Youth entrepreneur

Nolan Tozer has used his love of the outdoors and his home in Moosonee as a base for becoming an award-winning entrepreneur.
Nishnawbe Aski Development Fund (NADF) presented Tozer, a Moose Cree member, with its 2013 Youth Entrepreneur of the Year award in October.
Nolan, who also celebrated his 24th birthday last month, and his wife Jenn started Moose River Tours about three years ago. The couple’s home-based business provides customers with a range of fishing options and sightseeing tours on the Moose River and James Bay.
Nolan grew up in the area and learned about the land from his father, William, a legendary guide, hunter and trapper. William continues to work as an outfitter, mostly on the Abitibi River.
Nolan’s initial guiding experience came when people searching for a guide in Moosonee would be told be told by locals to “Go ask William Tozer,” who in turn would refer some of them to his son.
“I’d just take them out fishin’ for a little bit … make a few bucks,” Nolan says.
But this experience also sparked his interest in starting a full-fledged tourism business, which Jenn encouraged.
Now, Moose River Tours offers a “full package” boating experience.
“When we go on our James Bay tour, I’ll take you out and we’ll stop along the way, talk about the land, stories and experiences that I’ve had, and also the history of the land too, like with the Hudson Bay Company and the fur trade,” Nolan explains. “And then we get out to the mouth of the bay and we get off in the bird sanctuary and I let people walk around a get a feel for it. We take our time.”
Customers vary from locals to visitors, many of them Europeans.
“A lot of people from the south who come up north to work, when their family comes to visit we take them out,” Nolan says of one typical client group. “Or it can be people just stopping in to see what Moosonee is all about.”
Jenn moved to Moosonee about five years ago from a small town east of Toronto, for work as a paramedic. She books and co-ordinates the tours for the family business, and in some cases customizes tours for clients.
“I make something up for what they want to do, the ages that they have,” she says.
“All the older ladies like to flirt with Nolan,” Jenn teases him.
Moose River Tours promotional material speaks of the “awesome scenery” and bannock customers can enjoy during their freighter canoe trips. There is also mention of chances to see marine life and wildlife, and to explore mud flats, sandbars and islands.
“We just really love what we do and Nolan really loves being outdoors, and I think that shows on the tours a lot too,” Jenn says. “All his stories about him growing up in the area, people like to hear that – something different, something they’re not used to growing up in the city.”
Of course also on offer are opportunities for fishing, for walleye keepers and catch-and-release sturgeon, from shore or the boat, on day trips or overnight. Shore lunches are provided.
The business is a seasonal one, at least for now.
But as NADF executive director Brian Davey said in congratulating Nolan and several other winners at the 2013 NADF Business Awards, “I’m sure your dreams are not complete.”
Indeed. Jenn, holding the Tozers’ two-month-old daughter Sophia, talks of expanding the business to someday include a lodge and in winter, snowmobile rentals.
Adds Nolan: “I’m hoping in the next 10 years, maybe, to improve tourism in town … maybe work hand-in-hand with the Moose band and other types of businesses, give everybody a little piece of the pie. And hopefully be able to hire a lot of people from the community. There’s a lot of money in tourism, a lot of opportunities.”