Kim Ridgers was all set to reopen her yoga and fitness studio in southeast Barrie on July 16 after being forced to shut her doors multiple times over the last year due to the provincial lockdown orders.
Ridgers and her team at Oxygen Yoga & Fitness had planned a great first day back, working hard to get the studio clean and ready to welcome students back after months of being closed due to the provincial lockdown.
Things were looking up and Ridgers was finally feeling hopeful.
Then, just one day before she was supposed to reopen the studio, Ridgers' house, along with many in her southeast Barrie neighbourhood, was severely damaged by the EF2 tornado that hit the Mapleview Drive East/Prince William Way area on the afternoon of July 15.
“The studio was supposed to reopen Friday morning after having been closed due to the pandemic for April, May, June and most of July… and most of our classes were full. Everything was back to some sort of normalcy for us,” she told BarrieToday.
“Then the tornado hit.”
The reopening was literally the "light at the end of the tunnel" for her, she said, after what she admitted has been a very long and challenging year.
“We have hung on. Our studio got no funding. … We didn’t qualify for any of the provincial grants, the rent or wage subsidy. Nothing. This has completely depleted my personal savings and I was beyond broke. Friends were paying for my grocery and meals because I carried this place… through a pandemic and through loss after loss,” she said.
Some months have cost her personally upwards of $15,000 to keep the studio from closing permanently, Ridgers said.
“The 16th was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel. The instructors and I were ready to celebrate. We’d made it through, I had booked our one-year celebration and booked a reservation at Ciccio’s to say somehow we’d done this!”
Ridgers and her team had met earlier that week for a staff meeting and were excitedly planning for the much-anticipated reopening.
“Although it had been an awful year, we’d made it through. Somehow, someway, I’d given everything I had to the studio and we were going to get back on our feet. It was going to be OK,” she said.
Ridgers said she’d even felt a little bit sad earlier in the day that their final park class was going to be cancelled due to rain.
“Then a tornado hits. It was completely devastating. What was the universe trying to tell me?”
It wasn’t until the following day that Ridgers learned the Big Bay Point Road studio, located not far from her home, had not also been impacted by the twister.
“It was completely untouched, thank God. I could not have dealt with both,” she said. “The instructors are amazing. They completely moved me out of my home. And the fact that they pulled together and (were) running the studio without me… I am so grateful for them and for the community support.”
The studio officially reopened on Monday, July 19, and not being there to greet members is a fact that didn’t sit well with her at all, telling BarrieToday until that day, she’d been at the studio for every class since the studio opened for the first time in September 2020.
“I heard the first class went well, but it definitely wasn’t the big fanfare we'd been hoping and planning for. I wanted balloons and celebrations, meanwhile the community is devastated and there’s a command centre 500 metres down the road. It’s nowhere near what it was supposed to be. It’s open, but it’s not open in the way it’s supposed to be open. This was not the vision by any means," she said.
Eleven days after Ridgers found herself hiding in her basement clutching to her dog, she finally felt confident enough to return to the studio on Sunday to greet members face-to-face.
“I haven’t been able to resume my regular commitments there yet as I am still in so much chaos,” she said this week. “I have had an outpouring of support and kindness from our members, for which I will forever be incredibly grateful.
"It is amazing to see the community we have built there and how everyone has been so supportive of me and the studio.”
