Two family-run Canadian lodges on opposite coasts mix wilderness, wellness and community.
A floating lodge powered by a waterfall. A charitable foundation with an art-filled hotel perched on stilts. Moonshot ideas like these come from wild-eyed dreamers with a build it and they will come mentality. On the west coast of Canada, Craig Murray, and now his son, Fraser, constantly brainstorm out-of-the-box ways for guests to reconnect with the wild at their lodge, Nimmo Bay Resort. On the country’s east coast, Newfoundlander Zita Cobb has sparked an island-wide revival, giving locals a new sense of purpose and pride through job opportunities at Fogo Island Inn. Both destinations require multiflight journeys, but their incredibly remote locations are part of their magic.
FOGO ISLAND INN Newfoundland
Floating in its own time zone off the northeast corner of Newfoundland, Fogo Island is an unlikely bucket-list vacation. Surrounded by the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, its granite shores and rugged windswept landscape are far from inviting. But its 2,700 self-reliant, salty-dog residents are some of the most hospitable people you’ll ever meet.
Originally settled in the mid-18th century, Fogo Island’s economy thrived on boat building and cod fishing. When the fishing industry collapsed in the 1990s, islanders were left with little choice but to move away for more prosperous job opportunities. Right when most people were thinking of uprooting, eighth-generation Fogo Islander Zita Cobb returned. A brilliant business woman, she’d made tens of millions in the fiber optics business, cashed out, sailed around the world, and then felt the pull of home.
“I think every Newfoundlander wants to come home,” she says. “When you grow up on an island or in a rural community there’s a profound attachment to place.”
Where most saw doom, Cobb saw hope in the island’s plentiful “cultural capital.” In 2006, Cobb, along with her brothers, Alan and Anthony, set up a foundation called Shorefast, invested millions of her own money and got matching grants from government agencies then set about launching an artist-in-residency program and a 29-room inn that funds micro-lending projects for businesses on the island.
Locals thought Cobb was crazy, especially when they caught sight of the inn, a four-story building modeled after the island’s fishing stages, small buildings that rest on stilts. Balanced precariously on a rocky outcrop, it resembles a modernist lighthouse navigating culturally curious travelers like myself to this far-flung place. More socio-economic experiment than five-star hotel, the inn employs around 250 of the 900 households on the island. Cobb jokes that most of her employees have never stayed in a hotel, let alone worked in one.
“Until the ’60s we had no electricity, no running water, no cash,” she says. “We survived on community. We’re genetically hospitable people.”
With gourmet tundra-to-table meals, a rooftop sauna and spa, an in-house cinema, and floor-to-ceiling windows that frame mesmerizing ocean views, guests could be forgiven if they never leave the inn. But a network of community hosts is what makes a visit unforgettable.
Of the island’s seven distinct seasons, I’ve decided to visit in March, pack ice season, when the sea resembles a frozen jig saw puzzle and locals retreat to their inland cabins. During my four-day visit, I ice skate on a frozen pond near the inn, strap “potlids” (old-school snowshoes) to my boots for snowy hikes and try ice fishing. But my highlight is a Ski-Doo adventure with my community hosts Aiden, Phil and Fergus Foley.
The brothers, three of six, grew up in the Irish community of Tilting. Bundled in head-to-toe camo, they ride me deep into the woods for a traditional boil up of salt cod, toast with butter and jam, and Newfoundlander steak, aka bologna. Afterward, Phil invites us back to his cabin, which could double as a museum decorated with ice drills, antlers, an Irish flag and wooden anchors called killicks. He breaks off hunks of iceberg ice for cocktails while Aiden sings us Irish tunes.
There is nothing fancy about the experience. It’s pure and real and wonderfully unscripted. “We all thought Zita was off her rocker,” Fergus confides. “Assumed that the hotel would be the island’s white elephant. But because of her, we still have a home and our traditions.”
I leave the brothers, promising to return for berry season. Back at the inn, I wrap myself in
one of the island’s famous quilts and marvel that I have never visited a hotel that has had such an impact on a place — or a place that has had such an impact on a visitor.
NIMMO BAY RESORT British Columbia
If you think balancing atop a standup paddleboard is challenging, try doing it with a black bear staring you down from the shore.
I’ve dropped quietly down onto my hands and knees per the instruction of my guide, Adrien Mullin. We float just a few hundred feet away, admiring the young bear as he noses around the rocks for food. The experience is exhilarating and unexpected, as most things at Nimmo Bay tend to be.
Adventure has always been at the heart of this resort, buried deep within British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. Back in the early 1980s, Craig Murray towed an old float house to this secluded spot, installed a hydroelectric system within one of the nearby waterfalls, and introduced the radical concept of heli-fishing. The ability to access over 50 isolated rivers and streams, some of which few humans have ever fished, drew anglers from around the world.
Fraser Murray, the oldest of Craig’s three children, has been guiding guests around these waters since age 7. Those countless expeditions into the wild fueled his imagination with possibilities way beyond fishing — heli-mountain biking, heli-surf trips, freediving expeditions, grizzly viewing from treetop nets. They also opened his eyes to environmental threats posed by logging and fish farming.
Over the past decade, Fraser and his wife, Becky, have taken the reigns of the nine-cabin resort. Fishing remains one of Nimmo’s biggest draws, attracting loyal clients year after year. But conservation has become an equally important part of the lodge’s ethos.
“I’m looking to tell the environmental story a different way,” says Fraser. “Through experience rather than preaching. People need to discover it for themselves rather than be told what to believe.”
To that end, nearly every Nimmo activity — from massages in a treetop cabin to picnics atop 10,000-year-old glaciers — help guests make an emotional connection to nature. He even has plans to tow a glass cabin, his take on glamping, to various locations that will help guests better understand where their food comes from: “Imagine eating dinner 20 feet from cubs eating the same foods you are — seaweed, shore crabs, salmon.”
Over the course of four days I find myself crawling over logs to cross rivers en route to a remote grizzly viewing area and kayaking in the morning mist surrounded by a pod of dolphins. Days revolve around the unpredictability of nature rather than scripted itineraries. “I don’t like the tour in tourism,” Fraser tells me. “We look to offer a sense of discovery.”
When the sun goes down, I sneak off for moments of reflection in the floating sauna, by the bonfire on the dock, and in the cedar hot tub. Discovering the beauty and fragility of this place has also allowed me to discover more about myself.