This issue takes us from the shores of Georgian Bay through Muskoka and over to Prince Edward County, and it never ceases to amaze me how much creativity exists across this province.
By Maddie Johnson
What stood out most this time around is just how unplanned entrepreneurship can be. If you’re willing to say yes and lean in when the moment arrives, it’s pretty amazing what can happen.
A climbing trip that turned into a move. A campfire mug that turned into a brand. A gutted resort that turned into one of the most talked-about properties in the province. None of these stories started the way they ended up, and that’s exactly what makes them worth telling.
Wander the Resort
There’s no straight line from cancer researcher to luxury resort owner. But then again, Shannon Hunter has never really done things the expected way.
After years in medical research and then interior design in Toronto, Shannon and her husband bought a small waterfront property in Prince Edward County in 2015 on a whim. She styled it, put it on Airbnb, and came back after the holidays to find the entire summer had booked. One property became five, and five became a question she couldn’t stop asking: what if there was something here?
In 2019, Shannon and her business partner bought a tired lakeside resort in Bloomfield, gutted it, and started building something the County didn’t have—a place rooted in simple luxury, where every detail, from the percolator coffee to the cedar-and-smoke soap made by a local artisan, had been personally chosen to make guests slow down and actually feel where they were.
Named best new hotel in Canada by Condé Nast Traveller in 2021, Wander the Resort is now home to ten Scandi-inspired lakeside cabins, a clubhouse and restaurant, beach club, and the newly opened Wander the Spa.
“Making a beautiful space gets people here once,” Shannon says. “If they don’t feel welcomed, they don’t come back.”
They keep coming back.
Lemonade Collective
Melissa Goldmintz will tell you she was never really a gym person. Which is exactly why she opened one.
After growing up in the Blue Mountains—she learned to swim in the very pool she now owns—Melissa spent years in marketing and events before a phone call from her mom changed everything. The building was for sale. She knew it well. She put in an offer, and just like that, she was a gym owner with no fitness industry experience, a gutted building in desperate need of love, and a COVID shutdown four months after opening. She navigated all of it alongside her husband and with a determination that, by all accounts, has never really let up.
Six years later, the community Melissa set out to build is thriving. Lemonade Collective now offers a saltwater pool, gym, fitness studio, dry sauna, personal training, nutrition coaching, and an authorized Lululemon retail shop. The aquafit classes are always wait-listed, bachelorette bookings fill most weekends, and members drive in from as far as Owen Sound.
Whatever their day looks like when they arrive, they all leave the same way.
“They’ll say, ‘I needed that,’” Melissa says. “And that makes it worth it.”
Photography: Origin Films
Dags & Willow Fine Cheese and Gourmet Shop
Scott Irvine spent decades working for large corporations—CN, CP Rail, a string of U.S. companies—before finally doing what he always wanted: whatever the hell he wanted.
After buying and turning around a medical gas company during COVID, Scott set his sights on something with a little more soul. In 2023, he purchased Dags & Willow, Collingwood’s beloved fine cheese and gourmet shop, and quietly got to work. He expanded its wholesale reach across Ontario, transformed the underused upstairs into the Willow Room—an intimate, European-feeling event venue—and started hosting everything from five-course Spanish dinners to micro weddings.
But to this day, Scott describes himself as more caretaker than owner, thanks to the dedicated following the shop had long before he took over.
“The people of Collingwood feel like it’s their business,” he said. “It’s my responsibility not to mess it up.”
What drives him isn’t reinvention for its own sake, but something simpler: building a place where people love to work, and where the community feels a genuine sense of belonging. In Collingwood, it seems, they already do.
Photography: Town + County Collective
Muskoka Cup Co.
Jamie Burns was sitting around a campfire at Killbear Provincial Park when the idea came to her. A lover of beautiful, intentional things, she wanted a mug that matched the feeling of being up north, but she couldn’t find one. So she decided to make her own.
That small act of creative problem-solving in the summer of 2017 became Muskoka Cup Co.
What started as hand-painted ceramics for friends and family has grown into a brand carried by over 150 retailers across Ontario. The six signature campfire mugs remain the heart of it, and each design—a wind-swept pine, a dockside Muskoka chair, an anchor at rest—tells a small story about life up north. The line has since expanded to include Cottage Clean, an eco-friendly dish soap made with Muskoka cranberry and wild blueberry extract, now sold through the Ontario Made program.
“I love being able to provide people with that in-between connection,” Jamie says, “where they can experience Muskoka from no matter where they are.”
Photography: Michelle Delaney of Sisterhood Photography Co.
Millard Bautista Designs
Mike Millard and Venecia Bautista didn’t set out to build a furniture company—they set out to build a life. Mike left a career as an auto mechanic for the creative freedom of carpentry. Venecia traded tourism management for job sites in BC. Together, they founded Millard Bautista Designs in 2011 and moved to Clarksburg by 2016 after a single climbing trip to the Beaver Valley convinced them it was home.
“It’s been the best decision of our lives,” Venecia said.
Their work spans custom cabinetry and furniture for the cottages, chalets, and custom homes that define life in South Georgian Bay—built on a small-batch pre-order model, with sustainably sourced materials, and made to last. More recently, a request from a local bike shop sparked something new: a line of modular gear storage systems for bikes, skis, boards, and climbing equipment that has since caught the attention of outdoor enthusiasts and design-minded homeowners alike.
It’s a natural extension of who they are—two people who spend their days building beautiful, functional things, and their evenings out on the trails using them.