Forging a new friendship at Blue Mountain.
by Roger Klein
It was a radical plan hatched on a whim. Barbe Stephens and Carol Mintoff were on their way to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
“I was packing up and thinking, ‘My God, I haven’t even had a coffee with this woman and now I’m going away, on a plane, for a week and staying in the same room as her. What am I thinking?’” Stephens recalls, remembering how crazy it seemed at the time, taking off with someone she just met at work. “It was amazing, I don’t know, we just clicked,” she laughs.
That was 10 years ago and it was the first of many trips abroad the pair would take as their friendship deepened. The two women first met while working in guest services at Blue Mountain Resort. They were each at very different points in their lives.
Stephens moved to Collingood with her father as a teenager and stayed. She married, raised her family, and worked at various local landmarks including Woolworths, Pepi’s Pizza and Kelseys. After 40 years working in the local service industry she knew the area like the back of her hand. Working in guest services, Stephens taps into her local knowledge to provide guidance to visitors at the resort and she loves it. “Every day you have a special customer who appreciates your help and guidance. People are so appreciative when there is someone to interact with and talk to.”
“My God, I haven’t even had a coffee with this woman and now I’m going away, on a plane, for a week and staying in the same room as her. What am I thinking?”
Mintoff has a different story. She landed in Collingwood later in life. She cottaged on Georgian Bay as a teenager and then moved here from Ajax in 2012 with her aging mother in tow. With grown children, a divorce and a long career at Bell behind her, Mintoff was looking for a fresh start somewhere close to medical services for her mom.
“We came down Hurontario Street and it was like coming home, it was the strangest sensation. It was like I was a teenager coming back down that street,” Mintoff recalls.
It didn’t take long for Mintoff to put down roots. She followed up on a suggestion from a family member to go in search of a job at Blue Mountain. Mintoff says she was hired on the spot as a guest services representative. “I had alway worked with customers at Bell,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Ok, you’re hired, show up tomorrow.’”
It was the winter of 2013 when Minoff’s and Stephens’ lives intersected while working at the same long desk in guest services. It was a hectic year at the resort with major expansion unfolding. The mountain coaster had just opened in the village and a new chairlift was being built in Orchard. Just as that ski season was winding down, they concocted their plan to fly off to Mexico. “I don’t even know how we decided that we were going away,” Stephens giggles.
They quickly established that Stephens needs her coffee in the morning and Mintoff needs an ocean view while on holiday. Stephens says everything else was easy after that. “We never have a plan, we do whatever we want to do at the time.”
Taking some time off in April has become a tradition for the duo. Mintoff says things slow down at Blue Mountain and it’s the perfect time to get away. They’ve racked up a half-dozen trips together.
This year they have reservations to go away on another trip, this time on a cruise to Panama where they will visit a turtle farm and a rum distillery, even though neither of them drink alcohol. For a lark they also plan to stop in Hell, a jagged limestone rock formation on Grand Cayman, just so they can tell their friends and co-workers that they’ve been to hell and back, together.
Hardly a day goes by without the two communicating, even though they work in different parts of the resort now. Stephens says their friendship was unexpected and it evolved into something special.
“I think it’s unbreakable. It’s solid, it’s solid.”
