Lured by Captain Action

Published in The Cottage Times, July 2008

Captain Action always says it’s not the size of your bait, but the wiggle in your worm. This I learned first hand the other day when I accompanied the Captain, a.k.a. Mike Bertelsen, on a fishing charter on Lake Muskoka. The goal: to catch some pike.

We met in the morning at the Muskoka Wharf and sped off in his 21 foot, 225 horsepower Tracker fishing boat, fully stocked with what seemed like most of the fishing gear Bass Pro Shops has to offer. After a few minutes of navigating, we turned off the engine and stopped at our first fishing hole. Captain Action (Mike) lowered the electric trolling motor and it was game on.

Thus far, my fishing experience has been limited to smashing clams on the rocks in front of my cottage, fastening them to my hook and eagerly waiting for sunfish and rock bass to nibble the line I gingerly held over the edge of my dock. Today was going to be a little more professional, to say the least.

Captain Action (alright, from now on I’ll call him Mike), took me on a tour of his boat, explaining to me how the trolling motor works, and explaining to me that his fish finder wasn’t cheating (as many have suggested) but was really used to find the weedy areas on the bottom of the lake – the perfect place to find pike.

Now it’s not often that on a summer day, I’ll hope for clouds but after Mike shared some of his fishing knowledge with me, in that the fishing is better when it’s cloudy, I silently begged for the sun to go away. I didn’t want this to be known as the day I tried to catch a pike, I wanted it to be known as the day I caught the biggest pike in Lake Muskoka ever recorded. Hey, anything is possible.

Apparently there are different lures for fishing in different conditions. When it’s cloudy, you want to use a lure that is brightly coloured or reflective, to catch the larger fishes attention. When it is sunny, you use a dull-looking bait. When we started out, there was a lot of cloud cover, so Mike hooked me up with what was called a ‘Blue Fox Vibrex Spinner,’ which is also known as an in-line spinner, and known to me as a bright yellow spinning thingy that was going to catch me a fish.

After teaching me proper casting techniques (which he later confessed women are generally better at than men), we fished silently in some shallow, weedy water. Eventually the sun came out, and Mike hooked my line with what is called a Bass Pro Shops XPS Minnow, also known as a suspending jerk bait, and once again, known to me as a rubbery green minnow. A few nibbles here and there, but no bites and nothing to reel in just yet.

We decided to try another spot. We packed up the gear and zipped to the next fishing hole. Here, according to the fish finder it was also quite shallow and weedy, and sure to be filled with pike. It was cloudy again, so I picked up the rod with the vibrex spinner and cast my line into the lake. After a few casts, I felt a hefty tug on the line and I jerked my rod like Mike had demonstrated. Before I knew it, I was reeling in a small pike! We got him in the boat, took a good look and a picture (for all those non-believers) and threw him back in the lake.

“Tell all your friends,” I said to the pike as he swam away.

On my very next cast, I felt another good tug on the rod and reeling in my line, I found I had another, larger, pike. We pulled him in the boat, and after he flipped around a bit on the bottom, eliciting a couple of screams from the only female on the boat (me), we threw it back in the lake.

I caught one more pike at that hole, making Mike and I even - three pike to three pike, before we moved on to the next spot.

At the last location, Mike managed to hook the largest pike of the day and I half-snagged a bass that managed to get away before I got him in the boat, which was actually good because bass aren’t in season until Saturday.

As we headed back to the dock for Captain Action to pick up his next group of anglers, I smiled with pride at how exciting it had been to catch my first three fish of the season. Even though they weren’t the biggest pikes and I didn’t manage to catch the largest pike ever recorded on Lake Muskoka, since I threw those little guys back in the lake, they will continue to grow.

As we pulled up to the dock, I looked back on the lake and sent a telepathic message to all those big fish out there. I’ll be back.

Who says you need wings to fly?

Published in The Cottage Times, August 2008

I woke up for the third day in a row, thinking, this is going to be the day I go hang gliding. When I first made the call to High Perspective, a company that does tandem hang gliding flights out of both Pickering and Muskoka, I wasn’t the least bit nervous. I’d done rock climbing, wakeskating, and various other daring activities this summer, so hang gliding didn’t seem too intimidating at the time.

Well, that was before I spent two full days in suspense, waiting for what was sure to be the experience of a lifetime. The first day I had booked to fly high above Muskoka’s in nothing but an oversized kite with Michael, the owner of High Perspective, it rained, pretty much blowing our chances of flying that day. The second day, the winds were far too strong to chance flying up, up and literally, away. By the third day, I was more ready than ever, but after 48 hours of considering the risks, more dubious than ever as well.

What if the harness broke? What if I got up in the air and a sudden storm arrives? What if something, anything, goes wrong and we are there, gliding thousands of feet above ground, with nothing but the lake to break our fall? What on earth had I agreed to do?

On the big day, Jan, the photographer and I drove out to Cleveland’s House and met Michael and his crew on the end of the dock. There it was, the boat that was to pull me to my destiny, tied up to the end of the dock with the hang glider resting innocently on the back platform. When I was asked if I’d like to come along in the boat while Michael took the woman signed up ahead of me for her hang glide, I readily agreed, eager to see what it was all about before I made the final decision to be strapped in.

Perhaps that was a mistake. As I watched Michael and his passenger glide further and further away from us on their ascent into the sky, never could I have imagined the hang glider could go that high. It was going to take all the nerve I could muster not to back out.

When it came my turn, we returned to the dock where I signed my life away on the release form and slipped into the provided wetsuit. After Michael’s partner suited me up with a helmet and the harness that secured me to the glider, my excitement mounted. Every step closer we came to takeoff, the butterflies in my stomach would multiply but my thoughts were more about how exciting it would be than how scary.

I climbed onto the platform and Michael clipped me in to a large caribiner that was attached to the glider. He showed me how, in the chance we got flipped over upon landing in the water, to unattach myself, assuring me that this was a very rare occurrence. Next thing I knew, we were laying down in our harnesses, my right arm wrapping around Michael’s back as he gave word for the boat to go.

As soon as the boat took off, my fears were gone. This was going to be awesome.

When the boat hit the required speed for takeoff, Michael gave the signal and his crew detached us from the boat. Within seconds we were gliding through the air, still attached to the vessel by a thin rope, climbing higher and higher into the sky. Before long, we reached the desired height of somewhere around 1000 feet above water and traveling at a speed of 35 miles an hour, and Michael dropped the rope free of the kite. We were hang gliding.

“Look around us,” Michael said, as he snapped a few pictures from the camera attached to the wing. “Isn’t that something?”

I looked around and never before had I seen a sight like this. The only way to describe it is like being in a plane, but free of walls, seats, restraints and a captain. The air rushed by my ears creating a whooshing sound as I looked into the distance and spotted Georgian Bay, not very far away. Below us, islands were the size of quarters and the boat from which we took off was but a mere speck in the vast, blue water.

As we glided through the air, Michael pointed out Lake Joseph and told me to watch our shadow as it passed over the lake, the trees and snuck right over the deck of an unsuspecting cottage. From our perspective, even Red Leaves looked tiny. At one point, my tandem partner let me take the wheel, so to speak, and showed me that with the slightest movement of our bodies we could go left, right, and even faster or slower.

As we grew closer to the lake, Michael told me to prepare for landing. Though it appeared we descending at a frightening speed, we touched down on the lake with nothing but a soft splash. The warm water tickled my toes as the boat pulled up to collect us from where we lay.

As I climbed aboard, I was smiling like a clown and felt a rush like never before. I couldn’t wait to get back to land so I could tell everyone about what an amazing experience hang gliding had been. My only regret was how much time I spent worrying, instead of realizing that when I am flying with a man who has over 15,000 flights under his belt, I’m in pretty good hands.

Sam Roberts gets serious

Published in The Cottage Times, July 2008

Brienne Juniper sits down to chat with Sam Roberts about his latest album, his beard and what keeps him coming back to Muskoka year after year.

What have you guys been up to the last couple of months?
• “Oh this and that, putting out a record. I wouldn’t call it a tour, but we’ve been playing a couple of festivals and club gigs. It kind of came out at the end of the club season which is now sort of getting underway. We’re hitting the road, playing pretty much coast to coast at outdoor festivals.”

What’s it like spending life on the road now that you’ve got a little daughter?
• “Fortunately during festival season, you might play three days on and you might go home. There is just more contact with the mothership, and I think it will only sink in when we’re on a proper tour. Last year we were in the studio making a record so I think the longest we were away was a couple of weeks. Even that was pretty difficult. In my mind, at least, I have to learn to incorporate family life into this – I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive, while she’s young anyway. Maybe they can do a little traveling and see the world with us, that’s how I’d like to see it anyways.”

How would you describe Love at the End of the World compared to some of your previous albums?
• “The creative forces behind it weren’t necessarily coming from what felt like a different place, it’s only in retrospect when you listen to it and compare it to your previous albums you recognize you’ve actually taken a departure and gone off in a different direction. That’s a function of how you’ve been living, and you’re not always consciously aware of the changes that take place. That’s why records can be such an interesting way of documenting the twists and turns that your life takes. I think definitely, there is a significant departure in my mind anyways, from where Chemical City was coming from, but I only realized it after the fact. You’re not really all that aware, at least in my mind, you shouldn’t be overly conscious of what you’re trying to do with music. You just kind of let it come out the way it wants to come out. You’re just basically trying to capture it as you hear it in your head.”
• “it’s something you can’t really deny, it’s just a part of your genetic makeup I think when you’re meant to write songs, it’s just there. Not necessarily in whole or final forms, but the music is constantly drifting out of your consciousness. Again, it’s up to you to take it from there and recreate it in a form that can be listened to and experienced by other people, and that’s what making a record is.”

Is there a lot of pressure to come up with new material?
• “There’s pressure to do it well, there’s pressure to make good records, to keep people interested in the music that you make but that pressure is nothing compared to the pressure you put on yourself, to write a song that’s better than the one before. It’s not necessarily the pursuit of perfection, but the pursuit of musical places that you’ve never really been before. Just constantly pushing yourself and hope that other people are going to come along for the ride.”

I know you’ve said in interviews that you “just write the tunes”, but you’ve got some pretty interesting names for your albums. Where do they come from? (Inhuman Condition, Born in a Flame, Chemical City, Love at the End of the World)
• “It’s funny. Sometimes they come about when you’re sitting there and you’re listening to a finished record, and you’re trying to come up with that one phrase that encapsulates the whole thing – if it can be done. With Chemical City, I actually had the name of the album before I wrote a single song, so that came from the opposite end of the spectrum. Just having the name gave some of the songs their direction in a way. You can approach it from different ways. The song Love at the End of the World, the first song on the record, was the last song that I wrote. I think that in a way, having worked on and recorded the other 12 songs wasn’t an attempt to summarize, but certainly captures the spirit. If you were trying to capture everything that all the other songs were trying to put out there, that was the song that kind of summed it all up in a way, and therefore it just became the album title. But again, that was because I’d lived with the other music. I’d lived with the other songs for all this time I’d had a chance to reflect. It’s like making an opening statement, but sometimes you only make the opening statement after you realize the body of the work is going to be.”

You’ve played some pretty huge concerts, like SARSstock. What’s it like to play in a venue like the Kee to Bala?
• “Obviously it’s a great experience or we wouldn’t have come back. I think this is our 6th or 7th year in a row. The Kee just has it’s own magic. The Kee is a beast that knows no rules, really. It’s a phenomenon unto itself. There’s really nowhere else that I’ve played that I can compare it to. Some other clubs bear strong resemblances to other venues, sometimes one festival can feel identical to another, but there’s something about playing at the Kee. Maybe it’s the fact that the stage is 10 or 12 feet off the ground, it’s a bizarre thing. The fact that you’re playing in this old barn, essentially, on the edge of a beautiful lake, makes for a unique setting. Then there’s the mindset of the people who are vacationing. It’s strange to think that people need a release from cottage country, but this is apparently where they do it. There’s a freedom at the Kee. People don’t seem to be too self conscious there, they just seem to let it all out. At any rock and roll concert, that’s the ideal mindset for the crowd to have is to not be too worried.”

So does the audience feeling transcend to the band?
• “Oh for sure. I think we feel like anything goes up there, when we’re playing at the Kee, and that’s a really great feeling. In a way, its our summer therapy where we can just go and forget about the whole context and just really enjoy playing for the sake of playing.”

Have you ever watched a concert there?
• “Never. I’ve watched the opening bands, so that’s I guess at least some of the experience of being out in the crowd. I’ve never seen either David (Wilcox) or Kim (Mitchell) but I see their name every year on the bill and it’s amazing to think that we’ve thrown our name in the hat and been included in the legacy of the Kee, in this very unique and particular Canadian experience.”

What is it that gets you to return here year after year?
• “It’s that freedom, the uniqueness of the experience that it has no…there’s no point of comparison with anything else and I think that lures us back there all the time.”

What’s the wildest thing that’s happened to you while performing in Muskoka?
• “Oh man, it’s all wild. I think the craziest thing is the one time that someone actually got up and did a stage dive from that height. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody jump from that high before. It’s not recommended, that’s for sure.”

Did anyone catch him?
• “Not really, no. It ended up in kind of a cataclysmic wipeout, so I hope that experience isn’t duplicated this year.”

Can we expect to hear a lot of your new stuff or more of the older material this year?
• “We’re going to try to incorporate as much of the new record as possible, so we obviously advise people to start to familiarize themselves with the new material, for sure. We’ve got a few albums to choose from now, and I think we always just try to put together a set that takes people on a bit of a journey. Not just pump out the hits one after another. You’ve got to find the songs that really fit together and are going to take people somewhere. Whatever we feel on the night is the right thing we go with. There is always a heavy pow-wow an hour before we get on stage where we discuss the set list and what tone we’re going to set for the night.”

Sporting the beards this year?
• “Summertime we’ve been trimming it down. I usually put the woodsman/Klondike on hold until the wintertime and then you let it all hang out for a while. Right now it’s pretty low key, nothing more than a stubble. Beards come, beards go.”

What do you think about how them kids dance at the Kee?
• “They’re pretty good – they defy the rule. Whatever the song is talking about, that’s obviously one of the places where they’ve learned to let it all hang out. I think maybe that’s another reason why we love to play there. Maybe it’s the kind of place where other young people out there could take a lesson from. Come out there and see what a real rock and roll show is supposed to be about – just forgetting yourself, letting yourself go and become part of the music. If we all did that a little more, we’d probably be better off for it.”

It hasn't hit him yet

Published in The Cottage Times, July 2008

When promoting an event, it can be difficult to sum up what the audience should expect from a concert in just a few words. Without seeing the show first, it’s nearly impossible to capture the emotion and spirit a live concert brings to an audience, especially since no two live shows are alike.

In promoting Jim Cuddy’s upcoming solo performance on July 7 and 8, the Algonquin Theatre writes that “Jim Cuddy showcases his hits in this high energy show, backed up by a quartet of stellar musicians,” but those who have been to a Cuddy or Blue Rodeo concert before, know it promises to be much, much more than that.

Though Cuddy has been performing in Muskoka as frontman for popular Canadian band Blue Rodeo for 20 years, he returns this summer to perform at Algonquin Theatre with the solo project that he has worked vigilantly to maintain for close to nine years. Though he sometimes rehashes Blue Rodeo songs while singing solo, they often sound quite different because of the spin put on them by Cuddy and his band.

“We don’t play a lot so we’re kind of loose. We’re less an ensemble and more a collection of individuals, and the individual talents are showcased,” says Cuddy, describing the arrangement of he and his band. “There’s Anne Lindsay, she’s an incredibly beautiful violin player and Colin Cripps, and he’s beautiful guitar player…we do it for fun.”

Though Cuddy has always had success with Blue Rodeo, he went solo almost a decade ago after his songwriting partner, Greg Keelor, branched off from the band to work on his own solo career. Cuddy and Keelor had always played in bands together, so Cuddy took a note from his partner in crime and tested the waters on his own as well.

“There was a period of time where Greg was tired of all the work we had to do in Blue Rodeo, so I sort of did (a solo record) in defense. I just thought if he leaves, I guess I’ll be on my own so I might as well try it,” says Cuddy. “What I realize, was that it was actually a very good adjunct to being in Blue Rodeo. It was a very enjoyable, relaxed outlet and there’s no problem with making more music.”

Cuddy released his first solo album in 1998, entitled All In Time, to rave reviews. His first album became a Gold record. From the success of the first, Cuddy continued to work on his music and the second solo album, The Light That Guides You Home, was released in September of 2006. Though he explains it became more difficult splitting the schedule between Blue Rodeo and his new project, Cuddy loves the discipline of writing more songs and didn’t back away from the challenge.

“It allowed me to pursue some sounds, some songs that ended up being slightly different than Blue Rodeo,” he says. “It’s been very rewarding.”


No stranger to Muskoka, Cuddy feels very fortunate that he is able to travel and tour to so many unique venues like the Kee to Bala or the Algonquin Theatre. The more remote the location, the more interesting he finds it to perform and he loves the feeling of performing in front of such a laid back audience.

“Everybody isn’t in city mode, they’re in lake mode,” says Cuddy. “It’s a very enjoyable experience – coming off stage, standing outside and looking at the stars.”

So what can those who are in “lake mode” expect from Cuddy’s upcoming, back to back shows? Though they can count on hearing a combination of his own music and some reworked Blue Rodeo songs, he’s never sure what will strike him in the moment.

“It really depends on the night, it depends on the crowd, what it’s like,” says Cuddy. “I like having a catalog of songs I can go from.”

Some people call him a bad apple

Published in The Cottage Times, August 2008

Eavesdropping is where he gets his best material, he says. Where he hears people conversing about bearcats, rattlesnakin’ daddies and bad apples is anyone’s guess, but the singer who’s been plucking guitar strings since childhood compares himself to Shakespeare when explaining the inspiration behind his funky, hard-to-resist-singing-along-to songs.

“Eavesdropping is a great way to find material. I think Shakespeare probably did a lot of it,” says the artist. “If you think of those scenes with the Johns Falls Taverns scenes where he’s blathering on and drinking, it sounds like he’s heard it somewhere - a lot of those great things people say.”

A name that has become almost synonymous with the Kee to Bala is David Wilcox. Performing at the local venue since the beginning of his career, the audience has watched this Canadian rocker’s style evolve from the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll days of Layin’ Pipe, Hypnotizing Boogie and Riverboat Fantasy to his latest, more stylized CD release, Boy in the Boat.

This year he will be returning again on August 30 to wind up the audience with a mixture of his old and new material, performing in a show many concert-goers would not miss for the world.

“I’ve never had a bad gig there. Some I’ve enjoyed more than others, but I’ve just had a lot of happy memories, a lot of fun and a lot of feeling really inspired,” says Wilcox. “I used to come to Muskoka when I was about 13 or 14 years old and Louis Armstrong played there, and I remember people brought boats up and listened to the music outside. It’s very inspiring for me, as a musician, to play in that same atmosphere and that same venue.”

Performing in Muskoka since the 70s, Wilcox got his first big break at the age of 21 when he was asked to play with Ian and Sylvia on the nationally broadcasted Ian Tyson Show. There, he performed alongside greats such as Anne Murray, American country artists like Charlie Rich, Gerry Reed, Bobby Bear and Ray Price. Later, Wilcox went through a tumultuous period in his life, though still creating and performing, before arriving where he is today, though he credits his time on the show as being where he got his “real education.”

“I think everybody starts out copying. I believe no artist comes out of a vacuum, so I think my pieces have become more integrated,” says Wilcox. “It keeps getting deeper, and it keeps evolving all the time there’s always a new ingredient to try or some new way to play something.”

Over the years, Wilcox has built himself a wildly successful career. He’s released 12 discs, the latest released last October, won several awards, performed across the country and gathered a huge fan base. Throughout Muskoka, his songs are heard continuously on the radio, the lyrics ingrained in many memories of summers gone by.

“It makes me very grateful. I never have anticipated I’d have a career of this duration and to this degree of success,” he says. “I’m very grateful for that and it makes me very happy.”

True to himself, Wilcox doesn’t aspire to be like any other rocker. He prefers to blaze his own path and follow his own beat, though he admits to admiring the music of Sinead o’Connor, and finds himself listening to a fair amount of John Mayer records these days. Yet unlike many artists vying for top spot in the competitive music industry of today, Wilcox isn’t too worried.

“I try not to compete, which may sound strange,” he says. “I try to follow my own star, my own inspiration, and just keep learning all the time. I’ve played the guitar a long time, and I still feel like a baby on it. There’s always more to learn.”

He says to expect some surprises at his upcoming concert at the Kee, though he will be playing the usual favourites the audience waits al year to hear.

“We put out a CD last year called the Boy in the Boat, appropriate for the Kee, and so there will be some of the tunes from the new CD,” he says. “Just a mixture - and some new surprises to keep us on our toes.”

Survivorman returns to his roots

Published in The Cottage Times, August 2008

After surviving the stifling jungles of the Amazon, the ever-present daylight of Alaska, and the scorching sands of the Kalahari desert, Les Stroud returns to Huntsville to share his experiences, his filmography and his music with those who live in his hometown.

On July 19, Stroud will host a performance at the Algonquin Theatre where he'll intertwine his music with his films in a show that will take the audience on what he describes as musical and visual adventure. The rest of the world will completely fade away.

Known to most as television’s Survivorman, Stroud is the only producer on television to have an internationally broadcast series singe handedly written, videotaped and hosted alone. After growing up in suburban Toronto and moving to Huntsville where he currently lives with his family, Stroud began his television career in 2000 when he took his video camera into Northern Ontario’s wilderness and spent a week without food, water, equipment or a camera crew, documenting the every move of his own survival.

“I’ve always been addicted to adventure, even when I didn’t know what adventure was,” says Stroud. “Once I discovered what it was, I became more passionate about it. I discovered I could have adventures, big adventures, and wilderness adventures.”

Growing up in Toronto, Stroud’s curiosity was piqued by following the television adventures of Jacques Cousteau. Then, while vacationing at his cottage on the Muskoka River, Stroud would create his own mini-adventures.

“Playing behind the cottage very much fostered my fascination for the natural world,” says Stroud. “By coming to the cottage and building little shelters out back, and chasing frogs in the swamp. I was a classic kid that went off and played in the swamps during the day.”

Today, Stroud is more adventurous than ever, both in his survival outings and his creative outlets. He is currently in the middle of producing another season of Survivorman, developing his concert tour series, which will debut in Huntsville on the 19th, and in the middle of completing a book for Harper-Collins.

“My passion is driven on two levels – my love of adventure and my love of creative output and expressing myself creatively,” says Stroud, explaining the mindset behind the concert tour, in addition to his already-hectic schedule.

Stroud’s music is one of the outlets that carries him through his enduring adventures.

“I tell my field producer that wherever he goes, he has to buy me a beat up guitar somewhere. I leave them behind, whenever I go. I find a lodge or a kid and autograph it and leave it behind

Though Stroud has already released a solo CD of his musical works, as well as a collaboration disc with the Northern Pikes, he will be joined on stage by Ron Sexsmith and his backup band, and a number of other featured singers during the concert tour. Together, they will create and perform a broad range of music that suits the mood of the adventures Stroud has filmed over the years.

“I’ve taken a lot of my wilderness images and adventure images and been working with some really great musicians,” says Stroud. “I’ve taken about eight or nine films and said let’s score them, so when we play the music, we play to the imagery and the imagery plays to the music. I think that makes a much stronger connection.”

Stroud describes the musical sound that will be heard at the performance as Bruce Cockburn meets Blue Rodeo. Combined with the images he will project onto the screen, the performance will be deep and moving.

“There are a couple of clips that I have a little more potent impact than others and I think the Amazon film will come across powerfully,” says Stroud, mentioning one of his most memorable adventures. “There are a few really special moments.”

By January 2009, the concert tour will be visiting stages all around the world. But for now…

“You’re going to get a very classy evening of entering into your seat and being transported back and forth from adventure to adventure,” says Stroud.

Early season success for Just Crepes

Published in North Country Business, July 2007

The writing is on the wall at Just Crepes, and what does it say? Carpe diem - among other sayings - and that's what patrons have been doing since its opening on Victoria Day weekend. With the fiavourful variety of dishes ranging from eggs Benedict breakfast crepes to fruit-filled dessert crepes, there is something for everyone's taste buds. The fresh Port Calling hot spot has the feel of a quaint frenen café, and the walls throughout are decorated with uplifting and nspirational sayings. Owner Janine Hcaslip says she and her husband designed the interior of the
restaurant as well as the menu to suit their own tastes in hopes that their approach would please others as well. The old building, which is now painted a vibrant yellow, is located across from Tommy Bahamas on Port Carling's main street. Heaslip says it required quite a bit of restora-
tion, and to keep some of the character she and her husband incorporated some of the old floor joists into the bathroom sink fixtures.

"It would have been nice to open up last summer but that would have meant rushing things and not putting that finishing touch on a lot of stuff,"says Heaslip of their original plan to open for the 2006 season. "We decided that it was more important from a patron point of view and that's basically what we built this on."

Heaslip has more than 12 years of experience in bakery management, and spent countless hours working on the menu. With Ihe help of her sister-in-law, she came up with unique names for each dish, such as Just out of the Blue, a combination of chicken, blue cheese and broccoli florets wrapped in a crepe, or Heaslip's favourite Wholly Crepe Marie, which is beef tenderloin with a red wine portabello mushroom red wine sauce created by her husband. They also offer gluten-free and whole wheat crepes for health conscious patrons.

"Initially when we thought about a menu we were going on our taste buds but trying to be health regulated, however, it seems that everything has just gone to our taste buds," says Heaslip. "But everything is delicious and fiavourful, and we worked on the menus for a very long time."

The restaurant met with early success this spring, drawing large crowds on weekends. Heaslip predicts weekday patrons will also increase during midsummer and despite being open just a month, future opportunities have already presented themselves.

"Franchising is a thought for us. it was brought up to us the first day we were open," she says. "We were approached, and it took me by surprise because I had never even thought of that yet."
Other future plans may involve opening in the evening, although Hcaslip says she wants to focus on perfecting breakfast and lunch before pursuing the dinner crowd. Thought is also being given to whether or not to stay open during the winter months, but will be decided as demand dictates.
"The summer is definitely where your gravy is for this community and we will work at a plan." she says. "A lot of locals are coming in and asking so I'd like to make everybody happy, and it just works better too when there's a constant."