A New Face at Michele Stevens Sailloft
Sept 28, 2017
If you phone or drop by Michele Stevens Sailloft these days the first person you meet will likely be Doug Heard who handles customer service and general administration duties. A native of Brantford, Ontario, Doug spend many years working in the Relocation Industry.
Since he first visited the Maritimes 30 years ago Doug had always wanted to return, but a busy life has a way of knocking things off the front burner. Finally, in 2014 Doug and his wife, Melanie, decided to take a vacation in Nova Scotia. They were not the first visitors to fall in love with this province and its people. While staying a Lunenburg B&B and after, as Doug puts it, his wife had one too many cappuccinos, they decided to look for a house. At the time, they were thinking about a place to retire. Walking into the first Real Estate office they happened upon, the couple were greeted by Keller Williams agent Al Moser. As it turned out they only looked at a couple of properties before taking the leap and making an offer.
A few years ago, while visiting the Toronto International Boat Show, Doug had discussed sails for his Hunter 40 with Lunenburg sailmaker Michele Stevens. So, while they were in Nova Scotia Doug thought they should check in with a couple of sailmakers. While driving around with Al Moser, Doug mentioned the sailmaker issue and Al said, “Well, my wife is Michele Stevens and her Sailloft is just down the road!”
After the usual to and fro, the Heards concluded their deal to purchase a house on 1st Peninsula and returned home to Ontario. Working life was not easy knowing they had a home waiting for them in Lunenburg. It was not too long before Melanie said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m moving to Lunenburg”. Doug followed a few weeks later.
Last February while the Heards were chatting with Michele at the Halifax Boat Show, she told them she was looking for an assistant. Melanie immediately said “Doug’s looking for a job”. Now anyone who knows Michele knows she operates in “hyper-drive”, so it was not long before Doug found himself part of the Sailloft crew.
The Oxford dictionary defines serendipity as “The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy and beneficial way” It’s hard to find a much better example of serendipity than the sequence of events that lead Doug to his work at Michele Stevens Sailloft.
