Springwood Cottage Resort on Kennebec Lake

Jeff Green | Jul 24, 2024

Ed and Christine Chaplin purchased Springwood Cottage Resort on Kennebec Lake in 2021, the height of the pandemic. For the Ottawa based couple, taking on the resort was a big career change, trading the urban corporate world concerns for worries about plumbing, septic loads, and upgrading a well-loved resort without changing its fundamental character.

It has only been three years, but a lot has happened at Springwood in that time. The 17 cottages have all received an upgrade, and while the rustic nature has been maintained, there is a clean, modern aesthetic to the cottages, with the comfort of guests being the primary concern.

“We knew when we bought Springwood that it had a devoted following. Families had been coming here for generations, booking the same cottage or cottages year after year, and we were not going to do anything to make them feel this is not the same place they have enjoyed for decades,” said Christine. “But that did not mean we weren’t going to make some improvements.”

The cottages at Springwood are fully furnished, with kitchens, a gas BBQ, firepit with firewood, Internet, etc. Springwood is not about roughing it, and many of the cottages have hot tubs as well. Access to canoes and kayaks and paddleboards is included.

Kennebec Lake is the main attraction of Springwood, of course, and the beach and docking facilities are a focus of activity for resort guests.

One of the innovations the Chaplin’s have introduced are classes, such as yoga and tai chi classes, with local practitioners coming out to give them. They also host kids activities for guest’s children in the summer months.

This summer, wine merchant Brent Fehr, who runs Wine by Brent, is offering wine school on Thursday afternoons, for resort guests and others. The educational wine tasting sessions run for 90 minutes, and feature 6 wines. They are available to the public as well as resort guests. The guests have a definite advantage, as they can do more than sip the wines because they are already home for the evening.

he couple areT particularly passionate about the games room at the resort, which is in its own building. In addition to a pool table, an arcade game, shuffleboard, basketball, and card tables, the room has over 500 board games, categorised an indexed on an entire wall, with another 200 games stored elsewhere in another area of the resort.

“Our family loves playing board games together, so we wanted to share that passion with our guests as we believe it is a natural complement to cottaging in Ontario,” said Christine.

The resort employs over a dozen people each summer, most of them high school students from the Arden and Mountain Grove area.

In the three years since starting out as employers, Ed and Christine have worked hard to develop the right culture for the students to thrive in their roles and provide excellent service.

“Each year we have kids returning and taking on more responsibility, and mentoring the younger students who come here for the first time. We could not do this without the students, and for many of them it is their first job experience. They learn about customer service, work standards, all of that, and we get to watch them grow into their roles,” said Ed.

Coming from a corporate world also has its advantages, as the Ed and Christine have implemented and procedures in various areas for their staff, bringing consistency, quality control, and a stable workplace for the staff.

“We need that, especially on turnover day. We have a few hours to clean the cottages and get everything ready for new guests, as most of our summer rentals are for a week. It’s all hands-on deck,” said Christine.

Like some of the other resorts in the area, Springwood has little difficulty filling up in July and August.

“Families have the ability to reserve the same cottage for the following year at any time during the week when they are here. If they leave without reserving, the cottage becomes available, so a lot of cottages are rented over a year in advance.”

The next phase of development for Springwood, now that a lot of major infrastructure upgrades have been done, is to augment the shoulder season, always a challenge in Frontenac County.

The resort is open year-round, and while winters have been difficult in recent years because of unreliable snow and ice for skiers, skaters and ice fishers, the fall and spring are promising.

Springwood is an ideal location for a wedding, as the resort can provide facilities for a meal on the covered patio at the centre of the resort, locations for a ceremony and amenities for activities, and can house the wedding party and guests as well.

In their year end blog for 2023, the Chaplin’s emphasised plans to augment the “off-season”. Hosting weddings is one part of that, as is hosting events. Last year they hosted the Lions Club annual BAIT (Blind Anglers International Tournament) and look forward to hosting other larger gatherings.

One other thing that they have done since taking over the resort is to become integrated with the active local community in Arden, in a variety of ways, both with the resort and by volunteering. They are still partially based in Ottawa in the “off-season” but have purchased a house on Kennebec Lake for themselves, and plan to become full time Ardenites.

All that is far away in the summer season, however, when the resort is humming and there are customers to be taken care of.

Three years in to their new careers as resort owners, the Chaplin’s readily admit the money is not what it was in the corporate world, but they knew that coming in. They seem content with their choice, enjoying both the effort and the lifestyle. And they take pride in the first class facility that they have developed at Springwood in a short time