...AND I OWE IT ALL TO YOU!

I am guilty, I admit it. Every single time I see the movie ‘Dirty Dancing’ listed on my channel guide I watch it. I am sure I have seen it at least 75 times. It never gets old, I never get sick of it and it always makes me smile from start to finish. Anybody who has ever worked at Cleves knows exactly what I am talking about. We have all lived that movie - I just happen to have lived it for 42 years. The similarities between ‘Kellerman’s’ and ‘Cleves’ are uncanny. The properties actually look a lot alike. Both are beside a lake, have a huge Main Hotel and a ‘staff area’ (which we have a hard time keeping the Guests out of - ie Flip Cup Tournament of Summer 2011). Both have great Social Programs for their Guests. Sadly we don’t have time in our program dedicated to trying on wigs but we do have a weekly bocce and shuffleboard tournament and those are the events that get the most Guest turnout!! In ‘Dirty Dancing’ the Dance Instructor made all the women weak in the knees - in my day at Cleves it was the ‘Ski Boys’. Even some of the Guests liked the ‘Ski Boys’... and you know who you are!! :)

Obviously after the dancing, the main theme of that movie revolves around love and friendship. The same can be said for Cleves. If I were to sit down and make a list of how many people met and married after working at Cleves, I am sure there would be at least 50 couples on it, some have even come back to get married here. My parents met here and my sister and brother met their spouses here too. Back in the 70’s it was mandatory for every applicant to send a picture with their resume, something that I find absolutely horrifying!!! One winter my sister was rifling through the applications, saw a picture attached to a resume and suggested that one of the managers should interview him. They have been married for 26 years :)

The whole reason we are all connected comes back to my parents. Their love story is truly epic, one that Hollywood writes movies about. My Dad wanted to be a pharmacist when he was growing up and that was the plan until that fateful day his parent’s brought him up to stay at a resort called Clevelands House in Muskoka. As soon as he stepped foot on the property at the age of 14 he knew he was home. He worked his way up from Bellhop to Manager and one winter he went to Toronto to do interviews to hire for the following summer. My Mom was just finishing Teacher’s College and went with her friend to the interviews on a whim. My Dad interviewed her and when she got back in the car she told her friend that she had just had an interview with ‘the nicest man she had ever met’. That summer (1955) Mom worked as a waitress in the Dining Room. One of the other girls that she worked with came up to her in the kitchen and said ‘You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of landing Bob Cornell’. That was absolutely the right thing to say to her. Not only was she horrified that people knew she liked him but she was even more horrified that Dad probably knew too. She did the only thing any sane woman would do. From that day on, she totally ignored him. Apparently and quite frankly, thank God, that drove him nuts. They started dating later that year and got married three years later.

That was 53 years ago and they are still best friends. Each year as their anniversary approaches on October 18th I think of how many lives would be affected if they had never ended up making a life at Cleves. Dad once told me that when he and Mom got married he was in love with two things, her and Clevelands House. I can’t even begin to imagine where we would have grown up, spent our summers, worked or how many amazing people I would not have met if they hadn’t married. So on behalf of everybody who has ever worked here, fallen in love here, had their hearts broken here, met lifelong friends here or vacationed here, THANK YOU! I know I speak for everybody when I say ‘I’ve Had The Time Of My Life’.