Myers Cave Resort

Jeff Green | May 04, 2022

Nawar and Mike Hage have followed an unusual career path; from Beirut to Vancouver to Abu Dhabi to Myers Cave in North Frontenac.

And, like everything else these days, COVID played a role as a catalyst.

Mike is a Civil Engineer by trade, and Nawar is an event planner. About 20 years ago, when they had two young boys, they decided to emigrate to Canada, to Vancouver. The boys were raised in Vancouver, but for most of the time while the Hage’s were living there, Mike was working most of the year for a large development company back in the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

“Eventually it got to be too much,” Nawar recalls, “so we all moved to Abu Dhabi”.

The boys missed their friends in Vancouver but became well acclimated to life in Abu Dhabi, where they attended High School. While there, Nawar formed her own Event Management Company, arranging weddings and business functions, and parties of all sizes. 

Both of their sons decided to attend university in Ontario, one going to Brock and one to Waterloo. And when they finished school, both of them remained in Southern Ontario, one settling in St. Catherines and one nearby in the Niagara region.

“It was a long way from where we were in Abu Dhabi,” said Mike, but we would come and visit. We are not strangers to travel in our family, as you can tell.”

That was BC (before COVID).

When COVID hit in March of 2020, two things happened to Nawar and Mike. 

Nawar’s event planning business, which had been experiencing exponential growth, was stopped in its tracks. All of the scheduled events were canceled, and the event planning business ceased to exist.

The other thing that happened was that they could not visit their sons in Canada, because of travel restrictions. 

“We came to a decision that we should pull up stakes in Abu Dhabi and move back to Canada full time,” said Mike.

Mike’s business interests in Abu Dhabi were already winding down, but Nawar was committed to the well-being of her 18 employees, and she worked through the summer of 2020 to make sure every one of them had at least a job opportunity, as she formally shut down her company.

They moved back to Canada late in the summer of 2020, into the house they had purchased for their son in St. Catherines.

Their next business idea was to live out Nawar’s dream of opening a Bed and Breakfast type business.

“Our main criteria was to find something that was within 4 hours of St. Catherines. Cloyne just fit in that radius,” Nawar recalls.

She went to over 30 properties, in the Muskokas, Parry Sound, Bancroft, Southwestern Ontario, and she even went to see the Myers Cave resort on Road 506 near Cloyne.

Myers Cave was her favourite spot, but the price was higher than the investment group that Mike had lined up, were willing to consider. She never even brought Mike to see it.

In late September of 2020 they went from St. Catherine’s to see a property in Prince Edward County. 

“It took us 4 hours to get though Toronto,” Nawar recalls.

By the time they had looked at the property it was getting late, and mindful of Toronto traffic, they decided to spend the night in Belleville. The next morning, Nawar asked Mike if he wanted to go to see Myers Cave before going back to St. Catherines.

“I said no, I’m not going to add 2 hours, an hour each way, to our trip back, just to look at a property that is above our price range. She didn’t say anything, but a minute later I said, OK, let’s go to Cloyne. She brightened up when I said that,” Mike recalls.

“We had not given much notice when we arrived at the resort, and the place was not staged for selling that day, but we walked around, and then Mike asked me for my phone. I said ‘why do you need my phone’, and he said, “I need to call my investors, so we can buy this place,” said Nawar.

“She said it is more than they want to spend, and I said if they don’t want in on it, we’ll find some new investors,” said Mike.

Two months later, in late November of 2020, they arrived at Myers Cave, days before the snow arrived something they had never seen before. What had been an impulsive business decision became the beginning of an immediate integration into the social and economic life of North Frontenac. 

“We thought about it as a business venture, but it quickly became a lot more. We found a community,” said Nawar.

It started when they first arrived and a neighbour arrived on an ATV and started helping them unpack, before inviting them to dinner that night. It continued when they contacted the Northbrook Lions Club, because they are lifelong Lions, and began helping the Lions Club support the local community through COVID.

Myers Cave Resort includes a heritage log house that serves as the Lodge, as well as 5 cabins and a separate house where Nawar and Mike live, all on a lot that has frontage on Marble Lake and the outlet river that runs under Hwy. 506 at Myers Cave Road.

The buildings were all in good shape structurally, but they needed to be re-staged, some furniture needed to be removed, the beds all needed to be replaced, wallpaper removed, and the list goes on.

Since they were setting up the resort for customers in the winter of 2021, everything was prepared with the pandemic in mind, including procedures for cleaning everything from linens and boats. 

By the summer of 2021, the resort was ready, and it filled up for July and August, and there was spillover business in June and September. After one season, the resort has also received a coveted recommendation on Trip Advisor.

The Lodge and all of the cabins include full kitchens, but Nawar thought that resort customers would be looking for some prepared food while staying there.

So she opened The Red Barn Zone, a food truck in the resort's parking lot, which is located on a lot across the road, in front of a red storage barn. The Red Barn serves bagel sandwiches and coffee, including espresso-based coffees, from 7am-10am, and pizza from 4pm-7pm.

She miscalculated the appeal of the food truck, however.

“The guests at the resort seem to be happy to cook for themselves, but the local community loved the Red Barn Zone last summer,” said Nawar.

Keeping things simple, the Red Barn Zone will likely introduce ice cream this year. People have been asking if some Middle Eastern dishes might be coming to the Red Barn, and that might happen in future years, but not in 2022.

“We really don't know what this summer will be like, since we only have one year to compare it to, and it has been COVID times as well, so we will continue learning,” said Mike.

So far, whether it is the reception they have received from the local community, the attitude of the township of North Frontenac towards business, or the reception of customers from across the province, the Hages' are happy that they took that side trip up to Cloyne back in the fall of 2020.

They saw a business opportunity that day, and ended up finding a home.

Myerscaveresort.com