PROFILE
Guy Drouin
Canada’s largest waterpark, Calypso, opened in June. Andrea Jezovit asks owner Guy Drouin about the challenges of running a summer park in a wintery country
the average temperature hits -10 degrees Celsius. But 7 June saw the arrival of a tropical oasis on the city’s doorstep. That’s the day Calypso, a 100-acre, CA$45m (£29.6m, 35.4m, US$43.3m) waterpark
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– the largest in Canada – opened, with a design that goes all out to transport its visi- tors to the tropics. Ironically, the park’s creator, Guy Drouin,
president and CEO of Villages Vacances Valcartier Group, got his start in 1971 man- aging a major winter attraction – Quebec’s Valcartier Vacation Village, now the world’s largest snow tubing attraction. But Drouin
ABOUT GUY DROUIN
Favourite food: Thai food and sushi Favourite fi lm: I don’t go to the cinema very often, but I prefer adventure fi lms. I saw Avatar – that was a good fi lm What drives you? I’m an entrepreneur, so I have to be doing something, I can’t just sit in a Lazy Boy facing the TV – I have to move. That’s why I like building things and having people around me who are working in the same direction and really want to make something happen How would you describe yourself? A guy who works a lot
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ttawa, Canada, is known for being one of the world’s coldest capital cities – at least in winter, when
isn’t new to building sunny waterpark desti- nations either. He added his fi rst waterslide to Valcartier in 1980 and expanded it to a 35-slide waterpark and campground. Today it’s both a summer and winter destination, attracting 600,000 visitors annually.
A NEW JOURNEY The new park was a natural extension of Valcartier. “At Valcartier, we can’t enlarge much more because we’ve reached our potential, and to be able to go farther, we needed to go to another market,” Drouin says. So he chose Ottawa, an hour and a half away from Quebec City and far enough away from the other parks that they don’t compete with one another. Work began four years ago.
Drouin spent a year fi nding and purchasing a tract of land and spent winter 2007 clearing the site of trees. Then came the big challenges – permits and weather. “It’s a lot to do, there are a lot of permits affecting every stage of the project,” he says. “In 2008, we had a bad summer, it was raining every day, and sum- mer 2009 was even worse, so we delayed the opening by a year.” The park, funded through pri-
vate investment and a CA$2m (£1.3m, 1.58m, US$1.9m) grant from the Ontario Ministry
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Drouin acknowledges that spend- ing $45m on a park which only opens three months a year is a risk
of Agriculture, Food and Rural affairs, was meant to be big from the start. “We didn’t want to start small and then enlarge it. We’re starting large from the fi rst year of operation,” Drouin says. The design was created by Quebec architect Therese Bouchard, and thirty-fi ve waterslides have been supplied by WhiteWater West, includ- ing Canada’s fi rst Family Boomerango. The giant wave pool – Canada’s largest, at 4,645sq m (50,000sq ft) – was supplied by Aquatic Development Group. The design includes a number of
themed areas. Overlooking the wave pool is Calypso Palace, a structure featur- ing a fresco of seashells and a statue of Calypso, Queen of the Waves, a Greek goddess-inspired character. The Jungle Run River has a green canopy and water speeds of 2m (6.5ft) per second; the Turbo Lab features four slides and a laboratory theme; the family-friendly Pirate’s Aquaplay area boasts eight slides and 100 different water guns plus a series of extreme slides including Blackhole, Adrenaline and the multi-lane Fast Track. There’s also the Zoo Lagoon for chil- dren aged six and under, a sunbathing
AM 3 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
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