Tuesday morning wasn’t the first time Connie Schmidt has noticed one of her small businesses has been broken in to, but this time was far worse than a couple of bottles of stolen liquor.
“I drove in and the first thing I saw was the spray paint and the broken screen. So I knew someone had been in,” she said.
“And then when I open the back door, you just crumble – like someone just punches you in the gut.”
The Beach Café, which sits on the shores of Greenwater Lake, had been ransacked.
Shattered glass, cooking oil and broken kitchen equipment laid across the floor, preventing her from opening the restaurant after the long weekend.
Schmidt and her husband have been running a pair of businesses in Greenwater Provincial Park for 16 years and are expecting profits to take a hit this summer.
“We make our living in six weeks and to have two of those weeks gone is a big chunk of your income. It hurts,” she said.
The couple also runs the local store, which was also vandalized.
The Saskatchewan provincial park only holds a handful of businesses within its gates.
The park manager, Jason Tokarchuk, said visitors to Greenwater will be at a loss without the café and store running and noted the Schmidt’s do a lot to make the park a welcoming place to visit, like holding a fireworks display in August.
“It’s just unfortunate. These guys work very hard to provide services on behalf of the park. It’s unfortunate that it could happen and be taken away so quickly,” Tokarchuk said.
Schmidt added the hardest part is that the suspects don’t have any links to her, and it felt senseless.
“I had a little boy yesterday come out front and just say, ‘Can I help you clean up?’ And that’s the part that hurts. It does,” she said.
Schmidt is hoping to open the back of the café to serve ice cream and take out in two weeks, but is still waiting for insurance agents to make a final determination.
RCMP said two boys, 15 and 17, were in court Wednesday morning each facing eight charges in relation to the vandalism.