Staff at adventure park owned by Saskatoon Lighthouse have not been paid since January

The manager of an adventure park owned by the Lighthouse Supported Living Inc. says none of the staff have been paid since January.

The Lighthouse purchased Blue Mountain, 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.

Angela Beatty, manager of Blue Mountain Adventure Park, told CTV News that she hasn’t received any communication from its board of directors as to when or if the park’s eight employees will receive payment, and she doesn’t have authority to close the park or to stop taking bookings.

“Nor have I received any communication with respect to layoff, or future bookings,” she said. “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.”

According to the corporate registry of Blue Mountain, its 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.

The 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.

On Friday, a Court of King's Bench judge is expected to rule on whether financial control of the Lighthouse will be temporarily turned over to an accounting firm.