They say necessity is the mother of invention, but in this case it’s the grandmother. Aged entrepreneur Carolina Matterson, 78, believes she has come up with the solution to Ucluelet’s perennial problem of seasonal tourism.
The idea came to her while she was reminiscing about the old days to some of her grandchildren. “Back then, dearie,” says Granny Matterson, “we made all sorts of clever preparations for the winter season. We dried berries, smoked fish, laid in potatoes and flour so we wouldn’t go hungry.
“Well,” said the doughty grandmother of five, “we did all that when we had the resource economy. I just thought, maybe the same thing would work for a tourist economy. We used to can salmon to get through the off season. Why don’t we can the tourists now?”
So began two years of experimentation. First Granny M built several tiny detention cells in her basement, which she jokingly refers to as “the cans.” Then she had to figure out how to lure tourists into the cans, and how to keep them alive for weeks or months on her slim government pension cheque. In fact, confesses Granny, she lost a few during the early days. “Not enough bread and water,” she says with a wink. “Fortunately there’s a huge supply, so the few we lost didn’t make a dent.”
There were other problems to overcome, in particular the tourists’ reluctance to spend time and money in town after their release from the can. “Most of them just wanted to go home after being locked up for so long. That was a toughie,” says Granny M, who won’t say how she solved it. “Let’s just call it my little trade secret.”
If Granny Matterson’s market tests pan out this winter, her invention has a huge potential for franchising in tourist traps world-wide. Tofino has already shown some interest, she says, but her first mission is to turn Ucluelet into a year-round orgy of tourism prosperity. “I’ve lived here 54 years,” she says. “Ukee feels sort of like home to me, and I want to see it doing well.”
