SAND POINT LAKE- It was love at first sight when Doug Hall ventured from his Georgia home to discover the beauty of the region encompassing Crane Lake and Sand Point Lake, and like many, it wasn’t long before the Delta Airlines jet engine mechanic and his wife, Cindy, were on the lookout for a cabin to buy.
Possibilities came and went, but six years ago they happened across a different opportunity – Sand Point Lodge, a six-cabin resort on the Canadian side of Sand Point Lake, was for sale.
Hall found others interested in investing in the property with him, so he hired an accountant and an attorney to move the deal forward.
“And when it comes time to pull the trigger, everybody started crawfishing,” Hall said. “I told my wife that everybody’s out and asked what we wanted to do, and she said let’s go for it. We’ve been there since 2016.”
At first, everything went even better than they had hoped.
“It was phenomenal. The first three years were just unbelievable,” Hall said. “We were just taking on more customers and got busier and busier and busier.”
The Halls quickly discovered that they hadn’t just purchased a resort. They were the owners of the hub of a community that took root on the Canadian shores of Sand Point Lake in the early 1900s, and they enthusiastically embraced that role, according to Darryl Ponder, who owns one of the roughly 70 cabins in the area.
“Doug and Cindy are terrific,” Ponder said. “It’s the only lodge, the only store on the Canadian side of the lake. But Doug and Cindy have gone far past that. They get a call at 1 a.m. that somebody’s lost on Red Horse Bay and Doug’s in his boat going out in the middle of nowhere to try to find them. It’s a social hub where people will get together. Sand Point Lodge is where everybody gathers and has a pizza. It’s kind of the heartbeat of the community.”
But today, it could be said that Sand Point Lodge is on life support, a victim like many others of two barren years of COVID closures that’s now threatened by record-high flooding and burdensome Canadian border restrictions that could lead to yet another lost tourist season.
Border snafu
The Halls’ major problem is simple, it’s one shared by their neighboring cabin owners, and a solution has been maddeningly elusive.
“We can’t get there,” Hall said.
Canada closed its borders to noncitizens because of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, and didn’t start easing those restrictions until August 2021, wiping out two full seasons for Sand Point Lodge. Hall said that “99.9 percent” of their customers are U.S. citizens who access the resort by going through Crane Lake and checking in at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) remote station at Government Island about one-and-a-half miles away. And trying to replace some of those losses with Canadian customers wasn’t an option because the Halls couldn’t get there to open up.
“They wouldn’t even allow us in during COVID,” Hall said. “They wouldn’t allow us on our own property.”
Hall eventually got to the lodge last August after the restrictions were eased, but he couldn’t take the approximately 10-mile boat trip from Crane Lake because the CBSA didn’t reopen the Government Island station, although all the other remote stations were reopened, Hall said. His only alternative was to use a boat ramp at Lady Rapids on the Namakan River in Canada, having to go through International Falls to get there. That’s also how Ponder got to his cabin, and he described the ordeal of getting there.
“Having what would normally be a 10- to 20-mile boat ride across Crane Lake, now we have to go 181 miles around and it takes three hours and 47 minutes by Google Maps to do that. That’s like asking all the folks in Fort Frances to have their only boat launch being in the eastern suburbs of Winnepeg. That’s like having your only boat lauch for Minneapolis now being past Duluth in Two Harbors.”
The last 38 miles is down a dirt road, Hall said. “And then you have to come off that road and it looked like a four-wheeler path to the boat ramp,” he said. “There’s not a dock. There’s no way I can convince my customers to make this trek. Once you lauch your boat you’ve got to find a place to park the boat, your truck and your trailer. At best there’s enough room to park three vehicles with boat trailers. And they expect all my guests and 77 cabin owners to bring all their boats all the way around and all of us are supposed to park in there somehow. It’s impossible.”
And if someone has a problem, mechanical or medical, there’s no cell service at the ramp, Hall said, and it could be days before someone might happen by to be of help.
Meanwhile, when Hall reached Sand Point Lodge last August, he found some new residents.
“Because the camp had been unattended for two years the beavers moved in and set up camp,” he said. “We had 26 trees down in the camp, three of them laying on cabins. It took me four weeks just to clean up the mess.”
This spring was supposed to be different, but then came the rains of April and the flooding of May and June. CBSA didn’t reopen the Sand Point station because of flooding and provided no other alternative.
Seeing that the restrictions were still in place in late April, Hall began contacting various Canadian officials and offices, but got nowhere, and by last week had heard only empathetic responses from local officials, like those in Fort Frances, but nothing at all from the people who could change things. Even describing the potentially hazardous conditions due to flooding at the lodge fell on deaf ears.
“I have six propane tanks and they’re all over half full, so we’re looking at 4,000 gallons of propane,” he said. “I have a 2,000-gallon gasoline tank sitting beside a 500-gallon gas tank full of gasoline. It’s all sitting down where the floodwaters can reach.”
Hall reached out to some folks on the Canadian side to survey the property and secure the tanks, but that doesn’t solve the cash flow issue. After the Timberjay talked with Hall last week, the CBSA announced that it would provide an emergency access phone line for property owners to get in to see about possible flood damage. The CBSA is apparently serious about the property owner bit, as there have been reports that approval has been denied for relatives who aren’t listed as an owner.
“I know one gentleman who was elderly and needed some help, wanted to bring his grandson in, and was told that the grandson can’t go in to help him,” Ponder said. “I had another gentleman who wanted to bring his brother and was told his brother could not go in to help him, so it’s extremely limited.”
Ponder said a simple solution would be to reinstate the Remote Area Border Crossing Program, which allowed people to get an entry permit to use when a remote station was not available, and just add on the proof of COVID vaccination requirements, but for now it remains suspended.
With the floodwaters having peaked and started slowly trending downward, there’s a possibility that in a few weeks conditions would allow the Government Island station to reopen. Ponder also said they needn’t wait that long.
“There’s a house there at the site. The office is flooded right now, but the house is actually well above water line and it’s OK,” he said. “We stand by as a community ready to help to the degree we can. There are numerous offers of temporary housing from lodges to private cabin owners if they needed a place to stay. If they need us on an emergency basis to tie docks down or do some sandbagging or something of that nature, we’re ready to help. We just very much would like the CBSA office to open.”
Meanwhile, reflecting his conviction that Sand Point Lodge is an essential part of the community, Ponder set up a GoFundMe late last week to raise money to help, and as of Wednesday 66 donors had contributed more than $17,000, $5,000 more than Ponder’s original goal.
“The response from you all has been amazing, overwhelming, and quite humbling, especially in light of the fact that this flood is affecting everyone and their properties,” the Halls wrote in a social media post. “Without hesitation so many have come to our aid, and have given us a leg up in this particularly difficult time. Your contributions and prayers are deeply appreciated and will allow us to get on the road to recovery!”
Hall was uncertain if they could survive a third lost season, but with the extra assistance and even a partial season, he’s hopeful.
“We’re trying to be optimistic and we’re going to shoot (to open) July 1,” he said. “We had people who were scheduled to come in June and put their plans off to July and August, so we can still salvage part of it to try to get enough revenue to pay the winter bills and hold on till next year.”
Sand Point Lake property owners wishing to enter Canada by private boat can call the CBSA at 807-274-5473 and should call in advance of their arrival. They should also complete their ArriveCAN mandatory information before entering Canada.