‘It’s been a downward spiral since Hurricane Fiona’: General store sets up GoFundMe after insurance denies storm coverage

TATAMAGOUCHE, N.S. — Jenna Jamieson yearns for a simpler time.

A time when she’s not tens of thousands of dollars in debt, she doesn’t feel like she’s disappointing her customers and didn’t have to lay off all her staff.

“It’s been bang your head against the wall frustrating because it doesn’t matter which way you turn, we just can’t get ahead,” Jamieson said during a phone interview on Jan. 23.

How it began

Jamieson began her business shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. It started as a delivery service, offering local, Nova Scotia-made goods to residents along the North Shore.

“When all the farmers’ markets shut down, a lot of distributors and suppliers that we had spoken with lost their main source of distribution. So, I put a call out on social media, and I asked, ‘Hey, is anyone interested in a local delivery service during the pandemic?’ and 100 people said ‘yes.’ I thought we’d get like 30, maybe 50 orders at most; we had 96 orders in the first 36 hours and at the peak of COVID. We were doing over 165 deliveries a week, from New Glasgow to Oxford,” she said, clearly proud about what she once had.

Before even opening a physical location in Tatamagouche in June 2020, Jamieson said she had a dedicated customer base who loved getting the boxes of local goodies delivered to them.

“It was really exciting to get this box of goodies delivered to your door. Rural delivery is an anomaly unless you’re ordering from Amazon and it’s coming through FedEx; delivery to your doorstep from a small business is not something that’s common,” she added.

Following the store’s opening in Tatamagouche, Jamieson continued making deliveries to other communities along the North Shore, particularly Cumberland County and Pictou County. However, she said, the bulk of the deliveries were being made to Pictou County.

For her, it made sense to open a location in Pictou County to accommodate the large customer base there.

Jamieson opened the Pictou store location in 2022, sinking roughly $60,000 into the development of the store just a few weeks before post-tropical storm Fiona hit Nova Scotia.

Fiona

When post-tropical storm Fiona made landfall in Nova Scotia on Sept. 24, 2022, Jamieson said it stopped the Pictou location before it could even get started.

With no power for almost two weeks, the Jamieson General Store lost most of its goods. While she didn’t let it go to waste, hosting barbeques for the community so the food would at least be eaten, Jamieson had one reconciliation for the loss of business and goods provided by vendors that had yet to be paid for – she at least had insurance coverage to cover the loss of product and interrupted business.

“We covered our bases, we asked the questions, and we just added the Pictou location to our policy in 2022,” she said.

Jamieson had insured the Tatamagouche and Pictou locations of Jamieson General Store with Burns and Wilcox and was covered for $100,000 in business interruption insurance and $80,000 in inventory loss insurance at the Tatamagouche location. A similar amount was also applied to the Pictou location.

She said that over the summer, she had gone through the insurance agreement with a fine-tooth comb, making sure they were covered for everything as they approached hurricane season. However, after waiting for some time and she came closer to the 60-day deadline to be reimbursed, it started to become clear that they wouldn’t be covered for losses caused by the storm.

“There was a clause that our policy has to be paid out within 60 days of losses, and it was November, and we still hadn’t heard anything,” she said. “I didn’t like the direction that the conversation was going. It sounded like we weren’t going to be covered, and I got a lawyer involved in November of 2022.”

On Dec. 31 that year, she was denied coverage.

Not covered

Following the denial of coverage by Burns and Wilcox, Jamieson went to her insurance broker, Caldwell Roach, to investigate why they were denied coverage.

Three months later, in March 2023, Jamieson heard from her broker saying that the loss of goods and business interruption wouldn’t be covered because a power outage caused it, and the building they were renting from didn’t experience any damage.

Jamieson was floored.

“They were not going to cover power outages due to excessive wind. So, they didn’t cover any business interruption insurance, no payroll loss insurance. Our stores were closed for over two weeks because we had to wait for all of our suppliers who were in the same boat to remake all their products,” she continued.

She also missed out on provincial support for businesses impacted by Fiona when the broker gave her the documents two days before the deadline.

“We requested a settlement with the broker for negligence because they sent us the forms for the provincial coverage two days before the coverage closed, but they didn’t sign any of it,” she added.

SaltWire reached out to Caldwell Roach about the situation with Jamieson General Store. Greg Roach, the president of Caldwell Roach, said in an emailed statement that they regret the situation that Jamieson is in and wish her the best in her business.

“The broadest coverage available was provided to Jenna at that time. As in all cases, we worked with the insurer to exhaust all possible opportunities to provide coverage. As I am sure you can appreciate, respect for Jenna’s privacy prevents us from providing a more detailed explanation of this situation,” Roach said in the statement. “As a local small business, we too provide as much support as possible to our small communities and the businesses within them. We can only survive if they do.”

Looking for support

To make situations worse, the past summer was tough for Jamieson. Agriculture was down by 80 per cent for some crops, meaning there were often shortages at the store. Customers also had difficulties reaching the store in Tatamagouche due to summer road construction on three of the roads entering the town.

“If it weren’t for my suppliers, I wouldn’t keep fighting this. It’s just that our burdens have become the burdens of so many incredible small local businesses. We also haven’t been able to support the small local businesses as much as we normally do because we don’t have the funds to keep a full selection of products on the shelf,” she said.

After feeling like she was disappointing customers in two places, she made the difficult decision to close the Pictou location in November and laid off all her staff. She is now the sole employee trying to get the business above water.

“It’s just been this downward spiral since Hurricane Fiona, and we just haven’t been able to recover,” she said. “Normally, in peak seasons between the two locations, we had upwards of 20 employees, and now it’s literally just me. I do all the deliveries, I do all the running around, I do all the picking up, I stock the shelves, I now do all the cooking in the kitchen, and I open a store and serve the customers, and it’s a lot, and it’s been too much for too long. It’s been too stressful for too long.”

On Jan. 17, Jamieson started a GoFundMe campaign to recoup some costs and pay the suppliers she works closely with. Her goal is $75,000, and she is a little more than 10 per cent of the way to reaching her goal as of the time of publication.

When asked what she would like to see if she achieves the full $75,000 and can pay off all her debts, she said she would like to see full shelves again.

“I just want it like it was before Fiona.”