After an abrupt closure on January 8, Robinson’s General Store in Dorset, Ont. is expected to reopen on Friday under new ownership.
In a Facebook post, former owner Joanne Robinson wrote: “After having been owned and operated by our family for 100 years (1921 to 2021), we were, like all of you, disappointed and devastated when we learned that our beloved Robinson’s General Store closed in January. Since then, we have been working hard in the background to find a solution to allow the business to reopen. We understand the inconvenience this closure has caused the community, and we thank you for your patience during this difficult time.
“Today, we are pleased to announce that a new family, led by brothers Ven Komina and Satya Jyesta, is taking over the operation of Robinson’s General Store.”
Over the last 100 years, four generations of Robinsons have worked at the store. It started as a 1,200 sq. ft. business serving the local logging industry and has grown into 14,000 sq. ft. of retail space, selling groceries, hardware supplies, branded apparel, cottage décor, and, of course, ice cream. In the summers, the store employs 65 workers, many of them students. But despite the store’s success, Joanne Robinson and her husband, Willie Hatton, decided it was time to retire. In April 2021, the Robinsons sold the store to Mike and Katie Hinbest from Orangeville, Ont.
After a year and a half of operating the store, the Hinbests ran into financial trouble and were forced to foreclose. Since the Robinson’s had bought the store’s mortgage from the bank, the property defaulted back to them, sending the family in search of new owners.
Brad Robinson, Joanne’s father, who operated the store from the mid-1950s until 1991, suspects that the Hinbests struggled because they purchased both the general store and the local marina. “That marina took so much of [Hinbest’s] time, and they spent so much money over there,” Robinson says. Financing the two businesses with inflation and rising interest rates made mortgage payments unaffordable.
When the store closed, locals were left stranded. “We didn’t realize that it would basically shut the town down. People had to go to Huntsville or Bracebridge to do their grocery and hardware shopping,” Robinson says. “Everybody in the area is happy to see that new owners will be taking over, and they’re going to run it similar to the way we ran it.”
When the store went back up for sale in January, Ven Komina and Satya Jyesta approached the Robinsons with an offer. The two brothers own and operate a number of convenience stores in the North Bay area and purchased the Baysville General Store last year. “It isn’t a complete change for them,” Robinson says, “but the stores they’ve run aren’t as big as the store we have, so it’s going to keep them busy.”
The two brothers take possession of the store on Friday and plan to open it the same day. “They’re just having a soft opening at first,” Robinson says. “There won’t be any major produce or stuff like that, but they’re going to have milk and bread, and there’s canned food that was left there on the shelves.”
Over the last two months, Robinson has been going to the store everyday, in part for insurance reasons, but also to maintain the property. The family purged any expired food and staged the store for potential buyers. “It’s ready to go,” he says. “All they’ll need is a good order of groceries, you know, meat and vegetables, and hardware supplies, and they’ll be in business.”
Robinson has one piece of advice for the new owners: be on-site as much as possible. “People are giving you thousands of dollars a year. You have to be there to show your appreciation,” he says. “That’s what small businesses are all about. That’s how small businesses survive.”
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On January 8, employees of Dorset, Ont.’s Robinsons General Store were told they no longer had jobs starting the next day. After 100 years, the store would close, with current owners, Mike and Katie Hinbest, no longer operating the business. No reason for the closure was given.
By January 9, the store had pulled down its Facebook page, emails bounced back, and its phone rang endlessly, unanswered.
Online, among the Dorset community, there’s speculation that the store ran into financial trouble and had to foreclose. But this is unverified as the Hinbests did not respond to comment.
The Hinbests bought Robinsons General Store in April 2021, after it was reportedly listed for $6 million. Previously, the Hinbests operated a Napa Auto Parts store in Orangeville, Ont. As part of their new ownership, the Hinbests expanded the store by adding a café and upgrading merchandise.
Prior to the Hinbests, the Robinson family owned the store. In 1921, Harry and Marguerite Robinson opened the 1,200 sq. ft. general store meant to service the logging industry and a few locals. After the Second World War, when money once again rolled in, Harry proposed building an addition. Harry’s son, Brad, who took over the store in the mid-1950s, helped oversee the addition. Since then, the store has gone through 14 more additions and now sits at 14,000 sq. ft. of retail space, including a grocery store and a hardware store. The Robinsons also opened a nearby marina.
In 1991, Brad’s daughter, Joanne Robinson, and her husband, Willie Hatton, took over the store. Brad still helped on the day-to-day, working into his 80s. Joanne and Willie ran the store for 37 years, with their son, Ryan, helping part time. In the winter of 2020, the family put the store up for sale.
The Robinsons did not respond to comment on the store’s current situation.
The store’s closure has drawn concern from the community, both for historical reasons and convenience. Robinsons is the main source of groceries in the Dorset area. With the store closed, many residents are having to drive half an hour to Huntsville, Ont., for groceries and other supplies, which is problematic for residents who can’t drive. But the community is rallying with a flood of offers on the Dorset Facebook page to pick up groceries for those who can’t make the trip.
Online, Robinsons General Store says it’s “temporarily closed,” but there’s no word on future plans for this iconic cottage country store.
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On August 25, after months of debates and deferrals, the Minden Hills town council denied a short-term rental’s application to rezone itself as a lakeside resort.
The rental, known as the Post House, sits on the southern shore of Lake Kashagawigamog in Haliburton County. Husband and wife Joel Baker and Helen Milstein purchased the property, which sits on a two-acre lot, in 2018, and submitted their zoning application in June 2021.
Council, however, wasn’t happy with how the rental has conducted itself. Despite the owners labelling the property as a short-term rental, neighbours argue the Post House has operated as a resort since it first opened.
During the August 25 meeting, Debbie Fitzsimmons, whose 90-year-old parents live next door to the Post House, said that the previous weekend the property hosted a wedding with 15 to 16 cars parked along the driveway. She also pointed out that the property houses an industrial-sized kitchen operated by private chefs who cook gourmet meals for guests. A feature common among resorts.
“From what I’ve learned in this process, any development requires appropriate zoning, a site plan, and sufficient infrastructure, such as septic capacity, to all be in place prior to permits being approved. This whole process with the Post House has been in reverse,” she said. “Neighbours trusted what was initially presented to them about the business plan for the Post House, and now we realize what a misrepresentation that was.”
On its website, the Post House says that it acts as a corporate retreat, providing a private getaway for colleagues, clients, friends, and family. The property includes four dwellings, one sleeping cabin, a garage/gym, a boathouse, as well as an industrial-sized kitchen.
The Post House is zoned as a residential lot, meaning it can serve as a home, cottage, or short-term rental. Through its application, the property aimed to be rezoned as recreational-commercial, allowing the Post House to operate as a tourist establishment, resort, or restaurant.
As a short-term rental, the entire Post House property must be rented out to a single group. Whereas if it was rezoned as a resort, the property could rent out each cabin to separate groups.
Minden’s town council held a public meeting in December 2021 to review the Post House’s application. During that meeting town councillors deferred their decision until the Post House completed a lake impact assessment and septic system review to ensure that the rezoning wouldn’t threaten the health of Lake Kashagawigmog.
The Post House employed a number of firms to complete these tasks, submitting the findings to the council. The Post House also assured council that it did not plan to remove any trees or vegetation from the property or add any new buildings.
After reviewing the results of these assessments and confirming that rezoning the property as a resort wouldn’t affect the lake, town staff recommended during a June 9, 2022 meeting that council approve the zoning application. Yet, the council deferred the decision again, wanting staff to further research what kind of restrictions and limitations could be put on the property if it was rezoned as a resort, especially if the property was sold.
After hearing from all stakeholders during the August 25 meeting, council denied the application.
“This is setting a precedent. What we see as a short-term rental…a short-term rental to commercial zoning, that means that every short-term rental we have on the lake could do the same thing,” said councillor Pam Sayne during the meeting. “The way they’ve gone about this to totally undermine the process by just doing it and then asking for permission and rezoning is not the way any of us do [things].”
Minden mayor Brent Devolin agreed with Sayne, adding: “I can tell you this, not only to the applicant but to future applicants, it’s about trust. If your actions betray the trust between us, our staff, and the public, it comes with consequences, and in this circumstance, I think it’s unanimous that we want to deny this.”
In response to the denied application, Post House co-owner, Joel Baker, said over email that they were disappointed in the ruling, especially after he and his wife addressed and satisfied all of the council’s requirements.
“As permitted under the Planning Act, we will be appealing this decision to the Ontario Land Tribunal,” he said. “Facts were mischaracterized during the meeting and had we been given the opportunity to respond, we would have been able to correct those misrepresentations. In the meantime, we continue to operate lawfully and respectfully under the township’s zoning bylaw and short-term rental framework.”
In Haliburton, with its wide swaths of Crown land, the granite shore can be steep and rugged, flanked by white pines and leafy trees that turn fiery bright in fall. Many lakes are sparsely inhabited by cottagers, but filled with fish. In winter, groomed trails draw recreational snowmobilers. Haliburton’s true claim to superiority over some other Ontario cottage areas, however, may be the drive. Avoid the multi-lane highway, if you like, and the route takes you on two-lane highways and county roads that wind past grain silos, grey barns, and blue lakes.
Cottagers are drawn to Haliburton’s small, quiet lakes, though Kennisis, Kawagama, and Kashagawigamog offer big stretches of water for sailors and windsurfers. Many lakes in this region are reservoirs for the Trent-Severn Waterway farther south. Water levels are controlled by a series of dams and can fluctuate greatly over the course of a season.
For many years, Haliburton was undervalued. But as more buyers from Toronto discover this Shield country, within three hours of the city, those days are ending. As seen in most parts of cottage country, the COVID-19 pandemic has also increased demand in the area. A boat-access cottage that cost $7,000 in the early 1970s could fetch nearly a million dollars or more now.
Photo Courtesy of Michael and Jewelle Schiedel-Webb
Here at Cottage Life, we realize how hard the COVID-19 pandemic has hit local businesses. To do our part, we’ll be highlighting the stories of different businesses in cottage country. This week, we spoke with Jewelle Schiedel-Webb, who runs Haliburton Highlands Brewing, a cottage-country brewery, with her family in Haliburton, Ont.
What is Haliburton Highlands Brewing?
Haliburton Highlands Brewing is a family-owned production brewery that we started in 2014.
Photo Courtesy of Michael and Jewelle Schiedel-Webb
How did the business get started?
My husband, Michael, and I have cottaged in the Haliburton area for many years and have always wanted to live and work up here. We spent many Friday nights in the car talking about what we could do that would let us live and work in the area. We’re both big foodies and very interested in the slow food movement. So, in 2010, when craft brewing was exploding, we were thinking about how Haliburton didn’t have a craft brewery.
We decided to open one because we thought it could add to the area. My husband has a culinary background, and I worked in product marketing and operations, so I explored all the regulatory and business aspects of starting a production brewery. At the same time, Michael did a couple of internships and learned how to brew.
We partnered with Abbey Gardens, a 350-acre site in Haliburton that used to be a gravel pit. Now it’s focused on building the local food community through sustainable energy and wellness. It was a perfect partnership because they were looking for something to add to their tourism appeal. We were looking for a location for the brewery that would allow us to operate sustainably.
We started with a pilot project to validate. I mean, we were making a considerable investment and a huge transition, so we wanted to be sure this was what we wanted to do. Fortunately, we loved it, and Abbey Gardens felt like the perfect location. We planned with Abbey Gardens to build a building for the brewery that enables our sustainable mandate.
What they came up with is amazing. We lease the building from Abbey Gardens, and it’s been our home for the last seven years. Since brewing is very water-intensive, we have a quality source, but we also responsibly manage our wastewater. We divert a bunch of our waste so that it never hits our septic, and our greywater is managed separately. In our equipment selection, we recover the hot water that we generate in our brewing process so that it recovers the heat energy and the water itself. There’s a lot of closed-loop systems.
What inspired the name?
We felt it was important to have the name of the brewery connected to the region. People who live here and people who cottage here feel a strong affinity for the region, so that was essential. It was always our vision to build the brewery in this specific community rather than anywhere else. We want it to be an integrated part of the community.
To ensure that, we incorporate local suppliers and local ingredients and sources as much as we can. The honey used in our beers, we buy from the farmers’ market. On the retail side, our t-shirts are manufactured in Montreal, and we have them printed at Up River in Minden. We have bottle openers made by local artist Mike Townsend from Twisted Twig Designs. If we can find a local source in the county, we will use it.
Photo Courtesy of Michael and Jewelle Schiedel-Webb
What are some of your most popular products?
We have a regular line-up, which includes five or six year-round offerings. Our Blue Line Blonde is a straightforward, approachable, easy-drinking blonde ale. It’s called Blue Line because it’s the signature beer for McKecks, a restaurant in Haliburton that former NHL player Walt McKechnie started. We partnered with them from the very beginning, before the brewery was even open. In the spring, we partner with Colour of Wood, a local maple syrup producer in Carnarvon. We use the syrup from them to make a beer that we call Cool Runnings. That beer is made entirely from sap, which we get 100 per cent locally. There’s no water.
We also always have Coffee Porter. It uses locally roasted cold brew from County Coffee. We love our dark beers. There’s always a large selection of dark beers that we cycle through in the wintertime. Otherwise, we do mostly ales. Occasionally, we’ll do a lagered ale. Even though we’re a small brewery, we have a lot of flexibility on the types of beers we make. We have a big system that we use for our year-round beers and our mainstream products, and we use our small system to do all these fun seasonal varieties.
How do you choose which types of beer to brew?
Our son, Keanan, and his fiancée, Sandra, are both certified master brewers. They went to Germany to train. So, while Michael was our original head brewer, Keanan does all of our brewing now, and Sandra manages our front of house. When it comes to deciding what we want to brew, we have the advantage of being in Haliburton and not in the GTA, where there are 20 or 30 craft brewers. We don’t have to differentiate ourselves by doing crazy things, like putting out a pink unicorn sparkle beer. We’re not in that crowded market.
When people come here, they’re looking for classic things, sometimes with a bit of a twist. We want to do classic beers inspired by local ingredients. That’s very aligned with the philosophy of our German-trained brewmasters. They want to do things traditionally.
Photo Courtesy of Michael and Jewelle Schiedel-Webb
What kind of events does the brewery host?
While we think of ourselves as a production brewery, we are also a destination brewery enhanced by our partnership with Abbey Gardens. We do live music on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons all of July, August, and September. We have a drive-in screen on the side of the brewery where we show movies. Abbey Gardens runs a program called Little Pit Drive-in. This summer was Wednesdays and Saturdays in August until just after Labour Day.
On Tuesday nights, we host radio bingo. Canoe FM broadcasts radio bingo every Tuesday as a fundraiser for the community. It’s always more fun to play in company, so we broadcast the game and have a regular group that comes to play. Last winter, we did trivia but had to go online because of the pandemic. We also offer guided brewery tours and tasting tours.
How has the pandemic affected your business?
We are very fortunate that our bottle shop is considered essential. There was a quote in an early press release from the provincial government that said something like Ontarians have a complicated relationship with alcohol, which is why the LCBO, Beer Store, and bottle shops like ours were allowed to be open throughout the pandemic. We went to curbside and online like everyone else. We had to close our patio, and we couldn’t do any of our in-house stuff.
One other fortunate thing—and this is another reason we chose to operate the brewery in Haliburton—is that the businesses and people here are great about supporting each other. We had a lot of cottage customers who normally would have shut down their cottage and headed back to the city for the winter move up here. They stayed local, locked down, followed the rules, but they spent the pandemic at their cottage rather than in the city. We and a lot of other local businesses benefited from having a larger population over the winter during the worst parts of the lockdown.
Photo Courtesy of Michael and Jewelle Schiedel-Webb
What does the future look like for Haliburton Highlands Brewing?
We’re always looking at opportunities to change and grow. Abbey Gardens added a large tent to our patio this summer, which was tremendous. It enabled us to extend our programming and support private events. That’s given us the opportunity to really think about how to improve and expand our offering.
This summer, we changed the license on our patio so that we can offer wine and cider in addition to beer. Now we feature cider from Uxbridge, and our wine comes from a family-owned winery in Niagara. We’re also looking at expanding our food offerings. Right now, we offer locally sourced charcuterie boards with meats, cheeses, and breads. Those are the areas we want to continue to expand so that we can offer a better onsite experience throughout the summer and the winter.
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Photo Courtesy of Brigitte Gall and Michael Bainbridge
Here at Cottage Life, we realize how hard the COVID-19 pandemic has hit local businesses. To do our part, we’ll be highlighting the stories of different businesses in cottage country. This week, we spoke with Michael Bainbridge and Brigitte Gall, who run The Occurrence, a puzzle manufacturing company in Haliburton, Ont.
What is The Occurrence?
The Occurrence is an artisanal jigsaw puzzle manufacturer and retailer. We have a puzzle machine press that cuts the puzzles, but essentially everything is done by hand and they’re all our own unique designs.
Photo courtesy of Brigitte Gall and Michael Bainbridge
How did the business get started?
My background is a gem and mineral photographer who specializes in gems and minerals for museums and private collectors. The discussion for the last several years between Brigitte and I has been what to do with the library of pictures I’ve built up over the years.
We got the idea for making them into puzzles on New Year’s Eve, 2018. We had a bunch of friends over that night, but the temperature was negative 46 degrees Celius. It was colder in Haliburton than the daytime high of Mars. None of our friends’ cars would start. And even if they could leave, it wouldn’t have been wise. So, we ended up hosting eight people for three days, and we started running out of things to do. We pulled out some jigsaw puzzles, and at one point, we had eight people circling the kitchen island working on this Starry Night jigsaw puzzle.
That’s when the light bulb went off. We started making puzzles out of my pictures. Originally, we were outsourcing, but the intent was always to start a small manufacturing business in Haliburton. In October 2019, we took possession of the space we’re in now and we’re gearing up for a launch just after Christmas. But then we stopped hearing from our suppliers in China—right as the pandemic was getting started. It wasn’t until June 2020 that we were finally able to open our doors at full capacity. Now we have our manufacturing in the back and a little retail shop in the front.
What inspired the name?
The occurrence is a geological term. It’s a concentrated mineral deposit. With my background in minerals and gemstones, I’ve always used that name for my website. Then when we started talking about the puzzle factory and what to call it. We liked the different meanings of the word “occurrence.” It’s a happening, an event, something that’s exciting and interesting. But it also has a sort of cult feel to it, like a ye old book shop. Our branding is all based on the idea of an occult book store.
Photo courtesy of Brigitte Gall and Michael Bainbridge
How do you make the puzzles?
We start by printing out the design we want on photo printers, the same thing you’d use in a high-end photo lab. We use pigment inks and museum-grade paper. The photographic print is glued onto cardboard. Then we have a roller die press for cutting the puzzle. It’s like two giant rolling pins turning in sync with each other, and we’ve got a steel rule die that’s like a cookie-cutter. You run the puzzle through the two rollers and it pushes the cardboard into the blades and cuts it.
We have different dies for different sizes or shapes of puzzles. Every one of our 500 piece puzzles has exactly the same cut, but we have different dies for the 77-piece, 192, 504, and 1,008. So, each one of those dies is different based on size. After the puzzle’s cut, we have the highly technical process of scrambling, which involves taking the puzzle apart so that you can put it back together again.
We’ve done our best to source all of the materials from Canada, and always recycled materials. It’s a fine balance between getting the very best materials and the most local. We do import our cardboard from the Netherlands. It’s 100 per cent recycled. But our boxes are made in Markham, from recycled Canadian cardboard.
How do you choose the designs?
It started with designs based on my photographs. Originally, I had a ready market with the gem and mineral shows I’d go to, like the Gemboree in Bancroft. We started selling the puzzles there.
Then the next design we added was the Haliburton County road trip. We drove around the county for two days taking pictures of actual road signs and then designing them into a fun collage that represents a tour of the county.
We wanted to do it for other places as well, like Muskoka and Lanark. We thought it would be a simple matter of swapping out some names for different places, but when we went, we discovered that there was a really unique culture of place that was evident in the road signs. It wasn’t transferable. So, we did the whole thing over again for Lanark and Muskoka.
We also have artists’ puzzles. We wanted to feature Canadian artists and not ones that were typical or expected. Artists like Kurt Swinghammer, Wendy Wood, and our most recent one, Mary Anne Barkhouse, an Indigenous artist who lives in Haliburton—also a friend of ours. She’s really well known as a sculptor, so we wanted to get one of her works done. We actually launched it for orange shirt day.
Brigitte’s really keen on the nostalgia pieces. The old Canadian ephemera, so we’ve started a series of old covers from the Eaton company’s catalogues and we have the cover of Canada’s first sci-fi pulp fiction magazine.
We also do custom puzzles. It’s one of the side benefits of having brought production in-house. If you want a puzzle of your sister’s wedding or a picture of your dog, you just have to email us the picture and within a week or so, you’ve got a puzzle. All of the other designs come from Brigitte and I. We choose based on what kind of puzzles we’d want to do.
Photo courtesy of Brigitte Gall and Michael Bainbridge
How often do you make a new puzzle?
In two years, we’ve gone from five designs to 27. There hasn’t really been any regularity to that, but by bringing production in-house, we can do whatever we want. There are no minimum orders or turnaround times. What we’re learning, though, is that there are seasons to the puzzle industry, similar to the way tourism in the area is. We always try to get new designs out for the spring, when cottagers start coming up again.
There’s also the Christmas puzzle peak. For that, we try and get new stuff out in September, October. Then there’s the February blahs. Nobody’s going outside and there’s nothing to do but puzzle. We have a long list of design ideas that we’re keen to do. It’s just a matter of how much time and resources we’re able to dedicate to the process.
How has the pandemic affected your business?
Anybody who’s picked up a newspaper or a magazine in the last year has heard of the puzzle trend as a result of COVID. Canada is actually a puzzle capital of the world. We have two of the world’s top five puzzle manufacturers with Eurographics and Cobble Hill, but they both manufacture in the States. As far as we know, we’re the only Canadian puzzle manufacturer that actually makes everything in-house in Canada—aside from some very small, custom businesses. But this has been a real boon for us during the pandemic. People like that we’re Canadian. We’ve no doubt gotten a sales bump as a result of the pandemic, but it’s hard to compare since we opened in 2020.
We did encounter problems around the beginning of January 2020 when, all of a sudden, our manufacturer in China stopped returning our phone calls. We planned to order our roller die press from China, but this forced us to do some more searching. We found a machine company in Montreal that was able to build a custom machine based on what we knew we needed from the Chinese machine. So, even the machine we use was made in Canada.
COVID did delay our opening by about six months, but in the end, I think it worked out well because the machine that we have is undoubtedly better made, and it’s easier to get service. There have been other supply chain issues that continue to haunt us. For example, there’s a worldwide cardboard shortage. It’s been going for almost two years now. It’s caused our box supplier’s turnaround times to go from 10 days to 30 days. And we had a shipment go missing because the driver got COVID and had to park the truck for a month.
What we didn’t anticipate is that because COVID has slowed down the supply chain, we’ve become the manufacturing source for a number of small, craft puzzle brands. We manufacture puzzles for lifestyle brands in Montreal, Muskoka and Toronto. So, there’s been ups and downs.
Photo courtesy of Brigitte Gall and Michael Bainbridge
What does the future look like for The Occurrence?
We’re in an 800 square foot manufacturing space, which includes the retail storefront. It’s getting pretty crowded. I mean, we’re small, but we’re outgrowing the space quickly. There are certain limitations to the manufacturing process. Over the next year, we’re going to be charting out our growth, how much space we need, and what kind of automation we can introduce. Ultimately, in a year, we’d like to be in a facility that is at least twice as big with a second production line that’s more automated.
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