Tenacity Marina CEO CJ Thompson signed an agreement with the municipality to manage the small Picton Harbour Marina in late 2020.

The marina was draining municipal coffers, losing tens of thousands of dollars every year. But CJ and his wife, Megan, wanted to take it on, for two reasons.

“I saw it as an opportunity to do something good for this community, to manage something for them —and to make it great,” says CJ. “I grew up here. The place is dear to my heart. It meant, and means, a lot to be able to contribute.”

The year before, Mr. Thompson, along with a business partner, had purchased the large office building at 35 Bridge Street, across from the Picton Harbour Inn. Along with the building came mooring rights to 54 docks, formerly the Tip of the Bay Marina.

The Bridge Street building is on what is called a part water lot: it has rights to the water in front of it, called Water Lot 1. The municipal marina is next to it, on Water Lot 2.

The rights to Water Lot 1 are at issue, but so is a singular demand in the County’s sublease with Tenacity.

The County insists that Tenacity committed to paying 10 percent of the Picton Marina’s revenues back to the County when it signed the agreement, in addition to a modest rent of $1 per year.

“The Marina isn’t losing nearly as much money as it was when we took it over,” notes Mr. Thompson. “It now only loses about $5,000 a year. But we were running it as volunteers. Obviously we weren’t making anything.”

“For the County to say we owe 10 percent of the Marina’s revenues, when it’s operating at a loss, makes absolutely no sense.”

The demand, first made in summer 2024, came as a shock. “We were never invoiced, not once, all the time we’d been operating. Then, suddenly, we were told we were in arrears on four years’ worth of payments on non-existent revenues,” says Ms. Thompson.

The Thompsons’ lawyer thinks the County’s case against Tenacity rests on a misinterpretation.

In a Ministry of Natural Resources arrangement established in 2012, the County leases the harbour, which is Crown Land, from MNRF, and in turn establishes subleases with the various operators of the harbour’s water lots.

The terms of this lease, called a Beach Agreement or Head Lease, specify the County must turn over 10 percent of the revenues from its sublease agreements — not the small operators themselves.

Neither the Prince Edward Yacht Club nor the Picton Harbour Inn pay 10 percent of their revenues to the County in exchange for the right to operate docks on the harbour. According to owner Sophia Walcott, the Inn has a dock permit.  And while County spokesperson Mark Kerr said the Yacht Club “is on the same remittance schedule as Tenacity,” that statement was contradicted by the the Commodore. According to Robert Quaiff, the Yacht Club owns both its docks and moorings. It remits nothing to the County.

Big Plans

In his initial proposal to manage the Picton Marina, Mr. Thompson detailed a plan to replace the old docks in front of his Bridge Street building with a public boardwalk and 70 new boat slips — and what would over time become a state-of-the-art marina with electricity and water.

Over the next three years, he worked with the municipality to build the slips, investing $1.25 million in a new public boardwalk along the harbour’s edge, an extensive docking system, and in environmental remediation and protection of the harbour waters. The County contributed $250,000 to the boardwalk. An easement created by the Thompsons made it a public right-of-way. They were looking forward to completing water and electrical service as soon as their finances would permit.

“That is of course what really draws the big boats, the ‘loopers’, the ones on year-long tours of the lakes that come and stay for a week and visit all the restaurants and sights. They need electricity. It’s a huge draw, and would turn Picton Harbour into a destination,” said Mr. Thompson.

With Port Picton Homes’ installation this year of a million-dollar boardwalk to the Picton Marina, attention is laser-focused on the harbour, which is not quite meeting the demands of the moment.
It’s the absolute worst time for a legal battle to halt development.
But that is exactly what is happening.
The County has told Tenacity it cannot rent its slips this summer. It has no water rights.

Eviction

The sublease between the County and Tenacity Marina was abruptly terminated on March 4, following a damning staff report presented at the Committee of the Whole Feb. 13. It alleged that Tenacity had failed to properly run the Marina and launch the summer before. The Thompsons had not answered phone calls promptly and people were complaining.

The report also said MNRF had flagged missing payments. The Thompsons had failed to remit the rents and financial statements due to the County under the terms of the sublease.

The report, written by Director of Operational Services Troy Gilmour, recommended the Thompsons’ sublease be terminated so new management could be installed in time for the summer 2025 season.

The Thompsons felt blindsided. “We weren’t even told it was on the agenda until the day before,” says Ms. Thompson. “I immediately wrote a detailed letter most councillors didn’t even have time to read before the meeting started.”

Over the next weeks and months, Ms. Thompson would write letter after letter to CAO Marcia Wallace and Director of Community Services Emily Cowan, the managers of Tenacity’s sublease agreement, asking for clarification and explaining why Tenacity had not remitted the amounts the County, or MNRF, claimed were owing. The letters went unanswered.

“From day one, our request was simply to come together, sit down, communicate, and reach a fair and reasonable agreement. One that didn’t single us out in the harbour, but one that would be fair and transparent to everyone moving forward.”

No longer interested in the thankless task of operating the municipality’s marina, “we simply wanted clarity on our own operations.”

In the letter of termination, the Thompsons were advised to vacate the Marina premises and remove all “chattels” — including the $1.25 million new docks on Water Lot 1 — by March 31, or they would be considered to have been abandoned, and forfeit to the County.

It was then that the Thompsons, seeking legal counsel, realized that their 2020 sublease to manage the municipal marina had lumped Water Lot 1, assigned historically to 35 Bridge Street, in with Water Lot 2, the municipal marina.

The County was laying claim to all the new infrastructure the Thompsons had built while managing the money-losing Picton Marina.

“We were told we were no longer allowed to operate our own marina, 70 new slips,” says Mr. Thompson. “And not only that, we had to remove them.”

In the Thick of It

“We were told we were no longer allowed to operate our own marina, 70 new slips,” says Mr. Thompson. “And not only that, we had to remove them.”

“All of it, everything we built here, was planned and permitted by the County, every step of the way, over years. And then, just like that, all of it has to just be ‘removed’ in three weeks — or we lose it.”

The Thompsons kept trying to secure a meeting to clarify what they saw as a clerical error in their sublease agreement, the lumping together of Water Lots 1 and 2.

Finally, an April meeting with Ms. Wallace and Ms. Cowan seemed to establish how the sublease had linked the Picton Marina water lot in with that assigned to the Bridge Street building. Ms. Wallace promised quick action at Council.

On April 22, councillors emerged from a closed session with two motions: one directing staff to manage the Picton Harbour Marina with scaled down services for the 2025 season, and the other “to engage in discussions with Tenacity Marina regarding an interim solution for use of the existing docking system on Water Lots 1 and 2 for the 2025 season, and bring forward an implementation bylaw at the next feasible council meeting.”

The idea was to let the Thompsons continue to operate the brand new, $1.5 million marina while the legal issues got sorted out.

But a bylaw never appeared. Ms. Wallace announced she was resigning; she could no longer shepherd the Thompsons’ file. And the County hired a lawyer to manage what was rapidly escalating into a court case, Templeman’s Jennifer Ng.  

Ms. Ng wrote the Thompsons’ lawyer on April 24 to say the County would enter into talks  — but only if they agreed to remit all “outstanding rental arrears” — 10 percent of all revenues earned at the Picton Marina over 4 years, as well as, it was becoming increasingly clear, at the Tenacity docks, only just starting to bring in revenue, on Water Lot 1.

Council’s direction to seek an “interim solution” while the financial dispute was adjudicated went by the wayside.

Ms. Ng also instructed the Thompsons to stop writing to County staff to seek a solution and instead direct all correspondence through legal counsel.

Smoking Gun

Meanwhile, a security camera the Thompsons had installed years prior at the launch office captured a site visit from County staff on March 20, two weeks after their sublease had been terminated.

The Director of Operations, Troy Gilmour, author of the staff report which led to the firing of the Thompsons, features prominently on the 32-minute tape, leading the visit of several County staff members. Directly in front of the outdoor security camera, they discuss the new Tenacity docks, and anticipate the moment they will become County property.

“So, right now, those docks are CJ’s,” Mr. Gilmour says early on. “But we give him till the end of the month to get them out of here, and if he doesn’t get them out of here, then I’ll talk to [County lawyer Sarah Viau], but in the agreement…”

A staffer rejoins, “it then becomes County property.” Mr. Gilmour agrees.

“I love those docks. Can you imagine if we had hydro out here. Hydro and water?” Mr. Gilmour asks at another point, to which another staff member rejoins, “you could make a fortune.”

“We were doing some quick numbers, and we were trying to figure it out. $1700 per slip times 76 slips,” says Mr. Gilmour, citing the County’s standard slip-leasing fee. And a bit later, “Our goal would be 2026 and to market it like crazy.”

Over the course of the conversation, it is clear that Mr. Gilmour is envisioning taking over the docks and turning them into a County moneymaker. Jokes are made about Mr. Gilmour becoming “harbourmaster.”

The County is seeking an Injunction preventing the videotape’s dissemination and an Order directing it to be destroyed.  

Court Case

In July, the County initiated a legal proceeding against Tenacity Marina. The primary reason for the action is the dispute over the terms of the sublease. But the security footage is a key target. 

In its Statement of Claim, the County continues to assert: 1. That as the sublease with the Thompsons had been terminated, the County is entitled to vacant possession of its Marina premises — and both water lots 1 and 2.

2. That a portion of the Tenacity docks in water lot 1 encroaches on water lot 2 and must be removed because it interferes with the operation of the fuel pump and two Canadian Border Services Agency boat slips, a claim the Thompsons say is exaggerated.

3. That the videotape extracted from the marina’s security cameras constitutes illegal “surreptitious surveillance,” even though the motion-activated cameras, installed years prior at the request of the County, are clearly marked.

The County is seeking an Injunction preventing the videotape’s dissemination and an Order directing it to be destroyed.  

Threaded throughout the Statement of Claim is the insistence that the Tenacity docks are now just “tenant chattels,” irresponsibly left behind, and will have to be removed and destroyed by the County at Tenacity’s expense.

“We are in the thick of this with the County,” says Mr. Thompson. “They say we can’t operate here and we have to take everything out.”

“There’s something deceptive in all of this,” says Ms. Thompson. “It feels like a deception is taking place.”