TEND Services has been providing concierge services in Muskoka and Collingwood for more than five years, and as of 2021, the company also offers luxury rentals. Their dedicated team is made up of young entrepreneurs with personal and professional connections to the region. Andy Milovanovic, president and co-founder of TEND, grew up with a family cottage in Haliburton. He came to Muskoka in 2010 to teach wakeboarding and waterskiing before founding Muskoka Wake in 2011 and TEND Services in 2016. He knows the value of building memories at the cottage, which is why TEND aims to take the effort out of the cottage experience.

“We’re really trying to make the Muskoka experience a truly hands-off experience for those that want it,” Milovanovic said. “We try to enhance it by trying to add a certain level of convenience or a certain value added that people might not be able to find if they were to be doing all the work, entertaining and getting ready for visitors, on their own.”

Milovanovic bought a cottage on Lake Muskoka in 2017 and has been renting it out ever since. The process has given him firsthand knowledge of the do’s and don’ts of property rentals. That along with the expertise of his team has guided TEND in their mission to provide a seamless vacation experience.

Michelle Owens, TEND’s guest experience manager, said that based on the feedback from their guests and clients, they’ve succeeded in that goal. A common theme among their reviews and comments is that their guest service is outstanding and sets them apart from other rental and concierge services.

“The goal that we had in starting TEND was to provide a one-stop shop for any client at any given time, whether it be a renter, a concierge client, or a renter who was looking for our concierge services,” Owens said. “We are happy to say that we have been able to fulfill that and more!”

The team at TEND encourages their renters to ask for anything they need, Owens said. They let guests know if their requests are something they’re not able to deliver on, but they can nearly always fulfill requests thanks to their skilled in-house staff and their strong connections with the local community and service providers.

“Through COVID it’s also been a pleasure to bring experiences and services to clients’ homes and cottages,” Owens said. “Many weren’t able to travel internationally and it was a pleasure to be able to bring a ‘vacation’ to their home, or have them rent a local cottage through TEND in Muskoka, and allow them to truly experience a vacation.”

Rentals can be anything from a week-long stay to a summer-long getaway. TEND also offers perks for longer stays including tax breaks, price incentives or even other services like private chefs or wake lessons. Guests can also get money back through the Ontario Staycation Tax Credit, which gives Ontario residents the opportunity to receive a tax credit of up to $400 for vacationing within the province.

The team at TEND is looking to bring on more property partners this year as well. Cottage owners looking to rent can benefit from their property management expertise as well as their wide range of concierge services, which are available to property owners, renters and other private clients.

“TEND is a service-based business first, so we offer everything from cleaning and property management to general maintenance,” Milovanovic said. “We offer in-home private cheffing and catered events, along with individual skilled service providers such as massage therapists, yoga instructors, personal trainers, etc.”

TEND’s number one priority is customer service, Milovanovic said, and they always seek to not just meet but exceed the expectations of their guests and property partners. Muskoka is a place known for making memories, so at TEND, they strive to help their clients do just that.

“We’re really trying to enhance the cottager experience, whether it’s the private owner or the renter,” Milovanovic said. “We’re trying to enhance that experience so that people truly get to maximize everything that Muskoka has to offer.”

See some of TEND’s featured rental listings below. For more information, visit TEND Service’s website.

This post is sponsored by TEND Services.

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The Softub is a true portable hot tub, not an inflatable, and they only weigh 50 to 80 pounds while empty. The company has been in business for over 30 years with dealers all across Canada, including locations in Bracebridge, Mactier and Minden. The hot tubs are Canadian made nearby in Sudbury and distributed across the country. Megan McGillis, marketing coordinator for Softub Canada, said along with the affordability of Softubs, they offer portability and convenience unheard of with other hot tubs on the market.

“To be able to bring it [to the cottage] for the summer is super easy,” McGillis said. “If you have a pickup truck, you can load it on your truck and bring it there for the summer and then bring it back home for the winter, which is super convenient, and it’s so easy to set up.”

Setting up a Softub doesn’t require any tools or special assistance and can typically be completed by one person in about 15 minutes. It plugs into a standard outlet and heats up to 104 degrees, which is standard for any hot tub in the pool and spa industry.

The company is facing supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, but they encourage interested customers to visit their local dealer for information on when they can get a Softub and visit their website to explore the many options they offer.

Softubs come in three sizes, made for up to two, four or six people. Customers can also choose from three interior and seven exterior colour options and purchase other custom elements such as seats, covers and other accessories. Due to their easy set up and portability, Softubs are ideal for all kinds of people, from athletes and outdoorsmen to families and seniors. 

“If you do have young kids, or even your elders that are going in and out of the tub, there’s no hidden depth, so as you step into it, you know you’re stepping at the base of it,” said Skye Lagace, national sales representative for Softub Canada.

Another thing that sets them apart from other hot tubs is their heat exchange system. There’s no heater element; instead, waste heat from the motor is used to heat the water, using minimal electricity and saving money on customers’ hydro bills. 

Many customers spend just $5 to $10 on electricity each month to run their Softub, and beyond that, the hot tubs are made of high density polyethylene foam and marine grade vinyl, so they are UV protected and ready for all kinds of weather.

“It’s good for all seasons, especially our Canadian winters that we encounter,” Lagace said. “It’s a product that’s meant to last.”

Go to Softub Canada’s website to learn more, or visit local Softub dealers at Hot Tub Warehouse in Bracebridge, Gordon Bay Marine in Mactier and Tubbys in Minden.

This post is sponsored by Softub Canada.

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The elimination of the seasonal class has been a contentious issue since the OEB first made the decision to transition Hydro One customers to rates based on location density in 2015. Hydro One submitted a proposal to retain the seasonal class in July 2019, but the OEB maintained their decision to do away with it in September 2020. In the coming weeks, Hydro One customers will receive letters with details on being moved to one of the three residential rate classes as well as the projected bill impacts. The OEB will hold a hearing, expected to happen later this year, to review Hydro One’s Oct. 2020 report on the elimination of the seasonal class and their proposed implementation plan. The plan includes rate mitigation measures for customers who are expected to see a total bill increase of more than 10 per cent.

“We’re very concerned about the rate impacts of this,” said Spencer Gill, vice president of customer services for Hydro One. “Our proposal does take that into consideration, and so we want customers to have their say on that as well.”

To voice their opinion on the implementation plan, customers can file a letter of comment, or they can register as an intervenor to be actively involved in the hearing. Those interested in participating as an intervenor must apply to the OEB by March 15, and details on getting involved will also be included in the letters to customers. Customers can contact the OEB’s public information officers about the proceeding via phone, but inquiries and comments made by customers on such calls will not be part of the record for the hearing. 

“It would be good if customers read the notice and decided to participate,” Gill said. “Many customers will see increases, but there will be a number of cottagers as well that will see decreases, so I think it’s important that they understand how this decision will impact them.”

The OEB has not yet decided whether the changes will take effect on Jan. 1, 2022 or on a later date.

“The implementation date will depend on the extent and complexity of the issues that may arise during the course of the current proceeding,” said OEB spokesperson Mary Ellen Beninger. “The OEB panel hearing the case will decide when and how the remaining steps in eliminating the seasonal rate class will be implemented.”

The OEB also has yet to decide the form of hearing, which could be oral or written. The board is asking customers who think an oral hearing is necessary to explain why by writing to them by March 15. 

If an oral hearing is selected, it may be held virtually due to COVID, Beninger said, but the panel will decide closer to the time of the hearing. During the proceedings, the OEB will also hear questions and arguments from intervenors, but the focus will be next steps in eliminating the seasonal class as the OEB will not reconsider their decision.

“The OEB has found that the distribution rates currently charged to seasonal customers do not appropriately reflect the cost to serve them,” Beninger said. “More information is available on the OEB’s website on the Seasonal Rates webpage. That webpage describes the history and current status of this proceeding and explains how the OEB determines the costs to serve customers.”

To file a letter of comment, or to review the reports and other information related to the hearing, visit the OEB’s website.

OEB Maintains Decision To Eliminate Seasonal Rate Class

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The OEB released their decision and order regarding the issue on Sept. 17 after reviewing Hydro One’s proposal to retain seasonal rates. Groups including the Vulnerable Energy Consumers Coalition (VECC), the Consumers Council of Canada (CCC) and the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Association (FOCA) opposed the change due to the rate impact on seasonal customers, particularly because seasonal residents do not qualify for subsidies through Rural or Remote Rate Protection (RRRP) or Distribution Rate Protection (DRP). In their decision, the OEB stated that they do not and cannot factor provincial programs such as the DRP into rate design because the OEB does not determine how and when the programs may change or which customers are eligible to receive them.

“The submissions of the parties generally focused more on the bill impacts that would flow from the elimination of the seasonal class… The fact that there are impacts associated with the elimination of the seasonal class does not render the decision to eliminate the class in order to more accurately reflect those customers’ relative use of distribution assets incorrect,” said the OEB in their decision.

The OEB also said rate mitigation could play an important role in implementing the decision. In the past, the OEB stated that they wish to mitigate any large impacts to seasonal customers and expect Hydro One’s plan to “propose a phase-in period for those customers expected to experience a total bill impact of greater than 10% as a result of migrating to another class.” 

Imran Merali, Hydro One’s vice president of customer service, said in a statement that the company is disappointed with the OEB’s decision to eliminate the seasonal rate class for their customers.

“We advocated for a different solution that would have protected our seasonal customers and reduced the rate impact,” Merali said. “We want our customers to rest assured that their rate class won’t immediately change. The next step is to submit an updated report on implementing the elimination of the seasonal class to the Ontario Energy Board by October 15, 2020. We will continue to advocate for our customers throughout this process.”

To learn more about the issue, read our original coverage below. For more background on Hydro One’s efforts to retain the seasonal class, click here.

https://muskoka411.com/cottagers-await-answers-after-hydro-one-warns-of-possible-price-hike-for-seasonal-customers/

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The Great Lakes have been hitting record-high water levels during recent years, causing widespread erosion and threatening the stability of shoreline properties. Across southwestern Ontario, Lake Huron beachgoers are greeted by diminishing stretches of sand, while sections of the North Shore Trail between Port Eglin and Southampton have been washed out.

To understand the dramatic increases in lake levels, we asked expert Mary-Louise Byrne, a professor in Wilfrid Laurier University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. Byrne’s research focuses on the sustainable management of Great Lakes beaches and dunes, especially in protected areas.

Q: Dr. Byrne, for several years we have been hearing about shrinking beaches and shoreline cottages being threatened by eroding bluffs. Why is this happening?

Byrne: There is a natural variation in the water levels of the Great Lakes. Sometimes the change from high to low happens in as little as five years. Sometimes it’s as long as 15 years. Many people picture the Great Lakes at low levels because we recently had about a 15-year period of low levels.

During that time, some shoreline property owners became a bit complacent. They thought, “The water levels are low. There are all these regulations about only being able to build up here at the high part of the beach, but I want to have a boathouse and a dock, and yet I still want to have my nice wide beach.” They built out toward the waterline in spite of regulations that prohibit this. The term for this is encroachment: they encroached onto the beach thinking it was perfectly fine because year after year there were low levels.

I felt like I was Chicken Little saying, “The levels are going to come back up!” And people would look at me like I was crazy. And now we’re back to the high levels. Unfortunately, we’re back to record-high levels. So we’re still within the natural variation that occurs on the Great Lakes – we haven’t gone beyond it. We’re just at the high-level extreme.

Q: Why are the Great Lakes ‘at the extreme’ when it comes to water levels?

Byrne: We know a lot of the drivers for lake-level variation, but we don’t know how they combine to create extreme events. Personally – and I don’t have data to back this up, this is my intuition – I think it is a manifestation of climate change. We are seeing more extreme events and there are scientists who predict that this will be the outcome of the progression of climate change: greater frequency of extreme events.

We are seeing storms in the winter and summer that originate outside the Great Lakes basin and are bringing lots of precipitation. Some of that falls directly into the lakes, and all of the precipitation that falls over land makes its way through the natural drainage systems into the Great Lakes as well.

Q: Climate change aside, what are some of the natural factors that affect lake levels?

Byrne: Storm patterns are a significant factor. If storms originate in the Gulf of Mexico, they bring lots of moisture and increase the water levels. If we have winds that develop from storms over the Great Plains, those winds are drier and lead to greater evaporation. The balance between precipitation inputs and evaporation outputs result in the lake level.

Human activity in the Great Lakes basin also affects water level variations. The Great Lakes basin includes all of the area that drains into the Great Lakes, which is a huge area and contains about 40 million people. Everything that everybody does in the Great Lakes basin to divert water from flowing in its natural path will lead to a decrease in flow into the Great Lakes. Alternatively, everything that people do on their properties and in municipal areas to drain water causes that water to drain into the Great Lakes.

Other factors that affect lake levels include inflow of groundwater, surface water runoff and drainage, and human consumption.

Q: Much of your research has focused on the importance of sand dunes. Since we know that we can’t control water levels, would a return to more natural landscapes help protect our shorelines from shrinking? Are we messing with nature by creating flat, pristine public beaches?

Byrne: Well, if we expect the landscape to adapt to our aesthetics then we’re going to be sorely disappointed. As water levels rise, sand dunes dissipate the wave energy and help protect nearby properties from being flooded.

A woman on Facebook asked about sand dunes recently and said, “Should we just build sand dunes everywhere?” Well, no. If you try to build a sand dune by planting sand dune grasses at the base of an eroding bluff, nothing positive is going to happen. You’ll plant the grass and it will wash away. But if you have a natural collection area and you get sand accumulating, plant grasses there because it will help to build sand dunes. At high water times, that’s your savings account.

At this point in time, there aren’t very many places where I would recommend people try and do this because we’re at high water levels, so it’s an erosive situation. We just have to wait it out. When the water levels fall off again, then we go back to building up the sand dunes in locations where they would naturally occur.

Q: So as much as we try to engineer our shorelines and beaches, nature will continue to do what it wants in spite of our efforts?

Byrne: I think human behaviour causes us to want unchanging, beautiful beaches, but the natural processes on any shoreline are dynamic. Dynamic means that they are always changing. I always tell people, you never go back to the same shoreline twice because that sediment is there one day and gone the next. So you’re in the same geographic location, but it’s a different shoreline.

We are going to be in constant conflict with nature if we seek to have this unchanging system. The best environmental engineers are now creating shoreline protection that is dynamic. It allows for a window of change while protecting the shoreline. Our older shoreline protection structures didn’t have anything built in that was dynamic. That’s not a criticism of engineering – it’s just the way things have evolved over time. I think that as developed areas on the Great Lakes use more modern engineering approaches, we will create dynamic environments that are more in harmony with natural processes.

Q: What sort of government regulations are in place to protect the Great Lakes shoreline?

Byrne: The Province of Ontario has a policy statement which regulates the kinds of activities that can occur on different areas of the Great Lakes shoreline. In southern Ontario, municipalities and conservation authorities work together to regulate the shoreline based on those guidelines.

That policy statement is almost 20 years old. It needs to be updated and the province is beginning to do so. Our guidelines for flooding use the 100-year flood line, which is a statistical designation meaning that in any given year there is a one per cent chance a flood-risk area will flood. It is a calculated level and is based on the largest flood that’s happened in the last 100 years. We’re still using Hurricane Hazel from 1954 as the level of a large rainstorm.

In some places, that’s still a very significant marker in that you are unlikely to have a flood that’s as big as the flooding that Hurricane Hazel caused. But in other places there has been subtle erosion going on slowly over time that we don’t notice. So if we went back right now and measured that 100-year flood line, we might find that there is an 80 per cent probability that we could get flooding, even though that line is supposed to be the one per cent probability.

Q: So you’re saying that the flood-line marker needs to be updated and moved?

Byrne: Yes. We have all of this developed land and, in some places, it’s fine. In other places, it’s a problem because the shoreline development occurred in a hazardous area, in a place that was eroding, is naturally prone to flooding, or is an area where sediment should be able to move around. We built there anyway. This is a problem all around the Great Lakes.

Humans like to think we can engineer the shoreline, but I talked earlier about all that flow of water and all of these contributing factors – they’re so much larger than we are. We’re pretty arrogant when we think we can engineer a shoreline to withstand all of those forces. An engineer might be hired to solve a particular problem in a defined area under a particular set of circumstances. But that problem is not isolated in a box; it is nested in a larger box. And that one is in an even larger box. Then, when we solve the original problem, sometimes we cause a new problem. Our engineered solutions to shoreline management can be difficult from a very long-term perspective.

To engineer shorelines for the longer term on a large scale is very expensive and difficult, or impossible to do. So our practices have been to solve the local problems and to minimize the larger-scale and longer-term effects. Climate change is now changing the parameters and the older solutions no longer work. They were properly done to begin with, but the setting has changed and the driving and responding forces are working differently than they did before.

Q: What do you recommend for individuals who own property along the Great Lakes shoreline and are being impacted by high water levels and erosion?

Byrne: I think that individual property owners need to investigate for themselves what they can do to create a more dynamic situation instead of a static one. Municipalities are doing this already. Rather than sinking a ton of money into trying to create an unchanging waterfront, they are recognizing that they need to have some sort of dynamism built in to respond to natural processes. Property owners need to do the same: educate themselves and adjust their expectations around their property lines.

In some places, we’re going to lose the beach structures that resulted from encroachment. The places where people encroached over the low water-level lines, we’re losing that. I know people’s docks have been swept away, they’ve lost their boathouses… But the properties that have been constructed by rule-abiders have probably survived, unless there has been gradual erosion over the long term that has affected the flood line. If so, those people are in a precarious position. Governments may have to step in and expropriate properties that are in dangerous situations.

Q: Is there any reason to believe that Great Lakes water levels will continue to rise?

Byrne: The levels will come down again. We may not get the lows that we had earlier, but they’re not going to remain at this extreme height for 15 years. It might be another six months, it might be another year. Consider Lake Huron: we naturally have lower levels from about the end of August through the winter. Current models predict that the levels will either remain at the record highs or will drop by as much as 30 centimetres. A 30-cm vertical drop can expose several metres of a sloping shoreline and reveal more beach.

Photo credit: “Georgian Bay Sunset” by Joe Dodaro is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The post Where Did The Beaches Go?: A Q&A With A Laurier Great Lakes Expert appeared first on Muskoka411.

“I will never forget it,” Nye said. “I had a plastic toy seaplane that I was playing with at the time. My eyes just fixated on that propeller spinning around and making so much power, making so much noise, and I was intrigued and fascinated by it for my whole life.”

Nye kept the thought of the seaplane in the back of his mind until he took his first flying lesson in the 80s. At the time, he was too busy with work to commit to such an expensive hobby, but in the early 2000s, a friend of Nye’s decided to get his pilot’s license and encouraged him to do the same. They took classes together in Burlington, which plunged Nye back into his fascination with seaplanes. He got his license and started renting planes before joining the St. John’s Flying Club in Orillia, where he got certified to fly float planes. In 2013, he decided to buy his own: a 1980 Cessna 185 Amphibian.

Instead of joining other drivers on busy roads, Nye leaves his home in Mississauga and flies the plane to his cottage most weekends in the summer. It takes about 45 minutes to get from the hangar in Brampton where he keeps his plane to his cottage in Gravenhurst. He has a federally registered water aerodrome in the Muskoka Bay, meaning he can land and take off from the water in front of his cottage.

“After work, my wife drives up ahead of time to miss the traffic and then I drive up and the only traffic I have is on the 410 getting to the airport,” Nye said. “Once I get to the airport, I load myself and sometimes the dogs on the plane and fly straight up over the traffic and land in the Muskoka Bay.”

It can be difficult trying to land the plane amongst boat and seadoo traffic in the summer, Nye said, but he’s careful and takes precautions to make sure his plane isn’t too loud or disruptive to others using the bay. Boaters often come close enough to ask him questions about the plane and he likes to take his neighbours up for a flight when he gets the chance.

Nye said Muskoka is his favourite place to fly, in part thanks to the 1,600 lakes in the region. Along with giving him access to the skies above Muskoka, Nye’s plane also helps him reach the depths of the waters in and around the area by allowing him to fly to places where he and his son scuba dive.

“We fly out to Georgian Bay [and] there are wrecks on Hope Island and Christian Island,” Nye said. “The most amazing thing is to be able to be at the cottage in the morning, have breakfast, get in the plane, fly out to Christian Island, do a dive on a wreck and then be back at the cottage, and have all that done within three or four hours, which would otherwise require an entire day of travel.”

Although Nye does most of his flying in Muskoka during the summer, he comes up to the area in his plane about once a month in the winter to conduct ice surveys or take friends sightseeing. He’s been doing ice surveys in the area for about five years, aiming to help locals plan their outdoor adventures over the ice.

“Instead of just kind of flying around and looking for myself, I record video while I’m doing it and then I post that online and share it with snowmobiler groups so that the snowmobilers can get a good sense of where the currents are or the open spots in the lake,” he said. “That comes with many decades of experience snowmobiling and the realization that no matter how incredibly cold it is, the water under the ice is relatively warm.”

When you fly over top, you can see the blackness of the thin ice, Nye said, so the photos and videos allow snowmobilers to identify thin ice or areas of open water. Nye recommends that snowmobilers have local knowledge of the area and always test ice thickness and quality themselves, but he hopes that his photos can help residents avoid areas that pose serious danger.

Along with helping snowmobilers stay safe in the winter, Nye also used his plane to assist in the search for Kaden Young, a three-year-old boy that was swept into the Grand River in February 2018. It was a unique opportunity to use his aircraft for one of its specialities, he said, which is flying low and slow safely thanks to performance modifications.

“I had two GoPros mounted on the plane, which allowed me to capture high definition video images of the shoreline going up and down,” Nye said. “[I shared] that online and then that was shared by others and it received 9,000 views. Even people as far away as Australia were studying that video frame by frame to see if they could locate any sign of Kaden.” 

Nye’s son was on board the plane acting as a spotter, but Nye was still very aware of the dangers of flying at a low altitude, such as the possibility of a goose coming through the windshield. He said the heartbreaking nature of what happened to Young, whose body was located near the village of Bellwood after two months of searching, led him to take the risk, which he felt was an acceptable one given his flying experience. 

Along with taking video as part of the search, Nye regularly records his flights and posts them to his YouTube channel, which has hundreds of videos of flights, scuba dives and other adventures. Whether Nye is flying for a purpose or just for entertainment, it means a lot to him to be able to share the experience with others in person and online. 

“A sightseeing trip becomes much more than just a sightseeing trip if I’m doing something that I can share with others,” he said. “I know I’m privileged to be able to fly like that and it makes me feel good to share it with others, knowing that it might help somebody and knowing that it might even save a life.”

To see more from Nye’s trips, visit his YouTube page. See photos from Nye’s trips below and watch the video to see a flight from Gravenhurst to Bracebridge.

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