Welcoming in 2010!

We are hoping everyone had safe and Happy Holiday season and perhaps a few new fishing or hunting toys in your stocking this year! We know a few even found trip plans to Boreal Bay Lodge in the Christmas stockings in the past couple weeks.

For many the coming months will be days of thinking about getting ready for 2010 adventures to the Canadian wilderness and remembering the good times from the years past. Some are studying fishing related articles, inventorying the tackle box, others tuning up the fishing reels or figuring out the latest new toys. It doesn't matter where you are with your 2010 plans Boreal Bay Lodge will be ready!

We had a terrific 2009 thanks to the many returning and new guests to Boreal Bay Lodge and we are very eager for our 2010 season to start.

The past few years we have seen a few changes related to government requirements.

-- US Citizens require proof of Citizenship such as Passport or Passport Cards are now required for land crossing re-entry back to the US. Children under the age of 16 can still cross with birth certificate.

-- Canadian Citizens need boat safe operator cards for using their own boats. Rental boats require having a signed rental agreement on board. US citizens staying in Canada longer then 45 days also need the safe operator card. The fines for being caught without a card are understood to be $250 or more.

-- Ontario Outdoors Cards are needed along with your hunting or fishing licenses. Many guests received them this past year, so please remember them for 2010 as these cards are valid for 3 years.

-- Ontario is in the process of considering combining Federal and Provincial sales taxes presently called GST and PST. Assuming the tax combining is moved forward it will be called a Harmonized sales tax or HST. GST and PST taxes were not consistent with each other on exemptions or zero rated items and PST also had some items at 5% and 8% tax rates. The tax change is targeted to start on July 1st 2010, but subject to change. At present, the most likely impact is 3% increase from the tax changes on cabin rentals and cabin rental with meals.

Changes on a more positive note -

-- Digital cell phone service seems to be working well on much of Lake of the Woods and Kakagi (Crow) Lake and some phone plans from Verizon and Sprint allow roaming in our area. Using smart phones to make calls, send pictures, access the Internet and especially popular is using the GPS with Google earth maps.

Please check with your cell phone provider before you leave your home area because the cell phone providers often do not allow changes to your plans when you are outside of the area.

Sorry, no AT&T cell phone service in our area.

-- We found some good free Internet TV available late in our 2009 season. A few problems with Internet TV include border issues which impacted sites like Hulu that can not broadcast via the Internet into Canada. The main issue with Internet TV is the broadcast companies have a challenging business model and these companies often disappear or lose the ability to broadcast the content. In the spring we will post a note on working Internet TV sites in Canada, additionally we hope to boost our WiFi connectivity to more of our biggest cabins in the early June time frame.

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2010 Reservations have been coming in fairly quickly, but we have cabins available through out the season at present. Expecting we will update cabin availability in a couple weeks.

Let us know as you can and we would be happy to have you staying with us in 2010!

Regards,