By DC Rutherford
Unless you’re a prophet, chances are you didn’t see the pandemic coming, or the multitude of effects it has had on every aspect of our lives. The switch to remote working, the global rally to create vaccines, and the return to community-based living were all positive outcomes of this generation’s greatest challenge.
But not even Nostradamus could have foreseen the boom in the recreation industry. Boats, cars, snowmobiles, e-bikes, skis, and motor homes flew off the shelves like Cabbage Patch Kids at Christmas in 1983. And of course, cottaging has never been more popular. But how does an industry naturally limited by seasons, geography and socioeconomics confront supply chain challenges that it has never seen before? Well, with creativity, ingenuity, and an unprecedented expansion of the market. But you may want to book your contractor yesterday.
According to Canadian Mortgage Professional magazine, “Waterfront sales in Ontario’s Lakelands region (an area that includes cottage country hotspots such as Muskoka, Lake of Bays and Parry Sound) were up over 275% in April [2021] compared to the same month in 2020, according to the Lakelands Association of Realtors, with the median price for waterfront property sales last month having risen by 36.8% – to $833,500 – compared with July 2020.” So while the lake was getting flooded, so too was demand for work on new and existing properties in Ontario.
Ashley Gowland of Rockscape in Bracebridge was shocked by the explosive demand that followed an initial downturn at the beginning of the pandemic: “When the pandemic hit in 2020, we basically just sat back and went, is everybody going to cancel? What’s going to happen here? And we did have a slow start in the spring of 2020 for sure, but ever since then, it has literally never been busier.”
But with demand comes the inevitable challenge of supply, and while Rockscape’s locally sourced materials remained accessible until recently, labour was an issue as their building season extended but the availability of staff did not. Labour also, unfortunately, has been the cause of the new materials shortages. “We were actually okay through the summer months but we rely on a lot of students, but then as the fall hits, they all go back to school.” But with a determined crew, Rockscape had an incredible summer, and beyond. “We’re basically at this point booking out into 2023.”
Lumber was an early casualty of the supply chain challenge, and local supplier Muskoka Lumber was not spared. “The increased intensity [in] the cost of lumber came as a shock to everyone back in 2020,” says general manager Jason Sifft. “We remained as diligent as possible to follow the market projections and buy accordingly. The biggest hurdle was the increase in demand coupled with shortages in supply.”
Still, the company managed to adapt quickly to the new situation. “Staff were working quickly to collect and produce orders for same-day curbside pick-up. Each of them was certainly getting their steps for the day! This gave new staff members a crash course in our products and helped them learn the store layout quickly.”
After thirty years of servicing the region, Muskoka Lumber met this challenge the same way it has in the past, by working with its customers to find solutions. “We have always operated in close connection to our customers, whether it be a design for a build we are working on together, or a project we’re supplying for. In many cases, customers came in for the coffee and left with a framing package all queued up.”
“2021 has been a crazy year,” says Mike Archambault, senior project manager at Tamarack North, which has built custom lakefront homes, cottages, and accessory buildings in the region for over three decades. He adds some of the nearly forgotten international incidents that occurred in this unusual year to the list of local challenges:“The Suez Canal blockage, forest fires, inclement weather in Texas, record-high lumber futures…”
From his experience over the course of the pandemic, Archambault developed a bullet list of dos and don’ts of pandemic building in cottage country.
- Order local (support your neighbours), and where possible, select readily available products – unless you are willing to wait a long time to get stuff.
- You really need to be proactive when ordering. Don’t wait until the last minute. Also, rethink lead times – they are much longer now. Where the window used to be six weeks, now it’s 12 weeks-plus.
- Order your appliances the minute your contract is signed: allow for a really, really long lead time.
- You can no longer assume your local lumberyard has stock. (Engineered and pressure-treated lumber were really hard to get for a while.)
- Anticipate project delays due to additional site-related controls and measures, including daily checklists to help limit the risk of exposure.
Meredith Parsons of Cassis Design Studio, a cottage design company, recognized early that the current landscape would become the “new normal,” and adapted accordingly with her projects this year. “[We got] creative with the way that we schedule trades, to accommodate a scattered supply of materials that is not typical to the building process!,” she says. “In some cases, we are having to spend additional money on trades, because they are having to come back multiple times to do work as materials or fixtures become available.”
Parsons says it’s crucial to explain the challenges upfront to clients, and set realistic expectations. “We try to set the stage from the get-go. We start the conversation by explaining the delays we have seen on other projects and inform them, to the best of our ability, on what they can expect. We let them know that the more prompt they can be with decisions, the smoother the process will run.
“For example, we might send a client a lighting package, showing proposed specs within a build. If they wait one to two weeks, the light that we proposed may no longer be available, and we would be in the position where we are reselecting a light that the client fell in love with.”
So while the community of builders may not be prophets, they have become prophetic in anticipating client needs and have installed workflows and practices that focus on local sourcing, community interests, and ambitious solutions to singular problems. So while your new cottage or renovation may take a bit longer to complete, the precision, beauty, and integrity of the work will still be assured.
