They make up the fabric of the community—business leaders, entrepreneurs, visionaries. They have inspiring stories to tell, not only about the careers they have built but also about how they give back and inspire others to live their best Mountain Life—Ontario-style.
Shaped by Place: Marni Moreau
words :: Ned Morgan
Marni Moreau’s perfect summer day begins with a hike up the punishing ”1940” trail at Blue Mountain Resort, and winds down with oysters and a cocktail at Penny’s outdoor patio in Thornbury followed by evening croquet in her yard with friends.
Life under the sun comes easily to the born-and-bred Clarksburger. “My childhood home backed onto several acres of forest and the Beaver River,” she recalls. “As one of four kids, my mom wanted us outside as much as possible. Rubber boots and jean shorts comprised my uniform for the first 10 years of my life—mucking around the river, hunting crayfish, building forts, sleeping in tents and chasing fireflies.”
Rubber boots and jean shorts comprised my uniform for the first 10 years of my life—mucking around the river, hunting crayfish, building forts, sleeping in tents and chasing fireflies.”
Behind this charmed young life stood a family rooted in community service. Marni’s father Peter Moreau is a former town councillor who helped lead fundraising efforts for the Beaver Valley Community Centre, Moreau Park and the LE Shore Library. Her mother, Barbara, was a registered nurse at Errinrung Long Term Care and a volunteer with Beaver Valley Outreach and the Beaver Valley Athletic Association.
A graduate of Western University with an Honours Degree in History, Moreau worked in Japan before building her career in Toronto, managing partnerships for major brands including Tim Hortons, Ford and TD Bank. She also held a senior role at Rogers Sportsnet and as a top-performing sales rep at CMH Heli-Skiing. She is a co-founder of the Blue Mountain Film + Media Festival and a non-denominational wedding officiant.
More than a decade ago she returned to the Blue Mountains, as did many who had left and then found themselves wanting to be back here for more than just weekends. “I reengineered my life so that I could live here full time,” she says. ”I love the active outdoor lifestyle, the involved and caring community and of course all my old friends—those who never left and those that like me, returned as soon as they could.”
Marni is running for mayor of Town of the Blue Mountains (the municipal election is scheduled in October) and I asked her how she would seek a balance between housing needs, recreation spaces, services, sustainability and agriculture.
“The secret is out,” she responded. “This is an amazing place to live, but it needs to be liveable to a broad range of demographics. I would approach my term at council with a commitment to mixed housing initiatives—and this might lead to a greater densification so that we can protect the land that is designated as Special Crops agriculture. We will need to take a hard look at our finances and decide what can be delayed or phased in. My priority is infrastructure that keeps us safe and preserves the town’s character. I am a recent member of the Escarpment Corridor Alliance and I think their approach to protecting vulnerable wetlands and wilderness is absolute genius. I would be compelled to cooperate with them as much as I could.”
And that all sounds very reasonable to me.
The SUP Master: Tim Oliver
words :: Dan Rubinstein
In the 15 or so years since SUP racing became a fixture on the international sports scene, the best paddleboarders in the world have been mostly European. A handful of North Americans, mostly athletes who live on the West Coast, have reached the podium of major events. Which makes Tim Oliver’s success even more impressive.
Last year, the 47-year-old firefighter from Thornbury finished first overall in a pair of gruelling SUP races: Molokai 2 Oahu (M2O), a 50-kilometre crossing of Hawaii’s notoriously challenging Ka’iwi Channel; and the SUP 11-City Tour, a 220 km, five-day stage race along canals and across lakes in The Netherlands. The oldest man to win the M2O and the first Canadian to win either event, Oliver credits both his background in competitive cycling and the ideal training ground 100 feet from his house: the temperamental waters of Georgian Bay.
With a fleet of Starboard SUPs in his garage and a generous lakefront neighbour across the street, Oliver paddles on gnarly days that replicate ocean conditions, when strong northwest winds kick up big waves. “It’s such a dynamic environment and it’s different every time you go out,” he says. “You’re playing in a three-dimensional plane, constantly adjusting technique.” Sometimes, Oliver drives up the shore for the downwind run home, then hops onto his bike to retrieve his vehicle. Other days the bay is glassy, and he revels in being alone in the middle of an expanse of blue.
To maintain his edge, Oliver leans into the endurance tricks he developed through cycling—“I never let off the gas in terms of fitness”—and bio hacks that produce small gains. His approach to nutrition and recovery is scientific, and he trains with paddleboard stroke guru Larry Cain, a former Olympic canoeist in Oakville who has coached several international SUP champions. “Larry has an innate ability to grab water with his blade,” says Oliver. “He’s helped me become much more efficient.”
Oliver got into SUP after his daughters were born. It was a way to stay active that didn’t involve five-hour bike rides. Working eight 24-hour shifts every four weeks gives him enough bandwidth to hit the water and stay in shape on Nordic skis in the off-season. This year’s race schedule will feature Scotland’s Great Glen Paddle Challenge and the ICF World Championships in Italy. Although SUP is not on the docket for the 2028 Olympics, 2032 is a possibility. “I’ll be well into my 50s by then,” says Oliver, “but I’d still go through the process of trying.”
Between Race Gates & Bike Repairs: Mike Nazwaski
words & photo :: Colin Field
Walk into Smitty’s Bike Shop in Thornbury and there’s a strong chance Mike Nazwaski will be quietly wrenching in the back. And if you have any technical questions, he’s the man for the job.
Nazwaski grew up in Toronto, but like a lot of kids whose families skied at Beaver Valley, the area slowly became home long before he moved here. “I grew up coming every weekend to Beaver Valley,” he says. Now he splits his time between working full-time at Smitty’s, training for and racing alpine snowboard events around the world and squeezing in as much riding as possible in Grey County.
Nazwaski is on the Canadian national snowboard team in alpine snowboard disciplines. His winter schedule is relentless. Training camps in Europe. Trips to China. Racing blocks in Austria and Italy. Preseason glacier camps stretching weeks at a time.
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“All the World Cups and all the major races are in Europe,” he said. “We’re kind of semi-based out of Europe.” Nazwaski missed qualifying for the Milano Cortina Olympic Games after a frustrating run of results. But his snowboard resume is stacked. Second at Junior Worlds. He won the North American overall title and claimed a Canadian national championship last season. Still, after years of constant travel, he admits things are shifting slightly.
“This year I just needed a break because I’ve been doing this for so long,” said the 25-year-old. “I wanted to have a full spring here.”
And “here” matters to him. Nazwaski currently rents a place near Arrowhead Road and has spent the last four years fully immersed in the Collingwood-Thornbury scene. The riding around here is part of the reason he lives here. Gravel and mountain biking opportunities are top notch. Originally Nazwaski fell into mountain biking through Toronto’s Don Valley trail scene. He started joining weekly rides with the Don Vivants bike club as a teenager.
“I was like 14 riding around with a bunch of 50-year-olds in the Don,” he laughed. Eventually that turned into O-Cup series mountain bike racing and cyclocross. Although these days, riding is less about racing and more about exploration. Nazwaski has been working in shops since he was 14. He used to sweep the floor at Duke’s Cycle. Then he was at Bateman’s before working at the Trek Store. Then he got tired of the city.
These days, riding is less about racing and more about exploration.
“I realized I keep coming up here every weekend and all of my friends have moved up here,” he says. Eventually he walked into Smitty’s looking for work.
“I don’t even think I had a resume,” he says. Like most mechanics today, Nazwaski has watched bikes become dramatically more complicated in just a few years. Electronic drivetrains, wireless shifting and phone-connected diagnostics have transformed modern repair work.
Still, he clearly loves the culture surrounding bike shops as much as the bikes themselves. The constant conversations. The weird parts searches. The community that develops around rides, trails and hanging out for beers afterward.
This place slowly grabs hold of people over years of weekends, winters and dirtbag adventures. Until eventually they realize they’ve quietly built an entire life here. That’s what happened to Mike Nazwaski. And he’s fine with it.
“It’s honestly a perfect location,” he says.
The Waterman: Aaron Pilon
words :: Will Shelley
For Aaron Pilon, the path from Bay Street to life on Georgian Bay started with a surf lesson in Hawaii and a case of burnout. The founder/owner of Blu Wave—the board sports company headquartered in Wasaga Beach—grew up in landlocked Listowel, where water sports were not really part of his childhood (though his grandfather was a commercial fisherman on Lake Erie).
After attending Western University and Ivey Business School, Pilon moved to Toronto and launched a successful career in commercial real estate until the pace of the Bay Street industry began to wear on him. “It was a high-pressure, commission-based job,” he says. “I got to the point where I was looking for something different. I never really envisioned myself [in Toronto] for life.”
Around the same time, a surf lesson in Hawaii sparked an interest in board sports, and by the late ‘00s he was stand-up paddleboarding on vacations in Mexico. “It appealed to me because I had gotten into surfing and kayaking. So [SUP] was a melding of those disciplines.”
He launched Blu Wave in 2010 while still working his day job. Initially HQ’d in Toronto, the company was an early player in the SUP industry at a time when few in Canada knew the sport. “I would paddle along the waterfront in Toronto and get people yelling at me, ‘What is that?’”
Blu Wave quickly established a dealer network across Canada and grew to a size that Pilon could leave commercial real estate to focus on the company full-time.
After spending weekends in Collingwood, he realized there was significant potential for Blu Wave in the region. In 2014, Pilon, his family and his company made a permanent move here.
Originally he planned to find warehouse space and continue wholesaling. “But we couldn’t find the right space in Collingwood, so our broker suggested the old Giant Tiger location in Wasaga Beach. At first I thought it was way too big. But we needed space quickly, so we rented it. After the first summer, we realized it was actually a great location—close to the beach and a central location to serve the Southern Georgian Bay area.”
The move also changed the scope of the business from a wholesale-only brand/manufacturer to one that now includes a retail presence and experience-based programming offering rentals, lessons and tours.
“I would paddle along the waterfront in Toronto and get people yelling at me, ‘What is that?’”
In the intervening years, the board sports waterscape has changed. Blu Wave has evolved into a broader brand, designing surfboards specifically for Great Lakes conditions and moving into foil. “We now design foil boards, wings and foils, the whole setup,” says Pilon. “Wing foiling has grown at the same time the SUP market has plateaued. Today, I’d say foiling is probably the fastest-growing water sport in the world.”
The conditions on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay are ideal for wing foiling. Blu Wave teaches wing handling on the beach near their shop in Wasaga and offers foil lessons behind a jet ski in Collingwood.
In closing, we asked Pilon to recount his most memorable local on-water adventure.
“Shortly after my 50th birthday, I finally did something that had been on my bucket list for years: paddleboarding solo and unassisted to Beckwith Island. One weekend, the weather lined up perfectly: super-calm winds in the morning with a slight south breeze, then a north wind developing mid-afternoon, allowing for a window of time to make the crossing. I called a friend who was boating over and told him I might paddle there if conditions held. I also told him I’d need a ride back because I definitely wasn’t paddling both ways. I left around 6:30 in the morning and paddled roughly 50 kilometres. It took me about seven hours. My friends and their boat were waiting with a cold beer when I arrived.”
Reading the Water: Neal Owen
words :: Robert Artspool
On most mornings, before the calls begin and the markets start moving, Neal Owen is thinking about rivers. Not in the abstract sense, but in the way an angler reads current, light and structure. Where the seams form. Where a fish might hold. Where patience, perseverance and respect for the environment are rewarded. As the president of BlueRock Wealth Management, and as a man who gives back to the community in a big way, Neal embodies those attributes.
It’s a mindset that has followed him through a very different current: four decades in wealth management, building BlueRock into a firm that now serves multiple generations of families across Canada.
Neal takes a minute to stress the importance of each charity his firm supports: Home Horizons, combating homelessness; My Friend’s House, supporting vulnerable women and children from abusive homes—”So important in the community,” he says; The Collingwood and Marine Hospital Foundation; Ducks Unlimited; a well-thought-out fund at Georgian College focused on supporting kids at risk—and the list goes on.
Helping people comes naturally to Neal.
“It’s very satisfying helping people achieve what’s important to them,” he says. “And seeing them grow—not just financially, but as people.” That idea of growth beyond numbers shows up often when Neal talks. In his telling, clients don’t simply “build portfolios,” they evolve. Goals shift. Families expand. Businesses succeed. And sometimes, wealth planning becomes less about accumulation and more about continuity.
Today, BlueRock works with fourth-generation clients—families where Neal has advised grandparents, then parents and now children stepping into adulthood. “It’s gratifying,” he says. “We’ve watched the journey unfold across generations. Now we’re starting it again with the next one.”
Neal grew up in Owen Sound, where early ambitions briefly leaned toward hockey. At 17, he headed west to Edmonton for a tryout—an experience he now laughs about with a mix of honesty and understatement. What followed was a pivot that took him into finance, first selling insurance. Soon, however, he saw a need for independent, unbiased, conflict-free advice and decided to strike out on his own.
He moved to Collingwood in 1990, where the business found its footing. BlueRock grew alongside the town itself, shaped by a simple focus: Work with people who are building something meaningful.
At the office today, that philosophy extends through a team of 15 people. But Neal is quick to deflect credit. “The team shows up every day wanting to excel at helping clients achieve their financial goals,” he says. “They inspire me. They inspire each other.” That culture—steady, collaborative, quietly ambitious—mirrors Neal’s love for fly fishing.
On the river, there are no shortcuts. Success depends on reading water, matching conditions and paying attention to details most people miss. It’s called “matching the hatch.” It’s also a fitting metaphor for financial planning.
That culture—steady, collaborative, quietly ambitious—mirrors Neal’s love for fly fishing.
“You’re standing in nature, it’s peaceful,” he says. “But it’s also a challenge. You’re constantly thinking, adjusting.” Neal pursues steelhead, salmon and trout across rivers and streams that thread through Southern Georgian Bay. The tug on the line, he says, still feels like a small kind of surprise every time.
In winter, when rivers are frozen and work continues indoors, he ties his own flies—an old habit born from necessity and solitude in his teens. “It was something to do instead of watching TV,” he says. “And I needed flies to fish.” That blend of patience and self-reliance carries through everything he does. Even his advice for younger generations sounds less like strategy and more like instinct: “Just do it,” he says. “Don’t let fear of trying something hold you back.”
It’s simple, almost blunt. But like a well-placed cast into moving water, it lands cleanly. Because for Neal Owen, whether in business or on a river, the principle is the same: You learn by showing up, paying attention and letting experience do the rest.
The Trail Builder: Johnny Yeaman
words & photo :: Colin Field
Roll around Mansfield Outdoor Centre (MOC) with Johnny Yeaman and you’re likely to meet just about everyone. Everyone knows Johnny. And that’s probably because he’s been around here, building trails and riding bikes since the beginning. Long before MOC became one of Ontario’s fastest-growing mountain bike destinations, Johnny Yeaman was already building trails.
The 58-year-old Mansfield resident has spent decades helping shape mountain biking in the area. If you’ve headed to Dufferin County for dry trails, chances are you’ve ridden something he helped create. He’s a volunteer advocate and trail builder in Dufferin Forest. Now he’s the trail manager overseeing the revival of MOC’s trail network.
“I’ve lived in Mansfield forever and I’ll never leave,” says Yeaman. Mountain biking looked very different when he started riding in the 1990s. “There was Dufferin Forest, Three Stage and Kolapore,” he says. “That’s what was around.”
He and friends like Ken Klowak used to build mountain bike trails through the 1500-acre property at Dufferin. But when the county realized its forests had become a patchwork of competing users, horses, mountain bikes, dirt bikes and hikers all sharing the same space, Yeaman became one of the mountain bike representatives. Along with others from all user groups, the committee was tasked with creating a long-term recreation plan. Together, the group helped establish separate trail networks for different user groups, a major step forward.
“I’ve lived in Mansfield forever and I’ll never leave.
The result was a designated network for human-powered recreation and a separate system for equestrian use, helping reduce conflict while creating opportunities to build better trails.
Yeaman and a small group of volunteers formalized their efforts through Team Van Go, a grassroots club that operates on donations and volunteer labour. They cleared trails, built beginner-friendly routes and gradually improved the riding experience throughout the forest.
When MOC changed ownership about five years ago, the property’s new owners wanted to revive mountain biking, which had largely disappeared after an early experiment in the late 1990s. They approached Yeaman after seeing the work his volunteer group had done throughout Dufferin County. His answer was immediate.
“I’ve been trying to get back on this property for 25 years.”
The opportunity felt personal. He lives just seven kilometres away. What followed was part trail building and part archaeology. Many of the trails hadn’t been touched in nearly 20 years. Yeaman and his volunteers gradually cleared them, linked them together and built new sections to create a modern trail network. Today, MOC has become a year-round riding destination, with growing summer trail use and one of Ontario’s most established fat bike networks.
Despite working as trail manager, Yeaman still talks like a volunteer. “It’s a really good crew. A large number of them are firefighters, paramedics or retired people. We all have a huge passion for riding and building and have a very strong sense of community.”
These days, Yeaman’s 7- and 8-year-old grandsons help build trails and ride on the property. The trails he’s helped create across Dufferin County and Mansfield are, in many ways, his and the crew’s legacy on the landscape. The work was never about recognition. For Yeaman, it was always about community. And the riding. His favourite moments are the simple ones.
“When we’re down at the bottom having a beer at the patio and someone pops out of Happy Hour trail hooting and hollering, then I feel like our job is done.”
Amen, Johnny. Thanks for the singletrack.
Riding Waves of Change: Jason Schnurr
words :: Ned Morgan
Over the last 30 years, Jason Schnurr has built Jack n Jill’s Surf Shop in Sauble Beach into a local institution by doing what he loves most: getting on the water.
The journey started long before he opened a store. Raised in Walkerton, Schnurr spent summers at Sauble Beach, where his grandparents and later his parents owned cottages. As a teenager in the 1980s, he taught himself to windsurf with help from neighbours and also drew inspiration from an unlikely source: the tractor-tire inner tubes kids used for casual wave-surfing.
“I was on one of those, thinking, If I can get pushed by waves on this, why can’t I get pushed by waves on a windsurf board?” So he began surfing on his mastless board.
At the time, Great Lakes surfers (and proper surfboards) were rare. But in the coming decade, thanks in no small part to Schnurr’s efforts, that would change. While attending Western University in 1994, Schnurr opened Beachin’ in Port Elgin to help pay for his tuition. “As I was finishing my degree in Economics, the business was becoming more successful,” he says. “So I decided to continue it full-time.”
The shop initially carried only a handful of surf apparel brands, but Schnurr expanded his offerings alongside his knowledge of the industry. He opened the first Sauble location in ‘96.
The next two decades saw stage after stage of boardsports growth. “This was the first wave of surfers in the Sauble area,” he recalls. “So many people wanted to surf and soon grabbed up the BIC boards we sold.” Those durable, affordable boards helped make surfing accessible to a wider audience and contributed to a surge in surfing along North America’s “fifth coast.”
As the businesses grew, he continued exploring new watersports himself. He moved from surfing into wakeboarding and then kiteboarding after a friend showed him the ropes. “Lieuwe’s two-line kite was quite a thrill, and difficult to start, before the days of safeties.” Soon he was retailing kites and helping introduce more people to the sport.
The pattern repeated itself when Schnurr discovered stand-up paddleboarding. “Now I had a no-wind sport. I could be on the water every day.” For Schnurr and his customer base, paddleboarding’s appeal was simple: “Here was a sport which most people could participate in.”
Today, Jack n Jill’s boasts three locations, including a boardshop offering equipment and rentals, and storefronts focused on apparel and Schnurr’s own clothing brand. Over three decades, he has watched Ontario’s boardsport community evolve. “The Ontario boardsport industry definitely has its ebb and flow,” he says. “But what we have seen is more people on the water.”
“Now I had a no-wind sport. I could be on the water every day.”
The progression hasn’t been straight-forward: Surfers became paddleboarders and then returned to surfing. Windsurfers became kiteboarders—and now many are embracing wing foiling. “The trend is definitely still in the winging and foiling direction,” Schnurr says, noting that the learning curve is steeper.
Schnurr credits his success to staying connected to both customers and the sports themselves. “The best way I have stayed competitive is by listening to our customers and other retailers, and just getting on the water.”
But one of the challenges of running a business is spending less time on the front lines. “There’s that one downfall,” he says. “You go behind the scenes more instead of being at the forefront. So you miss the excitement and joy when people come off the water and say, ‘I just did…’ whatever it is for the first time. They’re just so happy.”
His own happy on-water moments are straightforward. He loves dawn patrol sessions at Sauble Beach, getting on the water before 6 a.m. and watching the sun rise. “A perfect day is to get out early and start on the water.”
Return to Roots: Meg and Mel Sinclair
words :: Kellie Wilkinson
For twin sisters Meg and Mel Sinclair, Collingwood and Beaver Valley have been woven into their story since childhood.
“We grew up ski racing at Beaver Valley and spending summers mountain biking throughout the area,” says Meg Sinclair. “The outdoor lifestyle here has always been a huge part of who we are.”
Like many local kids, weekends revolved around snow and trails. The sisters eventually traded ski racing for snowboarding, borrowing their brother’s gear and embracing a sport that was still finding its place on Ontario hills. Those experiences would later influence a business built around simplicity, functionality and life outdoors.
Back in 2009, Meg was completing a fashion design program at Ryerson University in Toronto when she began developing a collection of unisex outerwear. At the time, outdoor apparel felt heavily divided. Men’s clothing prioritized function and performance, while women’s focused on trends and traditional expectations.
What started as a school project quickly became something more—the clothing brand Muttonhead. Over the years, the company’s name has evolved. While many longtime customers still know the brand as Muttonhead, the shortened MTN.HEAD is now the official brand identity, reflecting an evolution without abandoning its roots.
Its customers are people who bike to work, spend weekends on trails, chase snow throughout the winter and keep outdoor adventure as part of their everyday identity. For the last 15 years the brand has built a loyal following in Toronto. While MTN.HEAD will continue operating its longtime flagship store in Toronto’s Roncesvalles neighbourhood, the brand’s newest chapter is unfolding in the community that helped shape its founders.
The new store at 146 Hurontario St. in Collingwood places MTN.HEAD directly within one of Ontario’s most active outdoor communities—a place where ski culture, mountain biking, hiking, paddling and four-season living are not marketing concepts but everyday realities.
For Meg and Mel Sinclair, bringing the brand to Collingwood isn’t simply about opening another store. It’s about returning to the hills, trails and winters that helped shape who they are. And for a company built on authenticity, there may be no more fitting place for its next chapter to begin.
Type-A Fun: Jaimie Arthur and Sarah Swackhammer
words & photo :: Colin Field
Turning 50 can make people do strange things. Some book a trip. Some buy a new car. Others throw a party and quietly pretend they aren’t thinking about mortality.
Jaime Arthur decided to run 50 kilometres through the woods. And then she convinced her friend Sarah Swackhammer to join her.
This fall, Arthur and Swackhammer will line up for The Bad Thing 50K, a point-to-point trail race on the Maitland Trail near Goderich. It’s not exactly a casual birthday jog. The course is long, rugged and more than 60 per cent technical singletrack. Runners start near Goderich, follow the Maitland Trail through roots, rocks, climbs, descents and a river crossing, then finish at Auburn Riverside Retreat.
Arthur, a Clarksburg massage therapist, turns 50 this year. Swackhammer, a local real estate agent, turns 50 within six months of Arthur. Both have spent much of their lives outside, moving through the world under their own power. Running, skiing, training, racing. This seemed like a fitting way to mark the occasion. Or at least it seemed fitting once they were already signed up.
“I’m turning 50,” Arthur says. “I just asked her if she would join me.” At first Swackhammer was thinking about a shorter version.
“In the beginning I told Jaime I’d run 25 kilometres with her,” Swackhammer says. “I was gonna sign up for the 25K and then by the time I went to sign up it was full, so I said, OK, that’s fine. I’ll do the 50K with you.”
That is either true friendship or delayed decision-making. Probably both. Neither woman has run a 50K before. Arthur’s longest run is 25. Swackhammer has run seven marathons and spent years chasing a Boston Marathon qualifier, getting painfully close before missing the secondary cutoff by less than a minute.
“I think probably what happened was I stopped at the porta-potty and I should definitely not have done that,” she says. Runners understand this kind of setback. But this upcoming race isn’t really about speed. Nobody is pretending there’s a podium plan.
“Good God, no,” Swackhammer says. “We’re just trying to finish it.” Arthur puts it even more plainly. “We’re aiming to finish without injury.”
The race itself sounds like the kind of event designed by people who enjoy watching other people suffer in beautiful places. The 50K course includes aid stations spread eight to 12 kilometres apart, a mandatory headlamp at the start and a nine-hour cutoff. At 14.6 kilometres, runners leave the main trail and climb something actually called The Bad Thing before returning to the course.
Nobody is pretending there’s a podium plan.
Arthur and Swackhammer have been training mostly on local networks: the Bruce Trail, Kolapore, Beaver Valley and the stretch from Georgian Peaks toward Loree Forest. Arthur calls the Peaks-to-Loree route one of her easier go-tos, which says a lot about her definition of easy.
“You just hike the hill and then Loree’s flat,” she says. Right. Easy.
The plan is to train smart. More time on feet, more hiking hills and more back-to-back efforts. Less hammering pavement and blowing up knees before race day. For Arthur, running changed after her mother died at 58. What began as a five-kilometre habit became something deeper. “It’s more like therapy,” she says.
Swackhammer understands that too. She started running with her father. Both lost those parents before meeting each other. “We honour them through running,” Swackhammer says. That’s the part that makes this more than a birthday stunt. Sure, there will be hills, headlamps, race snacks and probably a few dark moments where one of them questions every decision that led to this. But there’s also friendship, memory, gratitude and the simple privilege of still being able to do hard things outside.
Keeping Collingwood Rolling: Kris Baumgarten
words & photos :: Colin Field
Roll into Kamikaze Bikes in downtown Collingwood on almost any day of the year and there’s a good chance Kris Baumgarten is solving somebody’s problem. Maybe it’s a flat tire. Maybe it’s a creaky suspension pivot. Whatever it is, chances are he’s seen it before.
Baumgarten helped start Kamikaze Bikes back in 1993. He bought the shop outright in 2001 and has been running it ever since. The shop’s name comes from the legendary Kamikaze downhill race at Mammoth Mountain in California. Back when mountain biking was still figuring out what it wanted to be, the Kamikaze was one of the sport’s most iconic events. Fast. Wild. A little reckless.
The name stuck. So did Baumgarten. Mountain biking was exploding when he got into it in the late 1980s. Back then, Collingwood’s riding scene looked very different.
“There was just a handful of trails and a lot of them were like 4X4 trails and a little bit of singletrack,” he says. Three Stage and Kolapore were already attracting riders. Today, riders travel from across Ontario to sample the area’s trail network. Baumgarten has watched it happen from behind the service counter. “Collingwood is not the same town it was 20 years ago,” he says. “It’s exploded.” The growth has been good for business, but it’s also changed the way people move around town.
“Collingwood has done a great job,” he says. “There are bike trails everywhere. Not mountain bike trails, but I can ride my bike to work all on trails. And I live out in the country.”
Of course, the bikes themselves have changed just as much. When Baumgarten started wrenching, mountain bikes were relatively simple machines. Now they’re packed with electronics, software updates, batteries and diagnostic systems. A modern bike mechanic needs to be part technician, part computer programmer and part financial advisor. Baumgarten has adapted. He’s also stayed focused on the basics.
“I think we’re still here because we’re a consistent, dedicated shop. We really want to help people,” he says. That philosophy extends beyond the shop walls. Over the years Kamikaze has supported local rides, fundraisers and cycling events throughout the region. Baumgarten sees it as part of the job.
“We try to do our share,” he says. “It’s important just to support the community because the community is supporting you.” The result is a shop that serves just about everybody.
“There are 2-year-old riders and there are 90-year-old riders in town,” says Baumgarten. “We help them all.” At 56, he isn’t quite ready to slow down. “At some point I’ll have to pass the torch, but not for a while still.” There are still bikes to fix. Riders to help. And trails to ride when time allows. “We’re doing what we’re passionate about,” he says. “Sometimes that’s a problem because you don’t get to ride as much, but that’s okay. Keeping riders happy makes us happy.”
After 33 years, that simple formula seems to be working just fine.
Rooted in Place: Patrice Butterfield
words : Nadia Pestrak
A naturopathic doctor who hangs her shingle in Thornbury, Patrice first took notice of the area when her father, a stone mason, described it as “like the rolling dales of the Shire.” After years of increasingly stepping into the area, Patrice and her family moved here in 2020.
Being active outdoors was a major draw. Patrice describes hiking long sections of the Bruce Trail as meditative. She snowshoes and skis, and paddleboards in the summer. “I try new things to keep things fresh. I dabble in cross-country skiing but I’m terrible. I ski into trees.”
Patrice’s curiosity and lack of pretension carry over into her practice.
“I’m a kind of private investigator for your health,” says Patrice. “When you go to your GP, they’ve got five minutes for two queries because of a burdened health system. But I have the privilege of time and an endless appetite for understanding how the pieces of your health fit together.”
Along with detailed health histories, Patrice looks to labs. “As a naturopathic doctor, we don’t have to justify lab work through OHIP. It’s private pay, but we can do robust blood panels and if we need to, look at hormones or autoimmune markers.” Patrice is so invested in her patients that she admits she often ponders cases, “even as I’m falling asleep.”
While some people perceive naturopathy as “woo-woo,” Patrice emphasizes how regulated and evidence-based the profession is. She also knows when to refer. “There’s a time and a place for all medicine.”
“I’m a kind of private investigator for your health…”
Still, she takes a long view of science. “The only thing you know about science is that it will change.” Patrice attends naturopathic grand rounds, where doctors are presented with the latest updates in medicine. “We thought the earth was flat until better evidence told us otherwise. It’s the same with medicine. It’s constantly changing and evolving.”
While naturopathic doctors don’t specialize, Patrice’s passion project is aging wellness or “longevity medicine.”
“Maybe we’re all going to live to be 90 or 100, but there’s a difference between lifespan and health span.”
But her approach to healthy aging is not puritanical. “If you’re going to have some wine, then let’s talk vitamin B levels, or how we are going to optimize while doing that.”
Patrice has always loved the intersection of science and the mystical, but remains grounded and relatable. She finds as much wonder in discovering a grouping of puffball or lion’s mane mushrooms in the woods as in the car: “When I’m driving home from soccer with a full moon behind you, it’s a glorious place to be.”
That same perspective shapes her approach to health. Just as wonder can be found in unexpected places, health isn’t one-size-fits-all. It looks different for everyone and can be cultivated in many ways. “I like to meet people where they are. Together we work to uncover root causes of health concerns, and to find realistic and achievable change,” she adds. “You can have a decent life, or you can have an epic life where you’re out engaging with the world around you.”
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