About Us

What do we do with our life? The burning question was branded on our brains for almost two years. What should life be like? Although buying a fishing resort was the first idea, it was actually the last one we pursued. We hunted every corner of Ontario to get a mere scent of the answer. Almost bought a bed and breakfast in Stratford. Almost bought a home in Collingwood. Almost opened a store in Huntsville. And then we ended up almost (and this one was a close one!) buying a cute house with a pool not hundreds of miles away, but across town from where we already lived. I am convinced to this day they were all “almosts” for a reason. Nothing was getting us excited and we were miserable. Then Bruce got on a plane and went to the depths of Peru, Chile and Bolivia, again in search of the answer. He slept in huts made of salt in the deserts, but there was no answer there. He traveled down into mines, 1000 feet far below the surface of the earth, but still no answer did he find. Then one day, he climbed to where the air was very thin, to the top of Machu Picchu. Now I don’t know if you’ve been to Machu Picchu, but that moment, combined with some moving music on an iPod (and more than likely a bit of oxygen deprivation) made him climb right back down that mountain, get to the nearest internet café in the closest town, and text message me to pack my bags. We moved to Marten River thirty days later and never looked back. The answer was always there; it was just disguised as a childhood dream. All of the almosts, we later realized, were just bumps on the highway to Olive the Lake, and all we had to do was take a left to make our lives very right.

And now, although we work very hard, every day feels like a vacation. We live in absolute beauty. We welcome people from all over the world, perhaps in search of their own answers to life. And we hope they find them. After all, it only takes one moment (and an iPod) to change your life forever!

"Get away and experience the world around you" - Bruce MacDonald