When Vanessa Fox took over the management of Little Pine Gas Bar on Little Pine First Nation in 2012, it was running a deficit.
“It was probably getting up to $200,000 when I took over,” she says. “Now two and a half years later, it’s turning a profit.”
In fact, the store’s fortunes have turned so far around that a new building worth more than $300,000 has been financed from the money it’s made. Fox and her staff of 11 have moved out into a new building and are planning a grand opening for this Friday. No more clutter and disarray, no more freezing pipes and broken down furnaces in winter and no more melted chocolate bars in the summer. All is bright and new, with efficient heating, air conditioning and open spaces.
But it hasn’t been a simple story, or an easy one. Fox, whose dream of a new building inspired her staff and her family, first had to get the business out of the red – for the second time for her. She had previously managed the store, which was established in 2001, for two years beginning in 2003.
Although Fox is originally from Little Pine, she had moved to Wetaskiwin, Alta. with her mother when she was 13. She returned to Little Pine when she was 19 and, at 20, graduated from Little Pine School. She then took a two-year business course through the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies in North Battleford.
She was working at the Little Pine band office as an accounts receivable clerk when the job at the band-run store came up. She applied and was hired, taking on the challenge of improving the business from a deficit to a profit situation. A relationship breakdown caused her to think about starting fresh somewhere else and she left the store. She moved with her son and nephew to Maple Creek for a higher paying job working for the Nekaneet First Nation and the third party management company overseeing its operation.
She worked there as band administrator until the management company relocated to North Battleford.
“So I moved back and worked out of there until I went into labour,” she laughs. That was in 2008.
After a two-year maternity leave, she re-entered the work force as director of a daycare on Little Pine. It was another case of taking on a deficit.
“I had no idea what a daycare director was supposed to do,” she laughs, but loving a challenge, she took it in her stride.
“I worked with BTC, who runs all the daycares on the reserve, so I asked some questions and I remembered back in Nekaneet what the daycare director there did and what kind of reports to bring.”
Figuring out the staffing and programming for the kids was the easy part, she says.
“Then it came to the financial part.”
She started by installing a bookkeeping program to make it easier to track the money, especially the parents’ payments. Then they began fundraising so they could take the children on outings. She also procured a $30,000 grant to fix the flooring, install new furnaces, buy new indoor and outdoor toys and paint the facility.
“So once I was done that, I was like, ‘Well, what now?’ I needed a new challenge.”
The store manager’s job opened up yet again (Fox says there have been at least 15 managers in 15 years the store has been in operation) and she decided that was, after all, the job for her.
“Store manager. That’s my calling,” she says.
And she began with a challenge.
“When I came back I told my staff, ‘We’re going to build a new store.’”
So, after digging the Little Pine Gas Bar out of a deficit, she made her way through the necessary red tape to construct a new building, only to find the project stymied due to a lack of builders. She often found herself up against apathy and, occasionally, downright negativity, but the new building is now a reality.
But, over the last year, Fox has also faced heartbreaking personal challenges. So much so that she wondered if she should carry on.
A start on the new building had already been delayed from May, waiting for equipment and workers available to do the groundwork. It was just over a year ago, shortly after work had finally begun, that Fox’s grandmother was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Fox spent a week and a half by her side in the hospital before she passed away.
When a grieving Fox returned to work she had to begin regrouping the staff and renewing the building project that had “started to fall apart.”
Soon, however, she found herself in Edmonton. Her father had had a massive heart attack, and she stayed with him at the hospital there for three weeks, with occasional quick trips back to Little Pine to check on the store.
“Sometimes I would come back at nine at night,” she says. “I’d leave the hospital, come home from Edmonton, stay here a couple of days, take care of my daughter, take care of the store, and go back.”
After a couple of relapses, her father recovered enough to be released from hospital. She stayed with him a few more days at his Alberta home before returning to work.
There had been no progress on the new store while she was gone. She gathered her staff and said, “Ok, we’ve got to start with the store again.”
She was in the process of looking for workers when another family crisis occurred. While at his job as an ironworker, her husband Curtis had a heart attack – fortunately not as severe as her father’s had been. He was in the hospital in North Battleford for a week, with Fox driving back and forth from there to work until he was moved to Saskatoon about the middle of November.
“I was so stressed out by then with all the family problems I started to think ... ‘Is all this negative stuff coming from the store? Is it affecting me? Is my family going through this because of the store?’”
But she carried on, working 12- and 13-hour shifts to get the store back on track. Meanwhile, nothing was happening with the new building. The shell was up, but she couldn’t find anyone to take on the interior work.
“There’s how many contractors on the reserve, and nobody wants to help,” she told her staff in frustration.
In December, her husband, who had taken time off work after being released from the hospital, said, “Ok, I’ll go do it.”
Over December, January and February he did the drywalling, the flooring, the insulating and finish work in Fox’s office.
“He did the whole interior!” says Fox, who was excited to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
But another personal battle was coming.
“In March I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” say Fox. “I knew back in February that something was wrong with me, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I thought maybe it was just being tired from stress, from trying to get this store going, the personal life losses I’d had.”
She called a staff meeting.
“I let them know I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she says. “I didn’t know the stage at that time. Recently the doctor said stage three. I caught it, which is a good thing.”
Chemo treatments began, and in between she went to work, leaving instructions for her staff for when she was away.
“I just recently finished my seventh treatment,” says Fox.
Despite her illness, things were going smoothly at work. Progress was being made on the new building. Her uncle began helping with the contracting and her husband returned to work reluctantly.
“His job takes him all over Saskatchewan and Alberta and he doesn’t want to leave because of my cancer,” she explains.
“I have one more chemo treatment to do and then I have surgery, so everything is set,” she says.
Then there will be a follow up of one month of radiation treatments, Monday to Friday, she says.
“I will have to take time off. I will have to go to Saskatoon for that.”
She told the staff, “Possibly, I will be gone three months, but I’ll check up on you guys and will hire somebody to help, another manager. I won’t leave you high and dry.”
Everything seemed on track and a date was set to move into the new store in August. But yet another personal tragedy was about to befall Fox. Her son, while in Saskatoon looking for work, took his own life.
“I think that was the last straw, because still today I don’t know if I am ready to carry on,” says Fox, who cannot yet talk about her son without weeping. “He was 19 years old, and it was a shock.”
Fox says he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of his death. She doesn’t know why he did it, but his girlfriend had just broken up with him and that may have been part of it.
Fox was devastated, but she has managed to find a way to carry on.
“I didn’t come to work for all of August and most of September,” says Fox. “One day I got up and I came and sat outside with the staff and they said, ‘We miss you, come back, we’re falling apart. We need you back.’”
She told them, “I don’t know if I can do it. I miss my baby.”
But, she says, “I have a seven-year-old at home who tells me every day, ‘I love you, Mom. I love you, Mom.’ And it helps me keep going, helps me to get up and to take care of her and to remember that I have something to live for.”
She also has the support of family and fellow workers.
“My husband, sisters, uncles and my staff encouraged me to keep going on and build the store. Now it’s a big deal to everybody because now they see after everything that’s happened in my life in the past year that I’m not stopping. We’re still going.”
Friday, Oct. 16 has been set for the grand opening.
“I did talk about putting it off, but the staff said, ‘No, we’re going to do it.’”
They have a barbecue planned, along with door prizes and draws.
She told them, “I need your guys’ help because I can’t do it on my own anymore,” and they have taken on the move from the old store to the new building about 150 yards away with gusto.
“They don’t want me to move anything. They’ve been doing all the moving,” says Fox. “I was going to hire movers, but they said, ‘No, we’ll do it.’”
She says she is feeling well and though she can’t help with the moving, she still plays her part.
“I’m good to walk around and order them around,” she laughs.
Last Tuesday, a crane was on the site to move the gas tank to its new position for hookup to the new pump. All the staff were there, moving equipment and stock and watching the relocation of the tank, an important step toward the grand opening. Meanwhile, customers were coming and going as the old store continued business as usual.
Fox says, “I’m happy here with management of the store. I know I have to take some time off and council wants me to take time off to heal after my cancer, so I am hoping to beat that, and it not to come back.”
She’s relieved that moving day has finally come for her staff.
“I want to make sure they are in that new store before I leave. That’s my goal.”
