Saskatoon Lighthouse-owned adventure park temporarily closed

An adventure park owned by the Lighthouse Supported Living Inc. has closed, according to a post on the park’s social media.

A March 9 post on Blue Mountain Adventure Park Facebook page said the park is “temporarily not in operation, and will not be accepting any reservations at this time.”

Blue Mountain’s manager Angela Beatty told CTV News in February that none of the staff had been paid since January.

Beatty said at the time she hadn’t received any communication from its board of directors as to when or if the park’s eight employees would receive payment and that she didn’t have authority to close the park or to stop taking bookings.

“I would expect that if things are coming to a close that my employer would notify me or at the very least set the booking system to not accept future bookings,” she said.

CTV has reached out to the park for comment.

On Feb. 24, a judge handed over control of the Lighthouse, which owns the park, to accounting firm MNP, a move initially requested by two board members who were ousted as co-directors of the shelter by three other board members.

Among the points of contention in the legal battle was an attempt by the former directors, Twila Redekopp and Jerome Hepfner, to consider the sale of the Blue Mountain land.

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MNP has the power to manage Lighthouse operations and list the properties for sale, if it chooses, but not finalize a sale. The next hearing is scheduled for April 13.

The Lighthouse purchased Blue Mountain Adventure Park, spanning eight-quarters of land near North Battleford, in June 2012 with the stated intention of providing a “tranquil environment beyond the inner city where homeless men and women from across Saskatchewan can realize their full potential and positively change their lives,” a press release from the Lighthouse said at the time.

According to the corporate registry, Blue Mountain’s directors are listed as Don Windels, Jerome Hepfner, Twila Reddekopp and Adeel Salman, Beatty’s husband.

All the park’s directors are also members of the Lighthouse board.

A 2021 MNP Lighthouse audit report that revealed Don Windels and his relatives had effectively received loans from the Lighthouse and purchased property from the organization for less than the appraised value also found irregular transactions between one of Windels’ companies and Blue Mountain.

The Kowach Foundation for Advancing Education, a non-profit run by Windels, was tasked with hiring summer students for Blue Mountain beginning in 2018 by accessing federal wage subsidies on its behalf.

In 2021, the MNP auditor shows that Kowach recorded a $39,000 profit for this task, after being reimbursed by Blue Mountain, the Canada Summer Jobs subsidy and the COVID Emergency Work Subsidy.

The auditors were unable to determine if any of that profit later flowed to the benefit of Blue Mountain.