Sleeping Giant Brewing Co. plays a central role in the love story of Sarah Moreth and Luke Goerzen. Luke is a professional brewer, and he came to Thunder Bay from St. Catherines for a brewing job at SGBC. Sarah moved up from Alton, Ontario, which is near Orangeville, to attend university in the city. While in school, she worked at the brewery, and it was there that she and Luke first connected as friends through their mutual love of the outdoors.
Before she met Luke, Sarah had already lived in the city for several years and she had come to appreciate all that Thunder Bay has to offer.
“I was eighteen when I first moved here,” she tells me. “I didn’t have a car, and I stuck around campus a lot, so it wasn’t until my second year that I started rock-climbing and really grew to love the city. You can just drive over to the Bluffs and there are places to rock-climb.”
Once her and Luke started dating, they spent time together working on renovating a school bus that Luke bought that they kept parked on a country property. They have also spent a lot of time camping and adventuring in nature throughout their relationship.
“I like to be able to step outside and explore,” says Sarah.
“Sarah showed me the corners of Thunder Bay that otherwise might have taken me a very long time to find,” says Luke, “like the best places to climb, the more secluded places to hike, and some pretty awesome local haunts. I was given an expedited introduction to this city and was really drawn to Sarah’s gregariousness, genuine care, and eagerness to help anyone.”
Luke and his brother have even built small shelters and forts on crown land and used them as places to get out into nature.
“I also got Luke interested in hunting,” says Sarah. “I have been hunting for years with my dad. Every year we try to go and spend a week at my dad’s hunt camp.”
“When I first told my parents about Sarah, my mom had phoned while I was elbow deep helping Sarah skin and butcher a deer she had hunted,” says Luke.
Sarah now works as an Environmental Scientist for DST Consulting Engineers and Luke has been extremely busy for the past couple of years working on an exciting new local business project that I cannot go into detail about just yet.
Sarah and Luke were set to be married in the summer of 2020, but due to the pandemic, they have had to push the date.
The year that they got engaged they were living in a little cabin in the woods off Dawson Road.
“It had a wood stove, and we got eight-foot logs instead of pre-split firewood to save some money. We spent the entire fall cutting wood,” says Sarah.
“By ‘we,’ she means she promptly had to leave for work, and it was mostly my brother and I bucking the logs,” adds Luke, laughing.
The couple continues to prioritize spending their free time together doing activities like hunting, fishing, hiking, and climbing. Together they hiked the Casque Isles Trail in Terrace Bay over the span of a few days, which turned into quite the adventure.
“It rained a lot, and we definitely bit off more than we could chew in planning out the distances we would cover each day,’ says Luke.
“At one point, we were running to what we thought would be our campsite, trying to get there before dark, only to find it completely flooded. We hustled on, trying to find any flat, dry place that would do, both of us exhausted and getting on each other’s nerves. We got into quite a fight about where we would set up camp, debating if we should turn back or push on. Eventually we set up our tent in the cold, dark, and wet. We woke up the next morning to a beautiful sunrise over the lake, and I remember feeling so lucky that I had Sarah to share those difficulties with and the knowledge that she would be up for doing it all again.”
Experiences like this have worked to further fuel their love for Northwestern Ontario. These two adventurous spirits seem to know how lucky they are to have found one another.
