
The Klahoose Wilderness Resort’s 2023 tourist season ended in October. This is the time for refurbishments in preparation for the reopening next May. The need to provide a back-up for the resort’s micro-hydro system became obvious during last summer’s drought, and a propane generator has been installed. Additional storage space has been added.
Gorge Harbour Marina has been upgrading for the past year, and hopes to have a grand reopening this coming spring.
These are some of QXMC’s physical improvements but, in a recent interview with Cortes Currents, the conversation quickly turned to an overview of the Klahoose development company’s personnel goals for 2024.
“ Like in every business, we want to generate revenue and we want to keep our costs low, so that at the end of the day we can generate a profit. That profit is obviously used to extend our businesses and to make sure that they last in the long run,” explained Marco Bedetti, General Manager of QXMC.
“On the other hand, a very important focus is to generate employment. We are trying to prioritize Klahoose First Nation members, to give them the possibility to work here. But we would also like to extend this and be able to provide as much training as possible so that they can grow in these companies and they can start to manage, say the Gorge Harbor Marina or the sawmill or any other LP that we’re running nowadays.”

The goals that Maciej Szarecki outlined were more specific to his role as General Manager of the Klahoose Wilderness Resort.
“I would say there’s two. One is obviously to continue providing the sort of cultural experience that our cultural interpreters provide. We have excessively good reviews over this past summer season. I want to continue and build on top of that.”
“That’s on the guest side, but with the team side of things there is some development that I want to do with some of the team and help them with a lot of skill sets on the hospitality and customer service side of things.”

“We have folks of varying backgrounds. A lot of them are suffering with generational trauma and they bring a lot of worries from home and everything.”
“I’ve been working with a couple of the team, just to boost their confidence and their skill set. One particular person was very shy. They were helping me with serving drinks and serving food. With just a little step by step encouragement and positive words, over a very short period of time that skill set improved a hundred percent. It helped in other aspects of this person’s job. They were doing some of the crafts and cedar weaving evenings that we have with guests. They were able to fully take charge of a whole group of people and lead them in that craft.”

“There’s a few team members like that. You just need to spend a little bit of time with them and they’re going to do wonderful things. A lot of the team has the potential to really move up in hospitality and make great careers out of it. So a couple of years down the line, I’d love to just step away and have one of the team members take over and continue running the wilderness resort.
CC: Give us an overview of the people working for QXMC. Where are they and what are they doing?
Marco Bedetti: “We currently are employing 3 people at the sawmill. We have about 15 people employed at the Gorge Harbor Marina Resort. There are people working with our aquaculture business, but all of this is about to grow.”

“In the past, the Gorge Harbor Marina, in a full summer season, including the restaurant, would employ around 60 people, and we definitely want to get back to these numbers.”
“Klahoose Wilderness Resort as of now has about 15 people employed in the summer season as well. In hopes that we can expand the services, we could have more staff members working up there. There is also a very important aspect, which is the cultural component of it which can only come from Klahoose members who know the traditions and know which traditions they would like to share with the rest of the world.”

“I’ve heard that the sawmill operations are going to grow as well. We are getting a lot of new machinery in, be it tongue and groove, edgers, kiln. We want to start focusing on production for our projects and production for the Klahoose band, but there is also a part of us that thinks it would be nice to look into big box stores and sell wood off island.“
Top image credit: Looking out over the marina – courtesy Gorge Harbour Marina Resort
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