Sarah Pruys
Rainy Lake Sports and Tackle won’t be selling gas for much longer—at least in the short-term.
“We’re pulling out our pumps and our tanks,” noted owner Mark Fontana.
The pumps are being removed July 9, but Fontana expects they’ll run out of gas a few days prior to that.
“The reasoning behind it is the Technical Standards and Safety Authority [TSSA] have a lot of regulations and changes they’re implementing, especially pertaining to underground storage facilities for fuel,” he explained.
“In order to stay up to code, we’re going to have to do a lot of changes.”
Fontana said they thought about it but with their contract expiring this coming January, they opted to wait for the time being.
“The timing on everything is perfect,” he remarked.
“We can pull the underground tanks and do an environmental clean-up of the property, wait until January, and then renegotiate with the same company or any other company to put modern, above-ground tanks in.
“We’ll be able to negotiate better because we’ll be out of our contract and we’ll have an environmentally clean site,” Fontana reasoned.
“It’s a lot easier,” he said of the above-ground tanks. “There’s a lot less regulations, and monitoring and reporting that you have to do to the government.
“When it’s underground, you can’t see anything,” he noted. “You have to prove to them that it’s not leaking.
“When it’s above ground, you can see it.
“That’s what the plan is,” he added.
Fontana stressed the store otherwise will continue to provide all the same services.
“Nothing is changing,” he said. “Just the pumps will be coming out for now and it’s something we won’t have for the time being.
“Things change all of the time, and you have to adapt and go with the flow,” he reasoned.
This also was Fontana’s thought when he recently purchased a “chip truck” from Dryden.
“Things haven’t been the same in Fort Frances so you’ve got to look at opportunities,” he remarked.
“It was an opportunity that came along.
Fontana said they got some good professional help from local caterer Mark Nagant, who decided to spend some time as a consultant for them.
It will be serving typical “chip truck” food to begin with.
“We’re starting off simple: cheeseburgers, hamburgers, French fries, poutine,” said Fontana, noting the burgers are homemade and the fries are sliced fresh from potatoes.
The truck is open every day from 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
“It was very busy yesterday [Monday] and it’s been very busy today [Tuesday],” Fontana noted of its first days being open.
Regarding the tourist season as a whole, Fontana said it started off very slow because of the weather.
“But everything exploded this past weekend,” he added.
With the warm weather finally looking like it’s here to stay, Fontana expects the “chip truck” to remain busy into its first weekend open this summer.
