Theory of Hospitality

1999 was almost gone.  It was late December and the Murray family was winging their way to Newfoundland, to be at Cape Spear, just outside of St. John's, to watch the sun come up on the dawning of the first day of the year 2000.  This site would be the furthest point east in North America.  They just may be the first to see this magic moment.  While the rest of the world waits for a huge computer crash, this family will marvel at this moment in time that will never come again.  And the world did not go into melt down, but out of this exercise came a profound theory.  A theory that was never there before.  A theory that the world needed to understand, that Nimmo Bay needed, to let the world know what a special place this Temporal Nexus of ours was.

The Theory of Hospitality was born on the airplane that carried the Murray's onward toward 24 Poplar avenue, St. Johns Newfoundland, the birthplace of Deborah Murray and party central for these Christmas holidays.  After getting settled in the seats of the airplane and take off had occurred, it was decided that all flights are boring and the time should be spent in creating some marketing strategy for the family business.  While the world was preparing for a meltdown, our brains were at work high above the planet.  

Craig Murray reached into the seat pocket in front of him and pulled from that pocket a Time magazine dated December 1999 and featured on the cover, Time Magazines "  Person of the Century ".  This was none other than Albert Einstein, and there beside his picture and name was his famous, most well known equation - The theory of Relativity.  E = MC2 .  Wow, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  There never has been a theory of Hospitality, so this is what we will create on this long flight from Vancouver to St. John's.  Don't know where the thought came from but there it was and the challenge was on.  Myself, Georgia and our two boys, Clifton and Fraser were on it.  What could the Theory of Hospitality look like.

The answer of course was right in front of us, on the cover of Time magazine, right beside Albert.  What if we altered, ever so slightly, his theory, and came up with our own theory for the hospitality industry that our family was so involved with.  It had been our life for 20 years at this point.  It seemed so simple really, and it took the better part of two hours to put together what has become our Mission statement.

Put in simple terms, the Theory of Hospitality is what everyone in the industry is trying to do.  We just had to figure it out.  And eventually we did.

E = MC2 was the most known mathematical formula in history, so it seemed to us that the Theory of Hospitality should look similar, but mean something entirely different.  So it was with this thought in mind. that we proceeded to put together our own theory and how it might look.  Mission statements to be effective should be short and to the point and drive home what it is you are trying to say or do.  Remembering that tourism is an experience and not a product,  the challenge became even more interesting.  We had three letters and one number to work with.  There were only so many combinations of this grouping that could work.  We finally settled on E2 = MC.  We just moved the squared symbol.  Now we just had to come up with a meaning for the letters, that made sense in the world of hospitality.

The one thing that everyone tries to do with a tourism experience is make memories for people by giving them experiences that last a lifetime.  Create for them moments that are so powerful that they will tell all their friends and return themselves to enjoy again, that which gave them so much pleasure.  The only way to do this is by exceeding people's expectations.  Give them something that they would never expect.  Make them say WOW, bring tears of joy to their eyes and create for them the desire to share this experience with loved ones and friends.  In other words, have your guests do your marketing.  This is widely known as the best way to market - Word of Mouth.

So, we had the basics all jumbled up in what we knew, but how to say it in a simple way that all could understand and smile at when they saw and understood what that simple equation meant.  That took the better part of two hours.  What we finally came up with was what everyone in the tourism game was trying to do;  Creating memories while exceeding expectations.  So it was born -

Expectations Exceeded = Memories Created,  E2 = MC.  The Murray family's and tourism's new, Theory of Hospitality.

It is something we live by at Nimmo Bay.  It is what brings our guests back year after year and it is why they tell their friends about us and it is why tourism is an experience, not a product.  Simple isn't it, really.  It just had to be discovered, and have a name put to it.  It was already being practiced.  Make it so.

From the Temporal Nexus to Earth - a modern day reality.

In the Temporal Nexus everything is just about perfect.  No one wants for anything.  Back here on earth, just about nothing is perfect and most want for something, even the most precious gift to life.
That would be water.

Fast forwarding to the present day in Nimmo Bay, we sometimes take water for granted, as it is in abundance and all around us.  Salt water, fresh water, spring water, ground water, rain water, and water water everywhere with lots to drink.  We use water to live on, to produce our power, to provide us with the basic element of life and we enjoy the beauty an on site mountain waterfall can give to us.

The salt water can provide us with flotation for our buildings, a fresh and abundant food supply and by using the tides, a method of moving extremely heavy objects without the least bit of effort on our part.  Our ocean bay has provided us with a lifestyle that only a handful of people have enjoyed over the last 150 years on this coast.  At one time the coast was alive with people, all seeking out a living on the ocean's inside passages.  Hand logging and commercial fishing were the start of life on the coast with small family units tied up in the bays and estuaries from Vancouver to beyond Prince Rupert.  There were floating dance halls that moved from camp to camp for the entertainment of the working families who lived and worked on this coast.  Floating schools and towns were built on the water to house the folks who made this coast their home and what it is today.  Water played an important role in everyday life for many years.

Today, the salt water is a highway for mariners who ply the mainland coast from below the 49th to Alaska.  It also is our playground at Nimmo Bay and plays an important role in our wilderness adventures.  Whale watching, kayaking, paddle boarding, marine touring and swimming are here for our guests to enjoy, and the beauty of coastal BC is ever so abundantly obvious once on the water for a days journey.

In March of this year, the Murray family went to Las Vegas as Clifton, our son and a member of the singing group The Tenors, was performing with Cirque du Soleil in a gala, one night performance called " One Night for One Drop ".

This was an event at the Michael Jackson Theatre at Mandalay Bay to raise money and awareness for the people throughout the world who do not have access to fresh drinking water.  The performers gave freely of their time and talents to bring home this message of want and need and to raise money for a worthwhile global cause.  This has been championed by Cirque folks for the second year and The Tenors and Clifton Murray were very proud to be able to participate.

Sitting in the audience watching the performance made me think of how lucky we are to be living in the Temporal Nexus of Nimmo Bay, surrounded by ocean water and with our own waterfall thundering down 5000 feet from the top of snow capped Mt. Stephens.  We are blessed with the sweetest, purest drinking water anyone can find on this planet.  It comes from the snowfields of the mountain and is filtered through mountains of BC granite, ending up flowing into Nimmo Bay.  We are fortunate enough to capture a bit of this magic elixir and have it for our drinking water and also to provide us with electricity and power for our family business.  Plus, how beautiful is it to have a sparkling waterfall flowing in your back yard.  One would think we were living in Rivendell as this is as close to a Temporal Nexus anyone could find on this planet.

Our environment is a healthy ocean and fresh water supply.  The basis of all life is the ability to access this water and it is the duty of everyone of us to keep as pristine as possible the thing that we need the most to sustain our life here on earth.  We ourselves are up to 78% water at birth so it stands to reason we must keep replenishing this supply of water in our bodies throughout our lives.  Diet Coke and Seven Up will never replace pure, sweet water.  We are living on the edge of loosing our environment and our water supplies.  What must we do to reverse this?  Many around the world are asking this question and the answers are being fought over by those who value money over life.


" In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. "  But what is Truth?  The simple truth is that our economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of our environment.  For without Water, all life ceases on this plant, even in the Temporal Nexus of Nimmo Bay.

The kitchen tap is not the source of all water.  Through education our children will know what it means to preserve what we have left of this life giving element known as water.  We must make it so.

In the beginning ........... a family's choice

It is thought that a Temporal rift exists as a place in the universe where time stands still.  It is an extraordinary place where peoples desires can become reality and they can visit any time or place they choose.  William Shatner  aka  James T Kirk has been there.  There is no past, present or future.  It is like being inside of joy.  Such a time rift also exists as the Great Bear Rain Forest.  William Shatner,  aka Denny Crane,  has been there as well. The giant trees, the diamond blue glaciers, the pristine rivers, the white sand beaches and the snow capped mountains appear to stand as they always have stood, viewed by us on any given day in this nexus.  But over the years human interruption has caused blemishes on this once perfect natural skin.  As the years pass, changes can be seen in the land and sea scapes, which if left unchanged, can and will cause those inhabitants who live there great sufferings.  If for example, the wild salmon and the great forests of this wilderness region die, so dies humanity.  Mankind has the ability to save this Temporal Nexus.

BC's Great Bear Rain Forest is a timeless thing of beauty, a place of beauty, and for those of us who live there, a home of beauty.  Nestled in and around the coast range mountains of BC this boreal forest and the surrounding waterways is home to many diverse creatures, including human beings like myself, my wife and children and new grandchild and our first nation neighbours, the Speck family of Hopetown.

For thirty five years I have lived and carved out a living doing unimaginable fun things in this place that reminds us how sensitive our planet is.  Nimmo Bay is where I chose to make our pioneer lifestyle a reality and combine raising a family with growing a business.  It was really quite simple.  Everything was supplied courtesy of mother nature.  All I needed to do as to make this vast wilderness accessible to people and to add in smiles, ultra fine local cuisine, excitement, magical wild fish, unmatched wilderness adventure and journeys from sea level to seven thousand feet throughout 50,000 square miles of untamed mainland and north Vancouver Island mountains and coastline.

Finding Nimmo is our families story book, telling of how and why this was done, but this blog is the beginning of a more indepth reasoning of the wherefore's and the why's of doing such a foolish thing in such a hard to get to place and the outcome and how it can continue from generation to generation and be sustainable.  How is it a wife with two children, ages 1 and 3, pulls up roots in a North Vancouver Island town and heads off into the vast regions of the mainland coast to follow her husbands desire to create a lifestyle for their family and a tourist business for all of them to participate in.  She 28 and he 34.  Oh yes, Deborah is from Newfoundland which gives her a leg up to do such as thing.  Hardy stock to say the least.

There will be some hard to answer questions asked of what will happen to the great Bear Rain Forest in the future and how politicians today are
making very foolish decisions that will impact his pristine place for future generations?   What can we do to offset their decisions of today.  Being able to breathe pure air and drink sweet water is a very big deal as 90% of the world cannot do this.  We can and that is worth fighting for.  Fauna, my new granddaughter is just 3 weeks old.  I want her to be able to catch a wild fish, marvel at the majesty of a huge cedar tree, swim in a clear, coastal fresh water river and watch a mother grizzly suckle her cub on the banks of a lightly silted glacial stream.  Will she be able to do this??  Only if myself and others who care about life speak out and let it be known that you can't eat money.  Our environment should not be for sale to those corporate entities who do not have our best interest at heart.  But this is is for another segment.  I'm just setting the stage here.

There will also be some great stories told that will make you smile and perhaps laugh out loud, about family,  people and places that most folks only read about and see in pictures.  Nature is a magnificent artist and her sculptures and creations defy replication but can be viewed via  the creative artistry of the Nimmo Bay wilderness adventures.

To Fly is Human ... To Hover, Divine

To be continued ........