There is a sign on the wall at Flint House restaurant in Fort Frances that Christine Cridland bought for her parents when they retired. It reads: Just because it was a bad idea doesn’t mean it won’t be a good time.
Six months later, Duane was throwing holes through the walls of a building downtown and opening a restaurant.
That’s the Cridland way.
Christine and her sister Stacey grew up at Gillons Insurance, the Fort Frances brokerage their grandfather Herb bought into. which their parents Duane and Grace eventually came to own.
The girls shredded paper, stuffed envelopes, and treated the place like a second home. They watched how their parents handled employees: the staff parties at the cabin; the loyalty that ran in both directions.
“We treat our employees like family,” Christine says. “We want people to enjoy coming to work.”
Sarah Bagacki has been on staff at Flint House since 2016, her first job in hospitality. She never expected to still be there a decade later.
“Duane Cridland lives forever in the walls and spirit of Flint House,” she says. “The question for Duane was never ‘if’ but ‘how’ something can be done.”
Duane and Grace ran Gillons for about 35 years. Retirement lasted about six months. Duane had always wanted a restaurant, and when a long friendship with a fellow Fort Frances business owner became an opportunity, he took it.
By May of 2015, renovations were underway. On November 25th, Flint House had its opening night.
The sisters have been running it together ever since.
Today, Christine and Stacey operate three businesses out of Fort Frances. Flint House anchors downtown, a restaurant built inside a repurposed heritage building where old stonework and a pressed tin ceiling set the mood.
Directly across the street, Christine owns and operates Northwoods Gallery and Gifts, where locally made jewelry, pottery, and art reflect the character of northwestern Ontario’s bush country.
About a 45-minute flight north of town, on the remote shores of Lower Manitou Lake, the family’s fly-in fishing lodge, Manitou Weather Station, has been drawing anglers to world-class muskie, pike, and lake trout waters for more than two decades.
Not many siblings can run businesses together. Christine and Stacey have figured out why it works for them: they split responsibilities, lean on each other for the hard calls, and have an honest sense of where each one’s strengths end.
“I come up with the radical ideas,” Christine says with a laugh. “Stacey figures out how to make them work.”
It’s a dynamic that mirrors what they watched growing up. Their mother was the one who made Duane’s off-the-wall ideas land. Their parents worked together as opposites who complemented rather than competed.
Both sisters were named Fort Frances Business Woman of the Year at the 2025 Chamber Awards. Not a usual outcome. They find the whole thing a little funny. “We’re a package deal,” Stacey says.
For all three businesses, the guiding instinct is the same: make people feel at home.
Whether someone is sitting down for dinner at Flint House, browsing handcrafted pieces at Northwoods, or pulling a trophy muskie out of Lower Manitou Lake, the experience the sisters are building toward is comfort, not transaction.
“People don’t need us,” Christine says. “They want us. So we have to make sure we’re putting in that effort every time.”
Fort Frances is a tourist community, and the sisters know the seasonal rhythms well. They’ve been deepening Flint House’s catering work — weddings, corporate events, group celebrations — as one way to extend the business through the year.
They’re active in the local BIA, pushing for a more welcoming downtown and a stronger experience for visitors coming through the Rainy River District.
Their kids are getting recruited into the family orbit the same way Christine and Stacey once were, helping where they can, picking up garbage at the lodge, learning the rhythms of a working business from the inside.
But when the time comes for first jobs, both mothers plan to send them somewhere else.
“We want them to have a different employer,” Stacey says. “Not us.”
It’s the kind of thing Duane probably would have said too.
Flint House, Northwoods Gallery and Gifts, and Manitou Weather Station are Fort Frances family businesses. For more information, visit their Facebook page, flinthouse.ca and manitouweatherstation.com.
