Angry in the Great White North

The Credit River Company describes itself as an environmentally-conscious defender of local heritage:

Welcome to a new kind of company. The Credit River Company's mandate is to seek out properties and businesses of historic, geographic or environmental importance and to enhance them for today's visitors and customers, and for tomorrow's generations.

We aggregate properties so important that, in almost all instances, they are protected by public mandate, such as through the Niagara Escarpment Commission, Heritage designation or the Credit Valley Conservation Authority.

We do not develop, but rather restore, rejuvenate and enhance. We respect the history of our assets to the extent that historic walking tours of the communities we have a presence in are an important focus of ours. We work with small business owners and operators of many heritage properties, taking them on as partners and giving them the resources to properly protect the land under their stewardship.

The company was founded in 2002, with Garth Turner as the CEO.  Currently he is described as the former CEO.  As far as I can tell, The Credit River Company restored only three properties -- The Caledon Inn, The Cataract Inn, and The Belfountain Village Store.  The Credit River Company also sold itself as a catering company, using the kitchen of the Caledon Inn. 

This is based on crawling through several years worth of archived versions of the website. 

Garth Turner was still the CEO of the company when he re-entered politics in 2005 to run in the election that year.  During the 2006 election, Garth Turner's bio at the CBC Canada Votes site described the operation of the Credit River Company in the present tense.

Then in December 2005, with the election at the midway point, the main website was replaced with a page announcing the development of a new website:

We are currently in the process of creating a whole new web site, designed to best showcase the diverse properties we have to offer.

The diverse properties still only consisted of the two inns and the store.

Garth Turner remained the CEO even as he took his seat as MP.  That was still true in April 2006, when Garth Turner wrote a letter to the Caledon Citizen expressing concern about new parking rules that would have affected business at the Belfountain property. 

In May 2006, Garth Turner started to unload.  Garth Turner leased two of the properties to Lynn Bonner:

Those three hospitality virtues she has carried with her as she has acquired her other properties - the Cataract Inn, the Busholm Inn, and the Belfountain Village Store.

Bonner leased the Cataract Inn on May 1, 2006. Both it and the Village Store properties are owned by outspoken Member of Parliament Garth Turner - a man who seems like a walking headline. Turner was turfed from the Conservative Party, sat as an independent, and most recently has joined the Liberals. More importantly to Bonner's business story, though, he decided to lease two properties that she admired, just at a time that she was in the market.

In June 2006, in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, Garth Turner spoke of The Credit River Company as a successful venture:

My wife Dorothy and I founded the Credit River Company.  Our mission statement was “heritage, landmarks and environment” and we brought back as viable businesses many heritage buildings. I have always felt our Canadian built heritage has been overlooked.

Many heritage buildings?  I've only been able to find three.  I guess three could be "many".   And no mention of the shift in the operations, in what seemed like a move to get out of the business.

Was Garth Turner getting out of the business even as he spoke to the Canadian Parliamentary Review?  According to yet another article, he was already out of the business, having shut down the company altogether in May 2006:

You're fired!

And just like that, Belfountain's retail tycoon has fired himself right out the door of the village store.

And of the Cataract Inn.

And of the Caledon Inn.

All three operations—the beating heart of Garth Turner's The Credit River Company—have been sold, although the heritage buildings themselves remain with the genial shopkeeper and wannabe Tory cabinet minister from Halton Region.

"He is winding down his business here," says Bonnie Glenn, the alert, engaging new owner of the Belfountain Village Store business as of May 15.

The Caledon East mother of three boys—they'll "helping voluntarily and sometimes not voluntarily," she says—has been running the Credit River businesses for a couple of years on Mr. Turner's behalf. Earlier, she spent fifteen years managing several Thrifty car rental franchises in Toronto.

Mr. Turner did not return our phone call, locked in as he is to Ottawa where his assertive nature has already made its mark in the House of Commons.

The store has lost something of its local appeal by catering mainly to outsiders during his nearly four-year tenancy, but Mr. Turner has been true to his word in not handing it over to a variety shop and in restoring the building as a lovely centrepiece to the village.

The deal with Bonnie Glenn fell apart, and Garth Turner had to sell it again:

Looks like our general store has returned to serving the community.

Two months ago Garth Turner was the Belfountain Village Store shopkeeper.

Then Bonnie Glenn ‘bought’ the business, only to have her deal fall apart.

Now it’s new owner Lynn Moore who, along with son Austin and daughter Andree, is selling fresh coffee and muffins at 7 a.m. at the Belfountain store.

Yes, that same energetic Lynn Moore who in March 2005 opened Crazees at 282 Restaurant in Erin, who bought the Cataract Inn building and business earlier this summer with a closing set for the end of October, and who now has a lease on the Belfountain store with an option to buy the building in October, 2007.

Of course, Ms. Moore’s shop-owning career could fizzle fast—Mr. Turner retains the right to sell the building at any time before Oct. 2007 if he can get a better price than Ms. Moore’s offer. But Mr. Turner has already taken the property off the real estate listings where it was priced at $1.05 million.

Ms. Moore’s price for the store: “definitely under a million dollars,” she says.

So Garth Turner wanted $1.05 million, but was taking something "definitely" under a million.  Either he was being generous, or the he was in a rush to convert these properties into cash.  None of this was mentioned in his June 2006 interview.

In June 2006, a month after the May shutdown, at the same time he was talking to the Canadian Parliamentary Review, the content on the website disappeared entirely:

We’re sorry, the Credit River Company is undergoing some changes, and as such our web site is temporarily unavailable.

Please note, this site is under construction.

We have a brand new website in production, so please come back soon!

There is one link on the "under construction" page.  Look at the first word after the domain name itself: 

http://www.creditriver.ca/closed/temporarily-unavailable

Closed.  As far I can tell, it never reopened.  The three properties were sold off, and sold off quickly, and the company never invested in more properties after that.

Today, The Credit River Company is no more.  The domain still exists, but it is owned by BramCastle Holdings, and it performs a simple redirect to an entirely unrelated website, teacher.ca.

I don't know why it happened.  Maybe Garth Turner decided The Credit River Company had run its course and there was nothing more to be done with regards to heritage properties.  In that case, it was a success.  Maybe he was too busy with his duties as an MP.  Maybe there was some external pressure that compelled him to liquidate (and for less than the asking price, it seems), such as a family emergency that demanded cash as part of the solution.  Or maybe the ecotourism business model failed. 

Since Garth Turner refused to answer questions at the time from the people in the community about why he was making this move, we still don't know.  None of our business, really.

Why does this matter?  It probably doesn't.  But then Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is challenging Canadians to accept a carbon tax and to re-organize the economy around environmental concerns. 

We will make megabucks by reducing megatonnes [of greenhouse gases], says Stephane Dion.

Really?  The Credit River Company seemed to be an attempt to make money using a business model that included a large measure of environmental activism.  If he couldn't make a go of it, then maybe we all ought to be asking just how likely we can be making "megabucks".  At the very least, Garth Turner could be a very valuable asset to Stephane Dion, explaining to Canadians just how a green economy is going to made to work.

Addendum: Maybe the problem was just that Garth Turner doesn't play well with others.  Further research has helped tie off the threads to this story.

From the Fall 2005 issue of The View from Belfountain:

Sometimes what you do is less neighbourly than how you do it. If ever there was a man whose most benign actions have been overshadowed by a stern delivery, that man is Mr. Turner.

As Belfountain’s third biggest employer after the ski club and the school, his decisions on the village store and its operation have affected every villager’s life to some degree, and few seem very happy with the results—not even Mr. Turner.

Mr. Turner has spent some $220,000 on the shop he bought three years ago, restoring it with exquisite detail from a dilapidated state.

The store came with 14 picnic tables when he bought it, he says. Caledon ruled he could have only six. He paid $1,800 to It’s A Hobby to make six octagonal tables, only to be told they weren’t the prescribed shape. “Now we have six Canadian Tire picnic tables,” says Mr. Turner. “A lot of needless acrimony,” he describes the constant skirmishing and expense.

I read this and I can't help but feel sympathetic.  Busybody councillors giving Garth Turner trouble for wanting to put up 14 tables even after restoring this dilapidated property.  You'd think there would be some gratitude.

Then I go to the next issue of The View from Belfountain:

Mr. Turner has distorted the facts. The village store was not ‘dilapidated’. Under the caring stewardship of the late Judy Charbonneau it was a charming meeting place for the village. For the record, Mr. Turner was denied a heritage award because he had not followed proper heritage restoration guidelines. James B. Douglas

And then:

Mr. Turner says that when he bought the store it had 14 picnic tables. Not true. In the 13 years that I was there, there were never more than six. Karen Wrycraft, ex-Manager BVS

Who knows who is right here?  But sometimes it seems like Garth Turner can't say the sky is blue without someone disagreeing with him.  Maybe he just has a knack of bringing out everyone's contrary nature.  That would be a strange trait in a politician, who by definition needs to work by some level of consensus.

As for why he sold out, it might have been simply to run for parliament:

Now Mr. Turner is moving away—to Campbellville in Halton Riding where he plans to run for election as the federal PC candidate. He expects to continue owning the store and says he has in the last few months rejected two purchase offers from people wanting to turn it into a convenience store.

Maybe the effort to run the business remotely was too much.  Or maybe the Belfountain Village Store was losing money and Turner wanted out.  That might very well be the case, since the store went out of business in January 2008.  The former heritage property will now be converted into a health food outlet:

The Belfountain Village Store is to become a health food outlet and restaurant, says the new owner after shelling out a healthy $621,000 for the privilege.

The upstairs will be reserved for workshops and classes, she says. “We’ll be working over the next couple of months to define exactly what we want to do.”

And who might “we” be? “I have personal reasons I’m not saying anything right now,” she told The View. She did confirm that she has purchased both the building and the business from Halton Region MP Garth Turner.

The store closed its doors for the winter on January 19. The deal closes March 31.

“It’s a loss leader in the wintertime,” said current shopkeeper Lynn Moore, who has had a struggle with the store. “For us it’s a good thing to leave that building.”

She’ll continue to run her successful businesses at Crazee’s Restaurant, The Busholme in Erin, as well as The Cataract Inn, which will be serving lunch and dinner five days a week starting in April.

The staff from the Belfountain Store will still have jobs at her other enterprises, she said. “I’d like to thank all the customers who have supported us at the store.”

All in all, not a great legacy for The Credit River Company.  As the article points out, Garth Turner did retain ownership even after control was passed on to Lynn Moore.  But after all that time and trouble to maintain the building in its original historical form, and trying to sell it for over a million dollars, Garth Turner had to settle for just about half of his asking price, and the property will undergo significant renovations.