Editor’s Note: Some of the Paddle and Portage team were up the Gunflint Trail Oct. 18 collecting stories from people who knew Bruce Kerfoot for many years. Visit our social media pages to hear and see some of the people we spoke with and the stories they shared about Kerfoot.

GUNFLINT TRAIL – Bruce Kerfoot and his wife, Sue, sold Gunflint Lodge in 2016 for approximately $6 million.

The sum so extravagantly surpasses what Bruce’s grandmother, Mae Spunner, paid for the resort in 1929 that it’s not easy to comprehend. Cook County records are limited for the late ’20s, but they indicate Spunner paid $12,000 for the resort, which at the time was a simple lodge building and a small store. That price is exactly 500 times what Bruce and Sue sold the resort for less than a century later.

Several years after making the purchase, Spunner passed the resort to her daughter, Justine.

“Mother had finalized the papers and made the down payment for the purchase of Gunflint Lodge. Prices were high, the stock market was soaring, and business looked very lucrative,” Justine wrote in her book, “Woman of the Boundary Waters.”

Later, Bruce took the resort over from his mother. And until the day he died, that’s what Bruce called Justine in every passing reference: Mother.

Kerfoot, born and raised on the Gunflint Trail, died Oct. 10. He was 85.

Bruce ran Gunflint Lodge for many years and was involved in nearly every public happening within the Gunflint Trail community for the bulk of his life. He was a spirited individual who knew how to run a business. Some people viewed Bruce’s business mindset and aggressive approach to the world as too much. He could be overwhelming for some people.

He was also extremely generous. It’s possible, Bruce Kerfoot showed us, to stray from being one dimensional.