for lodge owners.
The off-season transforms into a race against nature's calendar. Massive infrastructure projects like rebuilding century-old fireplaces or pouring concrete pathways become possible only during these quiet months. One project alone required handling 1,100 bags of concrete multiple times—from mainland store to boat to island to mixer—all by hand. Meanwhile, the business side continues with booking management, equipment maintenance, and strategic planning for the coming year. Unlike traditional lodge marketing that once required traveling to sportsman shows across North America, today's success comes from creating such memorable experiences that guests become natural ambassadors.
Spring brings its own challenges as ice-out timing remains unpredictable, sometimes compressing weeks of opening procedures into mere days. Through it all, the emotional sustainability of this lifestyle hinges on these quieter seasons providing the necessary reset. As one owner reflects, "I don't think I would have lasted as long as I did if you didn't have an off-season." So next time you're enjoying that perfect sunset from the dock, remember the months of northern grit and dedication that made that moment possible.
My favorite time of the year. I didn't really have a favorite season until I owned the lodge and, honestly, my favorite season of the year was the fall, closely followed by the spring, because we were going back up, because we were going back up, but coming home and shutting your brain off and not being on 24-7 was huge, like I mean, I don't think I would have lasted as long as I did if you didn't have an off-season. This week. On the Outdoor Journal, radio Podcast, networks, diaries of a Lodge Owner Stories of the North, we're talking about the seasons you never see in a brochure. Sure, guests know the golden days of summer Boats in the water, fish in the net and sunsets that look painted by hand. But what about the months in between, the quiet ones, the cold ones, the ones where the magic is quietly stitched together behind the scenes? On this show, I'm taking you deep into the off-season grind infrastructure improvement and repairs, the bookings battles, the weather guessing game and the little victories that make the big season possible. From chasing the best deals on new boats in January to pouring concrete in the fall, these are the days when the backbone of the lodge is built. So if you ever wondered what really happens when the guests go home, the docks come out and the water freezes over. Pull up a chair. We're heading into the hidden seasons where hard work, quiet, dedication and a little northern grit keeps the dream alive until the ice melts again.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Diaries of a Lodge Owner. Folks, steve, here with you again, and yes, today we are talking about running a lodge, but not just the part that you see. We're going to be talking about the all year round rhythm for lack of a better term the planning, the prepping, the pivoting. You know, we are going to pull back the curtain on the off-season work that makes the busy season, if you want to call it the busy season, possible, and we're going to reveal to everybody the things that guests may never see and always benefit from. So we're going to talk about a few things, like the true off-season hustle when it comes to infrastructure improvement and all of that kind of stuff. We're going to talk about boats and gear and big purchases, the bookings chess game, which is a huge one, you know, nature's calendar I like to call it because you never knew when you were going to be able to get in because of the ice out, and when does that happen and how the heck do you plan for it? And what was big for me? The emotional reset, and we'll talk about all of that and more right now. So why don't we dive into it? The true off-season hustle? We'll call it. You know, from the point where guests leave at Thanksgiving to the point that I get to come home and that part of the season, as much work as it is, it was always a wonderful feeling for me, and that kind of goes into the last point that I pointed out in the overview, which is the emotional reset and the reason that the Thanksgiving was always so special for me.
Speaker 1:The Thanksgiving was always so special for me. Number one all of my family would come up and help me close Family, friends and I looked forward to that and all of the staff that makes it through. Typically, by that time of the year it's staff that is returning staff, because any of the students that we hire from university, college, whatever, they're already going back to school or have already left at the beginning of September to go back to school. So by Thanksgiving, the staff that was remaining was staff that was year round. Well, I shouldn't say year round, but they would come back year after year, and uh and my family, and it was uh an amazing. We would have Thanksgiving dinner. That was our last meal of the uh of the season and, um, we would have all of the guests, all of the staff, all of my family myself in the main in the, in the dining room and it was a a big buffet and and and a home style cooked meal. We had food on the table, we had food in the chafing, chafing dishes and it was just a huge party. It was a get together and where we were thankful for everything, thankful for another year, and that was the magic of that day.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I knew was the end is near for this year and the work that we had to do to close the lodge was daunting, to say the least, in the first few years, but once we figured it out it wasn't bad. So we would start with deep cleaning the cottages and by deep cleaning them. We're taking all of the linens out. We are washing all of the linens. All of the curtains on the windows come out and get washed. The girls are steam cleaning all of the carpets. We're washing down all the walls. We're truly cleaning everything. There's not one part of the inside of those cottages that don't get wiped down by hand and once they're done, then at that point they're clean.
Speaker 1:And during this process, the guys and myself so when I say the guys, it's my dad, it's some of the doc well, really, for the cottages, Honestly it was my dad, it was Billy Bosher, dad's buddy, he was our dad's tool manager. So you know my dad. He'd maybe leave the odd tool line around and Bill would follow around and pick up after him, make sure we didn't lose too many tools, and he would make lists of things that I would need, which was, you know, a wonderful skill that was not in my skill set. I usually just tried to remember all of the shit that we needed. But you know, bill, when Bill was on the job, I would get texts of lists and those lists were key because as they went and they were working on closing the plumbing really and I should have mentioned that off the top, closing the plumbing, all of the things that Dad and Bill would see that I needed, they would make note of and I would get the list and then I could just bring them, go to town, get them, uh, bring, find them on site and bring it out to them. Um, but their job was to um, winterize the plumbing system which is your water and your septic, and we got that down to a science towards the end, the first year that we went there and we didn't do it. Oh, what a nightmare.
Speaker 1:We learned about plumbing on that island like you wouldn't believe. We replaced I stopped counting at over 200 broken pipes, took us near, oh, it was better part of two weeks to get it open and fixed so that we could run water without it spraying all over the place, but anyway, so they would go and they would shut down all of the uh the water, um, uh, the septic inside the cottages. And then the girls would follow and they would deep clean. And the girls at that time, honestly, were Diane God rest her soul my housekeeper, server, manager, who was always there to the end, my mom, my aunt, my gram and maybe one or two of the girls that were staying behind Jen was one that was there a lot and all of those cottages would get shut down and it would take, you know, 14 cottages to to to deep clean the proper way and then do all of the linens, like all of the sheets, and everything would come out.
Speaker 1:We would wash everything and we had two sets of um, uh, of uh, king, um uh linens for all of the beds and we had two sets of twin linens. So there was a shit ton of linens, all of the blankets and at the end we would wash those and the Hudson's Bay blankets need to air dry. And it was a process. And then, because Diane told me to, we would always take all of the linens out of the laundry room and we would store them in the Kingfisher, which was the cottage right next to the laundry room, because that cottage was um, was very uh, um, it was sealed up very nicely and, uh, we didn't have to worry about rodents and and unwanted critters over the winter getting into our, our stuff. So that's, um, that's where we would, would store that stuff.
Speaker 1:And then there's once the laundry is done, you got to winterize every washing machine, which means opening up the machine and pulling out the solenoid valve, because inevitably water gets stuck inside that solenoid and when it freezes it busts the solenoid and it got to the. Well, jerry told me that and he said that he couldn't find solenoids anymore for them. So he said, make sure you get that apart, and you do that right or you're replacing the laundry machine, the washing machine and fortunately, we did that every year. It took time. We did it every year, though, and never had that problem, and Jerry was the former owner of the lodge telling me this One of the pieces of information that I got from Jerry that was very helpful, and that whole process to shut down everything depending on the season and how fast we wanted to get out was about a week to 10 days, and, as you can imagine, having my family up there, my aunt and uncle, uncle Chuck his job was to run around on the golf cart and bring tools, and he would clean stuff up, and the big job was putting up the tarps on all of the cottages, which was a big job, man.
Speaker 1:You had to climb up on the ladders and we had hooks, because we covered up all of the screened porches on the cottages to protect the well, to block the UV from going into the cottages over the winter and to save our screens from freezing rain and wind and everything else. So you know, everybody had a little, had their own job after a while, and again to be there with those people, and they're up there doing this out of the goodness of their heart. My family like I, wasn't paying them, you know and Aunt Beth and Uncle Barry, in the early years they were we ate well. I made sure that we always had good food and we some, you know, those memories of family and friends are really some of the best memories that I have and some of and I get the question a lot Do you miss the lodge?
Speaker 1:And that answer is a hard one for me and it varies depending on my mood and the day. But, to be honest with you, the one thing that I truly miss all the time and I find myself thinking back fondly on those days, those days when we're closing and those days when we're opening, and those were magic times for me and we all built something that we were all very proud of and I couldn't have done it without those people. And once you get the lodge closed and everybody kind of starts to go home, that you have for infrastructure improvement or repair is in that short window in the off-season, and you have a finite amount of time in the fall and an extremely finite amount of time in the spring. An extremely finite amount of time in the spring and the fall was always a time when if I had big infrastructure improvement plans that I needed to do, I tried to plan them for the fall, simply because after you're done closing, you've got probably about a month, month and a half to work there before you're iced out before the. You can't get there. Day comes and things like.
Speaker 1:I remember one year I was under the main lodge under the floor and everything is built on rock on the island. There's not much soil under there and I had noticed that around, like our fireplace in the main lodge, it backed into the dish pit and then it faced out into the lounge and there was a wall coming off of the side of the fireplace and it went straight up through the main building and in the dish pit. I'm pretty sure at some point they had a that was the kitchen and they were running a cook stove out of there. And because there was a capped off hole in the back of the fireplace where it looked like somebody run a um, like a stove pipe and uh, I'm sure it would have come off an old cook stove. But um, uh, the back of it was painted but you could tell it was starting to get. There was a little bit of wear and nothing in that old building is flat or square or level. And I was underneath the lodge looking for a plumbing issue or whatever it was, and I noticed that that fireplace, that the rocks underneath, had started to fall apart. And I got over and I was looking at it and, sure enough, that building was built in 1909.
Speaker 1:And the first structure was that fireplace. And, interestingly enough, the way that they built that fireplace, they took big timbers. So they just cut down pine logs and they weren't huge, but they were big, like I'm going to say, you know, 18 inches in diameter, maybe 20. They honed the top and the bottom flat, just enough. So well, not even the bottom, just the top enough so that they could get floorboards across them. But they built these logs right out of the structure of the fireplace. So they built a stone foundation for the fireplace. Then they put these logs, two coming off to the east, two coming off to the west and four coming off from the front, facing the south and the back. There wasn't anything coming off the back because that whole the dish pit area and that whole kitchen off the back of the lodge that was an afterthought, I don't even know when that went on the building, but the original building was just out from that main chimney and where those logs were going into that concrete over the years from hot and cold. The sleepers or the logs were still in decent shape, but the concrete around them had started to rot. The wood rotted a bit. It would hold moisture, the concrete went all punky, like it was turning back to sand. The rocks were falling out Like the structure was not in good shape at all and I thought, oh no, I don't, I'm not 100% sure what I'm gonna do here. So because I had no money, I basically did everything myself. I ended up in that off season. So this was after we closed Um, I tore up the floor all the way, uh, from the backside of the, uh, of the fireplace.
Speaker 1:So I didn't tear it up in the front, into the, the, into the um, uh lounge, but the whole dish pit and everywhere around that, that, that chimney, in the dish pit. I tore the floors out, I tore the walls out, I tore everything out. You walked into the dish pit, you look down and there were. There were the, the, the joists for the floor and then dirt underneath them and I had about maybe three and a half feet from the bottom of the joists to the ground. We built a mole like a form around the well. First of all I cleaned out all of the loose rock and sand and debris that I could and exposed as many holes into the center of this fireplace as I could that I felt was safe, and then built a form all the way around the front of the fireplace, the sides and the back, and what we ended up doing was we poured concrete and we had to do that.
Speaker 1:My good buddy, tim the Tool man, timmy Kendrew he had given me an old well, not old it was he had given me a gas-powered cement mixer in my first year Said he didn't need it anymore and he looked at me, said I think you're going to need this and actually he fixed the inside of the firebox of that fireplace in that first year and so his fix kept going for about two, three years. And now this I'm year four, year five, I don't even remember and we've got this form built and we had the cement mixer at the back door of the kitchen, mixing cement, pouring it into a wheelbarrow, driving the wheelbarrow through the kitchen and onto a plank, out into the dish pit and up to that form, dumping concrete in there, and then have to get underneath the floor and move that concrete around the front of the form and with a stick I was working that wet concrete into all of the cracks and crevices and areas in the center of this fireplace that I could get the um, the um concrete to go into. And you got to remember when this thing was built, it was 1909, 1910, and concrete was not um, was not a easy commodity to get a hold of. First of all, you were either coming across by boat from North Bay or you were coming by canoe from Highway 69, because there was no roads in back then. There was no roads to get in there, so there was very little concrete that they used. They piled up stones, they did the best they could, but this thing drank concrete.
Speaker 1:It really did, and that project alone cost us. I think it was pretty close and you know I didn't until you actually start pouring concrete and looking at the amount of concrete it actually takes to build something you underestimate so piss poorly that I figured might take 170 bags, 180 bags, you know, looking at it, yeah, no, that job alone was about 750 bags of concrete and we poured all around the bottom in that mold and forced it all inside the chimney and then let that harden and then on the backside of the chimney and the sides, I also brought that form up and that was the second pour. I brought that another four feet above the floor and when the concrete in the first, in the first pour, um, and it took us cause, once you start, once we started on that pour, um, I wanted to make sure that we got it up to the floor level Uh, that was probably I don't know eight hours, eight hours of constant mixing, pouring, moving, jabbing, hitting with the hammer on the form just to get everything to settle into everywhere where you need it to go, and then driving rebar into the soft concrete in the form so that on your next pour you've got that rebar to to lock it together. Anyway, that was my mom, my dad and Mark Plont was on that job, and that was after everything was closed and after everybody left. And and those are the little things that people don't see Not only that um, we then, uh, put a new floor in the dish pit, we put stainless on the walls, we I, I bought a new dishwasher, we redesigned the whole configuration of the kitchen so it flowed properly, put a new sink stainless sink and everything in there Stainless on the walls.
Speaker 1:We redid that whole dish pit and that project, um, that actually, and I'm sure by the time we left that year, mom and dad stayed for a bit, uh, mark and I, uh, I bet you we were there, wow, we were there pretty close to ice out, so it would have been middle of november, ice in, sorry, um, pretty much the middle of November and then, and then we had to call it and and finish it back up in the spring and, um, um, that leads, leads me into, you know, we'll talk about infrastructure improvement in the spring too, because that was that that happened. Uh, a lot as well, because the emotional reset sometimes and the burnout I just didn't have it in me to stay in the fall and with Melissa and the kids at home as much as I should have been doing in the fall. There were projects that I, just because of that, pushed off to the spring.
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Speaker 1:So if we're going in a chronological season, the next season I'd like to talk about is, you know, the winter season and that was always busy because we had the bookings game of chess and I bought the lodge in an interesting time of change when it come to the way that people were marketing, the way that people were selling trips and getting bookings, and traditionally lodge owners in the off-season would take the next four months and travel North America and go to sportsman shows like the Toronto Sportsman Show, the Spring Fishing Show, the Novi Michigan Sportsman Show show. They traveled the United States and some of Canada trying to sell their trips and experiences to people and that's where people would go to find where they want to go, because all of the outfitters are there. If you want to go hunting to a lodge, they're at a sportsman show are there. If you want to go hunting to a lodge, they're at a sportsman show. Well, in the 2000s and particularly the later 2000s and I was one, I think I was a little bit early there weren't a whole lot of people that were doing what I was doing. They were doing it in combination with those sports shows, but I chose to market the business more out of necessity remotely from home, because I had, you know, melissa and Mikey and Rayburn and Maddie a little bit later into my second year, all at home, I had just spent six months at the lodge and I couldn't leave to go to sportsman shows. I did the Toronto sportsman show and I did the spring fishing show in Toronto because they were close to home and I really used those as a place where I could network and meet people.
Speaker 1:You all know that I built Chaudière by television TV shows, television TV shows and the relationships that I built through that. I built it online with the website and that was always such a stressful thing for me, especially in the beginning. I didn't know that I was going to have people coming. I wasn't and right until you know, even when I sold and I was like, if you want to talk occupancy as far as cottages go, like 90% full, the books didn't show that. In January, like I always talk, I would talk to a lot of these old, old lodge owners and and they had a that were established and had a, an older demographic, and they were like oh yeah, we're booked, we're, we're, we're selling in January of, you know, 2014. They're, they're already booked for 2014 and selling into 2015. And I'm looking at my books and they're empty and I'm like holy shit, I don't know. Well, there is not enough in bookings here to cover my opening costs, let alone get me through the season.
Speaker 1:And I found that for me it just was like that the bookings would come in steadily, starting in January and they wouldn't stop coming in until the fall, and 80% of all the the occupancy that I had was I don't want to call it last minute, but it was in the calendar year, like there was very little I had. I had some guests that I knew that they were coming back year after year after year after year. Other than that, most of the bookings happened in the same calendar year and I would always talk to Cole and say, hey, cole, where are we at? This was after Aunt Beth passed and Cole who's still at the lodge, by the way, wonderful, wonderful man he would be taking the bookings over the winter on the phone and we kept very good notes on our bookings year over year over year, um, on our bookings year over year over year. And, um, we had a uh, um, um, cole would keep track of how many bookings he would take each month. So I could, in my stress over the over the winter in February, um, you know, looking at the bookings book and the online calendar, thinking, oh my God, we're empty, and I'd phone Cole and I'd say, cole, where are we at? Like, where were we last year and the year before? And Cole would say, steve, relax, relax, we're actually ahead of the game compared to last year and we're really good compared to the year before. So you know, don't worry, they're going to come and they always did.
Speaker 1:But that Bookings game, that Bookings game of chess, I played that game. For the most part I would say 80% of that game was played during my busy months while people were at the lodge, and I'll explain that in a minute. And then the other was played in the off season by focusing on the website and getting things set so that in the spring and through the next season the website was set, we had all of our, our, our, um, uh pricing in uh, pictures, um, um, it was. It was done in a way that was, um, extremely professional and um, and then, uh, sports shows and calling and talking to the guests that came the year before and sending out Christmas stuff. I always tried to. I didn't get it out all the time for Christmas, which is a perfect excuse for all you lodge owners out there to send a calendar or send a card or something to all of the guests that come to see you. But I always got something away by the time we were coming back and that's all important.
Speaker 1:But for me, that bookings game happened at the lodge. It happened at the lodge by ensuring that the people that came had an absolutely outstanding experience that I tailored as close to their expectation as possible, and the only way that you can do that is to understand your guests and talk to them, and that is where my marketing was done. And I was doing that marketing, not even realizing it. I just knew that I needed to make sure that every person that came to the Chaudiere Lodge left loving it as much as I did, and whether that person wanted to come for photography, to fish, to fish for a specific species, wanted a guide, didn't want a guide, you know I needed to under number one, I needed to understand what their expectations were, and that started on the phone with them. You build an experience for those people. For instance, you ask them how did you find us and is there anything special? Is there any special reason you're coming? And if there's an anniversary, a honeymoon, whatever, you start building an experience around that and that in turn, that word of mouth, that word of mouth, those people that I was turning into advocates for me did way more sales for me than anything else I did. You got to remember I'm looking on an extremely busy season. I'm looking for 500 people. I'm looking for 500 people over six months and for me that seemed like a huge number. But really, when you've got every person that's leaving the lodge in a mindset where they can't wait to tell somebody about the amazing time that they had, it fills up pretty quick and that is where my marketing was done and that, coupled with the television, that made my business a success. And that, for me, was that bookings game and you know so once you, over the winter, you do that. And there's also I'm going to call it infrastructure improvement. I touched on it Making sure the website is up to date is running well. It making sure the website is up to date is running well.
Speaker 1:There was one year that and this would have been, oh, I. It was a year before I sold. I brought every cedar strip boat home. I brought every cedar strip boat home. Now cedar strips for those of you out there who know me, I have no love for cedar strips. They are absolutely gorgeous boats. They look good, they're quiet, they handle well, but for a lodge owner they are a freaking nightmare when it comes to upkeep. They need so much attention like you've got it. You've got it in the springtime, okay, I had. I started with 13 um part of the opening now and and and the the. This is this is going to be a over the winter kind of thing and part of the opening because those cedar strip boats.
Speaker 1:You had to put at least two coats of varnish on those boats every year just to stay even, just to keep it looking decent, because the UV burnt. Every year burnt two coats of varnish off of those boats. So this one year I brought at the time I was trying to phase them out. Phase them out, get rid of the cedars, replace them with aluminums, flat floors. People love the aluminums, but there was a number of guests who really loved the cedars as well and, to be fair, those 18 foot um Cedar strip boats were the only boat that you could put three big people in and efficiently power it with it with a 15 or 20 horsepower engine.
Speaker 1:Because of the shape they're, they're a big flat back canoe engine. Because of the shape they're, they're a big flat back canoe. Basically they're light. Those were the only boats that you could. You could efficiently power with putting three big people in that boat and you could still move along at a decent, decent clip. So there are good things about those boats but I was at a point where I wanted to phase as many of them out. My ideal, my ideal fleet in my mind at the time was four to five seaters and everything else in aluminum, flat floors, bigger engines, more, more money to rent. Yes, I get it, but anyway.
Speaker 1:So I brought all nine cedar strips home and mom and dad just built their shop. So they had like a 40 by 40 or 50 by 50 empty shop and over that whole season we stripped those boats down, repaired all of the structure inside them that was needing repaired the dashboards, the gunnels, the transoms, the bottoms. We stripped down and we refiber glassed every one of them, painted them, we varnished them, we did them from top to bottom and they were beautiful. But that took me all year, that took me all off season. We got them back, which wasn't easy to start with. I had a 28-foot covered trailer that we had to stack them in and bring them home. I think we got four in a load, so brought them all home, like I say, and did all that work.
Speaker 1:It was right from November until the beginning of May that we worked on those and so you know, every once in a while you've got a big infrastructure project for the winter, but for the most part the winter was the slowdown time. The winter was and now I'm going to jump to that emotional reset and my favorite time of the year. I didn't really have a favorite season until I owned the lodge and honestly, my favorite season of the year was the fall, closely followed by the spring. But it was the fall, and it was the fall because I knew that it was just about over. I loved the lodge, I loved, and my second favorite time of the year was spring because we were going back up.
Speaker 1:But it is until you've actually experienced the highs and the lows of owning a lodge and not even just the day-to-day stuff, like when you owe a shit ton of money to a number of different people and institutions and all of the stress that comes along with that, and then all of the stress that comes along with the season, which is dealing with employees and all of that stuff, which is a totally different podcast altogether. That Thanksgiving dinner tasted so good, so good. And coming home and shutting your brain off and not being on 24-7, man, was huge. It was you need it, like. I mean, I don't think I would have lasted as long as I did if you didn't have an off season, because it was hugely important. And then, once you get through that season, you start to you know, come April you're chomping at the bit. You've got most of the stuff done.
Speaker 1:The other thing that we used to do in that big old trailer of mine every year we'd bring all of the small engines home. I had racks in that, uh, in that cover trailer and um, um, uh, we'd have anywhere from 20 to 25, uh, small engines and, uh, they would all be in there and, uh, it was always a panic. I had them in the trailer right from. You know, no, october, middle of October or beginning of November, and I'd have to call Scotty, my good buddy, scotty Hemp, and we would always plan on and it was never Scotty, it was always me. We would always say, you know, we're going to do two, three, four. You know, on weekend here and start and this, and that, well, I would always be busy or something was going on and Scotty would be planting little seeds like, hey, you know, I'll be around this weekend, maybe we should get into them engines. And I'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe we should get into them engines. And I'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Next thing, you know, there's hockey tournament for Rayburn or Michael, or there's this or there's that, and all of a sudden it's April and the potential of the ice going out again, that's nature's calendar, that's. You just never know right. But it could go out as early as the middle of April and as late One year it went out on like the 9th of May and we were opening on the 15th. But anyway, it was always a mad rush to get all of those engines serviced because you're, you know, because they're all four strokes. So you're changing the engine oil, the filter, spark plugs, you're changing the gear oil in the bottom end, you're repairing shit, like I mean, there's constantly bottom ends that have been mistreated and there's the gear oil's milky and you got to change out the seals or gear here or there or, you know, pull the bottom end off, take it to a buddy who was doing the skags Skags need repaired, all the props that are dinged, they need to go and be repaired. And again, mad rush. But we always got her done. We always got her done.
Speaker 1:I love those nights and those days with Scotty too. Like I mean, scotty is a wonderful friend of mine. Like I mean, scotty is a wonderful friend of mine and we spent a lot of great time together working at the lodge and doing things and really, for me, that's what it was all about. I just loved the people that I was hanging out with and I'm so thankful for those people who helped and believed in me and would do anything to help me out and that was the magic.
Speaker 1:But yeah, we'd get those motors going and the spring would be here at my house and you know, the anticipation would start to grow, because I know how much work we have and I know what it takes to open and, depending on how well we closed in the fall depended on how well things were going to go in the spring. And um, um, there was one year, like I say, it was May the 9th and that left like very, very little time because we open on the Friday, uh, before the third Saturday Fishing season opens the third Saturday in May on the upper French river, and we always opened on the Friday so that, um, um, our guests could come in. They couldn't fish that day, but a lot of them are getting in at you know, uh, two, three o'clock in the afternoon and we'd have a nice, uh, we'd always plan a prime rib dinner for the first dinner of the year and people were coming in. So that third Friday in May, depending on when it fell, that year we had it was like eight days to open, which is a. It typically takes us two weeks, know, two weeks to open and we always had the time because, you know, the ice would go out in the last week of April. If I had to pick an average date for the ice out, that's when it happens that last week of April, but this year it didn't at all and we barely got open. But we did. And the other thing that, on top of infrastructure improvement, like I mean, we probably did more infrastructure improvement projects in the springtime when we opened, when we could when the ice went out until we opened than we did in the fall, and that's just because of burnout, that's because in the fall, like I mean, I was done, I I had a hard time staying any later than I had to as well, melissa and and the kids back home. They were ready for me to be home, melissa, especially because we had small kids, right, and she was doing it and working by herself at home. So in the springtime it was so hectic you couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1:We did another concrete story. We did another concrete story. We poured a six to seven foot concrete path from the dock up to the main lodge and past the main lodge and poured a concrete bridge through a gully. And that project we were. We got in fairly early, I think it, and, and it took us, there were guests there, um, and we had just poured the last bit of concrete and we had to keep people off of the um, off of the bridge, which was the last pour for them to stay off of it, because it took us that long. We were three weeks, we were three weeks on that. And there was Mark myself, pat was helping us a bit.
Speaker 1:Uh, pete, uh, bowles, um, mac, uh, who was a great young dockhand, and then another one and I forget this, this fella's name, but um, when, uh, when Mac come, he was, uh, he worked for me for three seasons and I think this kid was a friend of Mac's seasons and I think this kid was a friend of Mac's. And I said to the boys, I and Mark, and like Peter and Pat, and, and I wasn't worried about them, but I said, listen, mac and uh, and I'll call him buddy, mac, buddy, if you make it through the next couple of weeks, the rest of the year is going to be smooth sailing. Because the thing that I don't think people understand when you're on an island and you're pouring concrete, okay, you get the concrete and and I had, I hired a barge to, and I, I hired a barge to and I can't remember who it was, I think it was Terry, but anyway, I hired a barge and I had, for that project, I had Home Hardware deliver the concrete to the Doakese Marina or one of the marinas. We had to go over to the marina and we had to hand bomb all of those bags of concrete. And this is just this job, this job, any other concrete job, like the one with the fireplace or the chimney or any of the other pathways or the concrete pad we poured in the water shop for the purification system. That's all.
Speaker 1:I drive to Home Hardware or one of the building places in Newellville and you load every bag, one by one, into the back of the truck, drive the truck to the marina, unload every bag off the truck onto the dock and then into the Alaskan. Or I had an old 20 foot steel boat. You unload it into there, then you get it. You drive it across the water, you get it to the dock, you unload it onto the dock. Okay, then you drive the golf cart down, load it into the golf cart and then you drive the golf cart to where the concrete is being poured and you have to unload the golf cart, the concrete, onto the area beside and then you have to pick every bag up to dump it into the mixer. So I don't know how many times we're lifting the shit, but the pouring part you're near done, right.
Speaker 1:So we brought all of the concrete over and lifted all of the bags, piled all the bags, started mixing all the bags. Wow, buddy, remember Buddy? I think he lasted about four days and then that was it. Buddy was done. We scared him because you know they were, they were long days and they were laborious days. You know they were long days and they were laborious days, because concrete is a shitty way to work. It's a very when you're done, it's very rewarding because you see what you do.
Speaker 1:And we poured that path, and not only did we pour the path, we built the forms and then it was a cobblestone path originally and we took all of those flat stones out of the path and then fitted them into the concrete on top. Now, the difference was, originally they laid the rocks down and then just parged in between with concrete, and then the rocks would constantly break up and come apart and and from driving the, the golf carts on them, and you know it was uh, and then their rocks are loose and people are tripping and it was just not not a good situation at all. And um, um, we, we placed all of those rocks back into the top of this pad and the pad itself is anywhere from about, I'm gonna say, seven inches deep in the thinnest to about three and a half four feet deep in some of the. There was one spot that went over and we dug out. I was digging down to the bedrock. We're right on bedrock and this one spot there was a crevice where two pieces of bedrock come together or they come apart. And I uncovered this freaking crevice that was like four feet deep and we started pouring concrete into it and we threw every nice big round stone that we could find and every piece of scrap metal or anything that we could find to take up volume into the hole so we didn't have to pour so much concrete. We got it up and level and all the way done.
Speaker 1:And when it was all said and done, we gave our cement mixer. The boys and I sat down and we decided, because we were doing the math and that project alone was 1100 bags of concrete, 1100 bags and just the, and all by hand, we gave her a name. We decided that because we at the time I had roughly figured that we turned over 2,000 bags mixed at that point and we gave her a name and called her Old Dinah. That's right, that old concrete mixer, old Dinah. And Old Dinah, boy oh boy. She's mixed another thousand bags, if not more, since on a number of projects, but those projects like that one, that that one was, you know what. It was a shit ton of work, but at the end of the day, we all put our initials in it and that legacy is going to out outlast man itself. You know, at some point when man doesn't exist on this planet, that pathway it's still going to be there and that's the way that we like to do things. When we were doing them and it like I mean the openings, were always crazy as you can imagine, we had projects like that. Always crazy as you can imagine, we had projects like that.
Speaker 1:The dock, our docking system, a good friend of mine, jason Lilly. He come up and we built a new dock house and Cole built floating docks and this was all in my second or third year built floating docks. And this was all in my second or third year. It would have been my third year because, after the whole situation with the vendor, take back, being forgiven and folks that is a wonderful, wonderful story that I'm not going to get into. Go back in the archives and listen to the into um, go back in the archives and and listen to listen to the story about the vendor, take back and the prayer and and uh and uh, everything, because that was key for me to make the infrastructure improvement that I needed to make. Uh, because I got a grant. I went and I got a grant for I put up $70,000 and they gave me the NOHFC gave me $70,000. And I bought, put new steel roofs on all the cottages all that one spring. That uh, all uh, that one spring.
Speaker 1:And, um, we, um, we built the dock house. Um, over the winter, cole built the, uh, the fiberglass floating docks which, by the way, are still there and still look beautiful. They're like. I mean, those docks are, are, were a ridiculously amazing investment and they're wide and Cole made them all. He hand-laid these docks and, like I say, they look as good today as they did when we put them in, as they did when we put them in.
Speaker 1:But that all happened in the three weeks before we opened in that year and without all of the people that I had to help. You know, bud helped us a ton on that one too. I paid Bud to come and redo the docking system right out in the front. We got rid of all of the crib docks and Bud actually started working on the ice because Chaudiere had a whole whack. It had a string, a dock that was like a string that joined all of the crib docks where you would park the boats in front together. And it wasn't very wide, the docks that you park on.
Speaker 1:They were all on cribs and we got rid of the whole thing. We saved all of the cribs and then we built off of those cribs and built the dock right back to the shoreline and now it's a beautiful big, wide dock at the water off of those cribs and built the dock right back to the shoreline and now it's a beautiful, big, wide dock at the water and then with floaters coming off of it. But Bud, that year that we were doing it went out on the ice and they let the water down in the winter and he started to. He burnt the cribs out because that's the hardest thing. The hardest thing is to get rid of these old cribs because they're all put together under the water with huge spikes and they're filled with rocks and it's not easy to work underwater. But when the water drops and in the wintertime you can burn the three feet of the crib that's sticking out of the water, get rid of all the rocks and then cut the ice around and pull up as much as you can. So Bud did a fabulous job getting rid of all of these docks, and there was probably nine of them.
Speaker 1:And then Cole built the floaters man, and what a huge infrastructure. That really the fact that it started with the mortgage being forgiven, making my numbers look well enough that I could go and borrow $70,000 from economic partners in Sturgeon Falls to put up against the 50-50 grant. It was a 50-50 grant so I had to have skin in the game. So I got that $70,000. They gave me $70,000. And with that money it changed the direction of my business, that one. You can almost pinpoint my success to that. As far as infrastructure, as far as putting myself on the map as a high quality place, that stuff needed to be done and without that grant, without that mortgage forgiven, without the prayer and belief, that wouldn't have happened. And I'm not sure I would have made it, because to redo the dock, to redo the dock house and make a beautiful place for people to come to, um and to set things up so that I was just making minor repairs on my docking system for a decade, um, that was huge. So you know that was key.
Speaker 1:The spring was key, getting into the lodge and, like I said, off the top, nobody really sees how we were working and what we were doing to bring an outstanding product to the forefront, right to the forefront, right. You know, at the end of the day the guests see the sunshine, the fish, the sunsets, but it's quiet months, the dusty work and the endless planning that make that magic happen. While the season's on, that was key. And the Hidden Seasons, right, they may not fill your photo album, but they were the real heartbeat of the lodge and they certainly, they certainly filled my photo album.
Speaker 1:And on that note, folks, I would love to thank you all for getting to this point. I really, really appreciate it. And I want to say thank you to Lakeside, marine and Red Lake they are a wonderful sponsor to our producer, anthony Mancini and Dino Taylor these boys, without them I wouldn't be able to be bringing this to you. And thank you to Ange Pete, the Fish and Canada crew, all of the people involved and folks. Thus brings us to the conclusion of another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner Stories of the North.
Speaker 4:I'll be making my way the only way, I know how working hard and sharing the north with all of my pals well, I'm a good old and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
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Speaker 1:Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast that's right.
Speaker 2:Every Thursday, Ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm.
Speaker 1:Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 2:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 4:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show.
Speaker 2:We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes.
Speaker 4:All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garton.
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