Pandemic hardships cancel campground season

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This article was published 17/05/2022 (1356 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The owner-operator of a popular private campground and recreation area has called off the 2022 season, citing economic ripple effects from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Georges Beaudry runs Oroseau Rapids Park near Senkiw with his wife Florence. The couple opened the campground and “user-initiated adventure area” in 2003, catering to groups, corporate events, and festivals.

The 200-acre park is located along the Roseau River, and accommodates overnight and day camping, hiking, biking, tubing, and swimming.

“We’d have repeat people who come every year,” Beaudry said.

It’s the only place in Manitoba that offers Class 1 rapids and 10 kilometres of hiking trails set against sandy cliffs formed by the retreat of Lake Agassiz.

“I don’t know of any other place that can offer that,” Beaudry said. “We’re pretty unique here.”

Every August, the park welcomes Rainbow Trout Music Festival, which brings in over 900 guests and 25 bands for three days of live performances and summer fun.

Of course, that was before the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit seasonal and tourism-related businesses like Oroseau especially hard.

Two weeks ago, Beaudry emailed past guests to inform them the park would close April 30 “for an undetermined amount of time.”

In an interview last week, Beaudry said it was a difficult decision. He said he knows people are “tired of Zooming” but can’t see the point of operating “with no reasonable expectation of profit.”

“Opening up, it costs money, and that’s got to be recouped during the season,” he said. “We can’t start chewing our pensions up to run the place.”

Beaudry said he plans to revisit his decision next spring.

“This is always going to be here, so there is always going to be potential to build it up again.”

Before COVID, Oroseau was often booked up every weekend between Victoria Day and Labour Day. Beaudry would often juggle three group bookings in a single weekend.

“A wedding would bring in 300 to 400 people,” he said.

Groups would often mingle down by the river. Friendships were made and Beaudry said Oroseau became a community that reconvened every summer.

“It’s not at all like a provincial campground,” he said.

COVID-19 cancelled the park’s 2020 camping season. The following summer, Oroseau hosted just four groups all season, “which is not enough to keep us going,” Beaudry said.

To get through the summer, he cancelled his insurance and asked guests to sign waivers.

“Our profit had always been reasonably good,” Beaudry said. “But after 2020 and 2021, we’re basically down to a bare-bones bank account.”

Experiential tourism is in vogue, but Beaudry said the interpretive tours he offered—rafting, Metis history—increased his annual insurance premiums by thousands of dollars.

“It just started making no sense to do what we wanted to do,” he said.

He and Florence are now repaying a pandemic relief loan. Beaudry said the campground has no other debt. It’s operating expenses that are the problem.

In his email to guests, Beaudry wrote that COVID has cost Oroseau three major corporate contracts, two music festivals, and 90 percent of its regular bookings. Meanwhile, inflation has increased utility and service costs.

“Everything’s going up,” he said.

Mother Nature also delivered some setbacks, like overland flooding caused by ice-jamming last spring that left some parts of the park under three feet of water. When that receded, it left debris strewn about.

“There was stuff floating all over the place,” Beaudry said.

A few months later, the problem was drought, which lowered river levels and turned the rapids into a rock garden.

But Beaudry said the hardest challenge continues to be the pandemic itself. Earlier in COVID, constant uncertainty made event planning nearly impossible. Now, he said the government’s decision to scale down COVID surveillance makes it equally difficult to plan. Beaudry said he misses the daily briefings and statistics on the extent of the pandemic in Manitoba.

COVID also affected customer attitudes. Last spring, Beaudry’s phone rang off the hook with campers eager for fresh air after a lockdown winter. Wanting to protect his and Florence’s health—“We’re of the age that we don’t need a cold”—Beaudry opened the campground with limited services. Guests were asked to show proof of vaccination, take out their own trash, and clean their own bathrooms. He also requested contactless payment and face masks in the camp office.

Beaudry said some groups balked at those precautions and said they’d take their business elsewhere. Beaudry, who has received a flu shot and four doses of COVID-19 vaccine, said the experience was discouraging.

While Oroseau won’t accept bookings this summer, Beaudry said he will open the grounds for Rainbow Trout Music Festival, which is gearing back up after a two-year pandemic hiatus. Two weeks ago, festival organizers posted a ‘save the date’ notice for this year’s festival, ahead of the board’s annual general meeting next week.