Bed, breakfast & back rub

NEAR STE. ANNE- Raylene Snow quit her teaching job, was living alone in a trailer in the woods using propane for heat, and had just purchased an abandoned farm home that she planned to move and make into a spa.

She mailed a photo of the abandoned farmhouse to her daughter in Montreal, and when her daughter's husband Sébastian came home from work that day, he found his wife crying at the dining-room table.

Tanis was clutching her mom's photo, saying, "There's no way she's going to make it."

Well, daughter was wrong. Mom made it. And for two-and-a-half years, Snow has been offering an overnight wellness spa unlike any other, in a reconditioned farmhouse on the edge of the Seine River.

"Come and meet the crazy person who did all this," Snow says mockingly, like some voice-over in a TV commercial.

Raylene's Wellness Spa, on a two-hectare woodlot 30 minutes outside Winnipeg, promises relief and rejuvenation from a turbulent world. That includes an hour-long massage, steam shower, screened-in hot tub, and one of those robotic massage loungers. And a giant breakfast in the morning. All for $130 a night. Tax included.

"There are hermitages and spas where you can stay overnight, but they're large, with lots of people around you. This is secluded and private," she said.

It started out as a bed & breakfast/wellness centre. For an extra $50, travellers could get an hour-long, relaxation massage.

But travellers made up just a small portion of her business. It was the wellness spa that took off, with people coming out from Winnipeg and other places just to get away and be pampered for a night.

A little lower please. Over to the right. A bit more. Now up a bit. Ahhhh.

Well, that's not quite how it goes. First you take five deep inhalations of "un-stress oil," a concoction that smells like industrial lubricants and floral scents on steroids. It's nice.

Then Snow does her massage thing. She's more like a faith healer, determined to drive out every evil stressor from your body, including from your -- hello! -- bum. She doesn't permit talking during a massage "because it interrupts the flow."

She hasn't followed an easy path. Her dad was in the air force and the family moved frequently. Snow married at 18. She became a nurse's aide in the premature births unit, then a hairdresser, where she learned to do the facials, manicures and pedicures that she now offers at her spa. Then she was a stay-at-home mom for her three children, while selling everything from Tupperware to encyclopedias to organic cosmetics on the side.

She returned to school, got her bachelor of education degree in three-and-a-half years, and began a teaching career at age 40 in Morris. She and her husband divorced around the same time.

At age 55, Snow quit teaching. "I walked in, handed in my resignation, and said I was building a spa. They thought I was mentally ill."

She gave up a well-paying job, good pension, and health and dental insurance. But, she says, "I had to get out of there and do what I wanted to do." She adds -- unnecessarily -- "I'm a high-energy person."

That led to Snow's living alone in a trailer in the woods in a part of Manitoba she didn't know. She had no hydro or water and used propane heat. Vandals welcomed her to the neighbourhood by stealing her propane tanks. Then she found the abandoned farmhouse. With help from her two sons and a carpenter, Snow completely gutted the farmhouse and turned it into a southeastern Manitoba ashram.

She's always loved to give people massages. "I think my hands were born to do this," she said.

But Snow is not a trained massage therapist. She's self-taught in what she calls relaxation massage. Snow has been massaging friends and co-workers regularly since 1995, and immersed herself in massage therapy textbooks and other literature. She hopes to soon hire a trained massage therapist to take Blue Cross patients.

Business is steady. She gets groups of teachers at the end of a school year for "de-stressing" sessions, before they start summer holidays. Golfers (there are seven golf courses nearby, including Quarry Oaks) like to sit in the hot tub at night, and get their backs and their feet massaged before another round of golf next morning. (She's a reflexologist, too.)

She gets truckers who arrive for the steam showers. She has guests from Toronto book every year, as well as from Vancouver.

Snow also gets many couples and she hosts wedding nights. She leaves the premises for newlyweds, but otherwise stays in the basement while guests have free rein of the top two floors.

For breakfast, guests get a huge helping of waffles, whipped cream, strawberries and bacon.

Snow secretly dreams of being on the Oprah Winfrey show, and envisions Oprah donning a headscarf and dark glasses to visit her spa, just southeast of Ste. Anne's.

"I'm going to be 60 in February. But, you know, I really agree with Oprah that you have to go with your heart. Since I started doing this, I feel like I'm 30 again."

The spa operates by appointment only. Gift certificates are available. More information is at raylenesspa.ca

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 19, 2009 A5