How dreams of a floating home turned into a ‘nightmare’ for several Ontario couples

The acrimonious fight in Ontario’s lake country, with its multi-million-dollar properties, is a dizzying, tangled mess

Get the latest from Sharon Kirkey straight to your inbox

Published Jan 02, 2025  •  Last updated 5 minutes ago  •  16 minute read

Wayne and Kathy Paquette are claiming more than $389,000 in damages in a dispute with float home builder Joe Nimens. Photo by Courtesy Paquettes

Kathy Paquette had been following the Facebook posts about the vessels in Ontario’s cottage country for about a year when she and husband Wayne decided to pack up, sell their century-old house in Midland, Ont., and sink their savings into a home that floats on the water.

Article content

Article content

The vision Joe Nimens, the builder of those floating accommodations, pitched of life on the water sounded idyllic: “No lawn to cut,” his website promises. “No driveway to shovel. No hydro bill. No water bills!”

Article content

The Paquettes bought a Sea-Doo, a steel fishing boat with a 25-horsepower motor and life jackets for the dogs — Annabella, a golden retriever and a Shih Tzu named Maggie — in preparation for their custom-designed, solar-powered floating dream home. “Before we gave Joe money he was as sweet as pie. Man, you would have thought he adored us,” Wayne said. “And then, as soon as we gave him the money, things started to change. It became one nightmare after another.”

The couple is one of several now claiming Nimens left them high and dry. Out not just hundreds of thousands of dollars but also peace of mind, they say. Nimens is facing legal actions for alleged breach of contract, breach of trust, “unjust enrichment,” misrepresentations and other wrongdoings, allegations that have not been tested in court.

In an interview with National Post, Nimens said the float homes have taken longer than anticipated to complete, that he’s been “overly optimistic” about schedules and that, while he’s “behind the eight ball” on several projects, “I’m gonna build everything that everybody wants.”

Article content

The Paquettes are claiming more than $389,000 in damages in a dispute over a float home that now squats, unfinished, on dry land at a marina lot in Port Severn on the shores of Georgian Bay, effectively held hostage in a legal muddle over allegations Nimens defaulted on a lease agreement with the marina.

The couple spent the summer living in a makeshift apartment in their daughter’s garage before recently moving into an in-law suite in the basement.

“Joe left us stranded without a hope of completing our home,” said Wayne, 66. “I can’t even buy Christmas gifts for my grandchildren,” said Kathy, 62. She’s on anti-anxiety medication and twice-a-week counselling to cope with the ordeal, she said.

“It’s been very traumatizing for me.”

“My wife has suffered emotionally, big time,” said Wayne.

Joe Nimens builds floating homes, like these, from repurposed shipping containers. He admits to being “behind the eight ball” on several projects but says he will “build everything that everybody wants.” Photo by lotb.ca

Another former client, Ronda Kemp, is claiming she’s a victim, too, alleging that Nimens’ company, LOTB (Live on the Bay), is liable for “refusing or failing to supply” the flat-roof floating cottage vessel she had contracted Nimens to build, and for which she made payments totalling $168,000, according to her statement of claim. Kemp, whose allegations were first reported by Cottage Life, is also accusing Nimens and his partner of “malicious” behaviour and misrepresentation. “At all material times Nimens represented to Kemp that she would be able to dock her vessel at LOTB’s marina in Port Severn, Ont., when not using the same to travel,” the notice of claim reads. Kemp says she had visions of living in a community of float homes, like Toronto’s Bluffer’s Park, not out on the bay, anchored off crown land.

Article content

Article content

Nimens, who was served notice in the Paquette’s claim this month, and who hasn’t filed a statement of defence in Kemp’s, says that LOTB performed the work as per the contractual obligations, “except in cases where the customers requested changes, which is in all of the cases.” He says that he himself is being “soaked” for tens of thousands of dollars in “ridiculous” invoices by the marina where he rented space for a construction yard. “I am not the bad guy here,” he said in an email outlining the dispute as he sees it.

The acrimonious fight in Ontario’s lake country, with its multi-million-dollar properties, is a dizzying, tangled mess, with critics on one cottagers’ association’s Facebook page accusing Nimens of taking advantage of innocent buyers, many of them seniors, and thumbing his nose at regulations governing floating accommodations on crown land and federal waterways.

Others commented that the matter is a private contract dispute between parties. “Everyone needs to mind their business,” one post read.

The Paquettes and Kemp have spoken to police.

When contacted, the Ontario Provincial Police declined to confirm or deny police are investigating Nimens for fraud but did say that the Southern Georgian Bay detachment “is currently conducting a fraud investigation as a result of multiple complaints in the Port Severn area.

Article content

“The OPP cannot confirm particular details as it may be detrimental to the ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson said in an email to National Post.

“Fraud investigations can be lengthy due to the complexity and thoroughness required to ensure that the evidence is followed and because of the nature of these complaints,” the statement read.

Nimens said he’s unaware of any police investigation. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nobody contacted me. A year ago the OPP called me and said, ‘This lady Ronda is upset,’ and I explained to them, ‘Right now officer, I’m standing beside the thing we built for her with her money. I don’t know what to tell you.’ He said, ‘Oh, well, so it’s just a contractual dispute.’

“It’s not like I took her money and didn’t build anything. I took her money, built the thing she asked for and now I’m stuck storing it until, what? I don’t know.” In her lawsuit, Kemp says the floatation units built for her vessel, “and for which she had paid,” were resold to another customer.

It’s not like I took her money and didn’t build anything

Nimens’ own floating vessel emerged on the waters of the Trent-Severn system several years ago — two repurposed shipping containers 24-metres long and six-metres wide.

Article content

The structure, or “architectural monstrosity,” as others have offered, touched a nerve among cottagers and waterfront property owners who say the water squatting vessels are a threat to the environment and to the character of prime cottage country like Muskoka.

The Paquettes and Nimens are family, sort of: Nimens’ girlfriend, Erin Morano, is Wayne’s cousin. “It’s not like we were close,” Wayne said, but they grew up together as kids.

It was Morano’s posts that first sold Kathy on the idea of a floating home. “We went out and saw Joe’s and we liked the idea, the concept,” Wayne said. “Joe talked about not having to pay taxes. He said you could park it on any crown island you wanted.” According to LOTB’s website people can “float to anywhere” they desire. “There are 36,000 crown land islands in Georgian Bay alone. Any of them welcomes you and your family to stay for a day or 2 or 3 weeks.”

In fact, Ontario last year amended a bylaw prohibiting any floating structure not primarily designed for navigation from dropping anchor overnight on public lands covered by water. (Nimens argues that everything he builds is equipped to be navigable and self-propelled. He uses a tugboat to push his about.)

Article content

Around late 2023, the Paquettes entered into a contract with Nimens for a floating dwelling consisting of two large shipping containers equipped with solar panels and surrounded by a wooden deck, according to their statement of claim. The couple said Nimens gave them a deal on a float home originally intended for another buyer, Nimens’ former salesman.

They sold their home, gave Nimens a total sum of $245,000, according to their claim, and invested additional money into a kitchen, bathroom and wood stove.

According to their claim, as part of the contract, Nimens agreed to put the couple up in a furnished Airbnb while he worked on their unit. They stored their furnishings and belongings in the vessel.

The century-old house in Midland, Ont. that Wayne and Kathy Paquette owned before they sold it and hired Joe Nimens to build them a float home. Photo by Courtesy Paquettes

The houseboat was to be completed, assigned a vessel registration with ownership transferred to the Paquettes, and launched into the water no later than late May 2024, according to their statement of claim.

That date came and went.

“Around this time, the owner of Severn Marina, Morris Lucchese, advised the plaintiffs that Mr. Nimens had failed to pay rent for several months and threatening to exercise (his) right to distraint,” meaning seize possession of the floating home, potentially to sell off, in order to cover the arrears in rent, according to the statement of claim.

Article content

Nimens alleges he began receiving unexpected invoices from the marina for winter storage and other costs, over and above the agreed upon rent. His winter storage fee for three floating homes increased from $7,000 to $22,000, he said. When he received an invoice last spring “out of the blue” for $43,000, he said, “I was dumbfounded.”

“Every time I paid a bill, the marina sent me another invoice, for a bigger amount,” Nimens alleged in an interview with National Post.

“All my rent was paid, and I just kept getting these ridiculous bills. I met with (Lucchese) and said, ‘If I pay this $43,000, what guarantee do I have that you’re not just going to give me another bigger bill tomorrow and demand that I pay that before I can launch a boat? His answer was, ‘Pay the bill. I’ll just keep sending you invoices.'”

When contacted by National Post, Lucchese said that he couldn’t comment because of pending legal actions, other than that the charges invoiced “are legitimate and were disclosed prior to any services being provided.”

As per the lease agreement, Nimens wasn’t permitted to launch vessels without permission.

Article content

“So, I finally went to Wayne and Kathy and said ‘Look, here’s the problem I’m having…. All I can think of is basically trying to be sneaky and try to get your home into the water without paying this ridiculous $43,000 bill for nothing,’” and complete the work elsewhere, Nimens said.

I want to finish their house. The marina made that impossible

The covert launch never happened. Marina workers noticed what Nimens’ crew was up to and threatened to call their boss, he said. “The marina owner makes it their job to be watch dogs, if you will,” Nimens said.

“I got a phone call from of one the guys who works for me: ‘We think (Lucchese) is on his way.’ I said, ‘Alright, abandon the mission. Get all of our trucks, all our equipment, everything off the property before he shows up because I don’t know what kind of barricade he’s going to try to put up, and then I’d be really screwed.’

“It was a very difficult situation,” Nimens said. “I want to finish their house. The marina made that impossible.”

The couple said Nimens’ problem with the marina owner is his problem, not theirs, and that it doesn’t absolve him of his responsibility to honour their contract and deliver them a home. “He should have integrity and give us back our money,” Wayne said.

Article content

The Paquettes say Nimens stopped paying for the Airbnb when he heard they were talking to a lawyer. The Airbnb “was paid right up to the date that Kathy threatened legal action,” Nimens confirmed.

When they last visited the site at the end of July, the solar panels hadn’t been installed, a system using steel “spuds” to lodge the home into the lake floor hadn’t been installed and construction of a floating shed had not begun, according to their claim. Nimens said the pockets for the spuds are welded under the house, the spuds are at the marina and that the solar panels are in his storage container, “ready to be installed.”

“I paid him $25,000 for solar panels and a water treatment system and never saw them,” Wayne said. “I paid $29,000 for a shed, and there’s only an empty sea can worth $1,500 to show for it.”

Kathy said it “took a miracle” — calls from supportive members of the “Freedom” community, which opposed COVID lockdowns and other restrictions, to the marina — to get their belongings out of the vessel.

“Even now we can’t get in there to retrieve the kitchen and wood stove we personally paid for and had installed,” Wayne said. He’s worried the kitchen cabinets are starting to warp. They’re hickory and can’t handle the weather. Rainwater leaked through an improperly installed patio door and damaged the hardwood flooring they paid to have restored, their claim states. They have no proof of ownership, Kathy said. They haven’t been listed as the registered owners of the boat. It’s too late now to try to launch the vessel off the property. Any launches will have to wait until the snow melts in the spring.

Article content

Ronda Kemp, who has filed a lawsuit against Joe Nimens and his company, Live on the Bay, alleging breach of contract. Kemp says she gave Nimens payments totalling $168,000 and is suing him for “refusing or failing to supply” the float home she’d agreed to purchase. Photo by Courtesy Ronda Kemp

Wayne’s a courier. He’d hoped to retire but now has to keep working. They had a small mortgage on the house in Midland where Kathy’s garden took home Midland Garden Club’s Garden of the Year award in 2023.  “Technically we can’t qualify now, because of the interest rates, for even a mobile home,” Wayne said.

“It’s affected us in every way.”

In a separate case, Justice Robert Charney of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in June that Nimens was unlawfully detaining an unfinished float home he’d been contracted to build in 2023.

Julia Fraser and Dr. James Lewis had paid 70 per cent of the contract price ($343,910) when a dispute arose between the parties in July 2023 over the construction’s progress, according to the written decision. The couple was worried little to none was being made.

The couple alleged that they were forced to take over the project after Nimens abandoned work on the two-storey vessel. They hired a local contractor who’d been subcontracted by Nimens to do the original framing, to finish the build and fix work they said Nimens had done improperly.

Article content

“Did the construction work go more slowly than it should have? Yes,” Nimens said. “Was that partly my fault? Yes.

“They said, ‘We think you’re going too slow. We want (the contractor) to do it.’ I said, “Ok, I’m open to that idea…. That will get you guys what you want sooner.’ It’s no benefit to me.” But he said, “somebody has to pay for all that stuff,” meaning access to the leased space and “a nice warm (shop) full of a lot of tools” for the construction crew.

In January 2024, he sent them an invoice claiming money for occupying one-third of the rented yard space. The couple said they were never asked to remove the boat and that at no time did they have a contract with the marina or agree to pay rental fees for the construction site, otherwise they would have moved the vessel sooner.

Nimens sued for the unpaid portion of the contract price, plus $57,000 for “occupancy and obstruction of the construction yard” he was renting, plus $149,000 to launch the houseboat, “which is not a small thing,” Nimens said. “It takes several days work for a bunch of guys.”

According to the court decision, Nimens changed the locks on the vessel and issued an unsigned trespass notice, preventing  Fraser and Lewis from attending to the float home.

Article content

I gave him, like a fool, $168,084 without him having done anything for me

Charney issued an order granting the couple, the registered owners of the boat, interim possession of the vessel, and ordered that Nimens be restrained “from directly or indirectly by any means whatsoever” interfering with any attempt by them to move it “to a location of their desire” while they battled over who, if anyone, was in breach of contract. Nimens was ordered to pay the couple $10,000 in legal fees.

In December, Nimens’ claim against the couple was thrown out by Justice Annette Casullo and he was ordered to pay an additional $15,000 in legal costs after he failed to file materials in response to the motion, and failed to attend the hearing.

However, the float home, like the Paquette’s, still sits captive at the marina on a vacant gravel lot. In July, the couple was told by the marina that Nimens was in arrears and that they need to pay, failing which he would take the vessel, according to their sworn affidavits. They, like the Paquettes, were invoiced $500 a day in storage fees.

The couple tried to move the boat. They’d bought land on an island so they’d have a place to moor it. They hired a boat transport expert, who assessed the vessel as unseaworthy, according to their sworn affidavits. The floatation system wasn’t sufficient or safe to move the structure, or maintain floatation on the water, they said. So, they hired a barge company to build two barges, totalling $169,000. The plan was to have the barges welded together at the marina, the vessel lifted by crane onto the barges and then transported to the water.

Article content

Except when the barges and welders arrived at the marina in September, a boat trailer with a boat in tow and backhoe were blocking the entrance.

The couple is now in a legal battle with Lucchese, who they said has demanded they pay exorbitant and “far from commercially reasonable” rental fees for having the float home on the marina property and who has threatened to charge them with trespassing if they go to the float home without paying such a sum in advance.

The estimated total construction cost to complete and launch the vessel now exceeds $850,000.

In Kemp’s case, Nimens says that after he built the floatation system, which is “the expensive part — it’s your foundation, front-yard, driveway, dock” — Kemp backtracked and requested something smaller. “She’s like, ‘Cut it in half and build a tiny home on it now.’ That’s not how it works; that’s not fair of (her) to ask me. We have a contract that says otherwise.”

“That’s a complete lie,” Kemp, a 68-year-old retired nurse, said in an interview with National Post. “You can’t cut the floatation system in half.”

Floating homes, like these, can cruise the waterways and are engineered to freeze into the winter ice. Photo by lotb.ca

Kemp said Nimens presented her with a new contact that increased the original price and included spuds “so that I could do what he was doing — go out into Gloucester Pool (a lake in Georgian Bay Township) and put the spuds down and just blatantly be in the face of everyone else.” (By this time she’d learned that cottagers’ associations are dead set against floating homes even being in the water.)

Article content

“So, he’s adding on more money and saying, ‘You owe this’ and by the time he was done I was owing a lot more than the original contract. That’s when I said to him, ‘I’m not paying you another red cent. I want my first contract null and void.”

“I gave him, like a fool, $168,084 without him having done anything for me.”

Susan Hamilton, 70, loves water and boats. Her daughter discovered LOTB’s website. “We went to see them, and I got all excited, and just went for it.” She signed a contract in November 2023, and said she gave Nimens deposits totalling about $238,000.

“All he has been saying to me (since) is, ‘We’re a couple months behind …. things are moving along, there are other people ahead of you.’ Still, to this day, that’s what I’ve been getting.

“I could have done something else with that money. I could have bought a boat to live on, or a big RV bus to travel around. I’m not dire, I’m not going to die from this. It’s just disheartening.”

“As with others I am definitely behind,” Nimens said. Hamilton has a clause in her contract that allows a $2,000 per month reduction in the contract price for every month’s delay. “The house is going to get finished and she’s going to end up with a smaller total purchase price due to my tardy performance,” he said.

Article content

Nimens said all those seeking legal recourse — and here he rhymed off their names — are “great people. They’re all awesome people who’ve put their trust in me to build a wild crazy thing for them…. But I never put any deadlines in anyone’s schedule,” he said.

“I didn’t portray to anyone, ‘Oh, I’ve already built 500 of these things. I can do one more in my sleep.” The homes are engineered to freeze into lake ice. Changes require a math re-do and recalculation, Nimes said, so that, once in the water, the vessel floats level, not lopsided. “Every one of these is a huge engineering challenge.” (The Paquettes said they did not request the number of changes Nimens claims.)

Nimens said he’s completed three float homes and has other customers “who are quite happy.” He said he’s currently renovating the Island Princess, an iconic old tour boat that for forty years toured the shores of Orillia, into a float home for its new owner in Barrie.

In addition to the amendment to Ontario’s Public Lands Act to clarify that floating accommodations cannot be placed on public land covered by water, Parks Canada has also tightened its restrictions around floating homes moored on federal waters. A mooring permit is required if the vessel is not self-propelled.

Article content

“Okay, so we put an outboard motor on ours,” Nimens said. “We’re still in the whole Georgian Bay islands,” which is a national park. His home was there recently. “Why don’t they give me a ticket for not having a mooring permit? I think it’s just more stuff made up to get headlines and have you call me and say, ‘What about those rules, Joe?’”

The Paquettes sold the Sea-Doo but lost $7,000 on it. “The boat, we haven’t been able to sell yet, so we were forced to pay storage and winterizing costs,” Wayne said. “Hopefully we can sell in spring, but it will be for a loss.”

They still have the life jackets for the dogs.

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Article content