Two months after evacuation, lodge remains empty

It has been two months since Joe Hnatishin stayed at the lodge he owns in eastern Manitoba, owing to an evacuation necessitated by a large wildfire.

It’s also been two months since a paying guest slept at Wallace Lake Lodge.

Hnatishin and his visitors were forced leave the lodge, at the edge of Atikaki Provincial Wilderness Park, on May 13, one day after it had opened for the season.

Although the main lodge was closed, Hnatishin still had some revenue from four fly-in outpost camps. That dried up this weekend when the province closed down the area where they are located because of the fire danger.

“All you can do is just watch the weather and see what improves,” he said Monday.

“Usually we run until the middle of October, so we are hoping we will still have time to get in and get moving again.”

Hnatishin said he doesn’t expect the government to step in and help lodge owners recoup some of their losses.

“I’m not holding my breath for either the federal or provincial governments,” he said.

“They don’t seem to have any interest with us.”

This year’s combination of wildfires, evacuations, and closures of wide swaths of the province have left dozens of fishing lodges, whether fly-in or connected by roads, hurt financially.

Summer, usually the most lucrative season as American guests visit to fish, has turned into a season of forced vacancies of days, weeks or, as in the case of Wallace Lake, months.

“Everybody is struggling. There will be a substantial loss this year.”– Don Lamont, executive director of the Manitoba Lodges and Outfitters Association

Don Lamont, executive director of the Manitoba Lodges and Outfitters Association, said out of 67 member lodges in the province, 45 have been closed for various periods of time because of wildfires.

Lamont said the association is waiting to see if the province will help. He noted lodges help inject $566 million annually into the Manitoba economy.

“Everybody is struggling,” he said. “There will be a substantial loss this year.

“This is just unbelievable. We’ve never seen anything like this summer. I like what the government has said so far, but that was two weeks ago and all hell has broken loose since then.”

Tourism Minister Nellie Kennedy said last month a recently announced tax deferral program covers all Manitoba businesses affected by wildfires and, as far as new programs for affected businesses, “we’re still (at the) beginning of the wildfire season. We’re just going to manage things as they continue to happen.”

Kennedy added the government’s first priority is help people to evacuate safely and work to assist Manitobans to get back to their communities.

A provincial government spokesperson said Monday it was still too early for the government to consider announcing disaster relief with the province’s second state of emergency this season still in place.

Bryan Bogdan, owner of Wekusko Falls Lodge near Snow Lake, said he has guests, but they aren’t his regular ones.

“We have firefighters staying here now,” he said.

With Snow Lake and Wekusko Falls Provincial Park under mandatory evacuation orders — due to a large out-of-control fire about 20 kilometres from the community — the lodge is considered an essential service.

“We don’t know about next week yet because we don’t know what to tell (guests) yet.”– Bryan Bogdan, owner of Wekusko Lake Lodge near Snow Lake

Bogdan said he will still look to file an insurance claim for lost business this year.

“We shut down a month ago and now we’re shut again — this time we had a night’s notice,” he said.

“The first time, we lost two weeks of revenue, but because they only insure you for mandatory evacuations, that was half a week. We don’t know how long this evacuation will be.”

Because of this, Bogdan said he waits until mid-week, to see what’s happening with wildfires and evacuations, before cancelling bookings for the following week.

“We don’t know about next week yet because we don’t know what to tell them yet,” he said.

As for Hnatishin, while the fire has damaged the financial side of his business, he is holding on to at least two positive things.

“It was caused by lightning,” he said. “It was good to hear that it wasn’t human — almost all of them have been started that way.

“And it hasn’t burned any of the shore line of our lake. That’s good because, on the road south of us, from Bird River all the way up to north of Long Lake, it is all burnt.

“It looks like a war zone.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca