Conor met Dominique while they were both working in the film industry in Winnipeg. Conor took the film program here at Confederation College, which took him to Winnipeg to pursue more opportunities in film there.
Dominique is from Ste Anne’s, Manitoba - a small town just east of Winnipeg.
“I was actually working with her mother for about two years before Dom and I met,” says Conor.
“At some point, Dominique came in to help her mom with the costumes,” Conor explains. Her mom is a costume designer and Dominique would step in to help during big projects.
Dominique worked at a law firm in Winnipeg but also wrote up contracts for film projects. One morning Conor walked onto the set greeting the many crew members he’d worked with for years.
“I didn’t recognize this new person on set, but she got my attention.” Conor wandered over to the craft services table for a morning snack when Dominique happened to head over as well. As she made herself a coffee and reached for the sugar, Conor joked “That’s not for you.”
“Uh-huh...” replied Dominique, acknowledging the comment but not laughing.
“I thought I was funny, and she thought I was annoying,” says Conor laughing. “Just like every good romance starts.”
“I thought he was arrogant, I thought, this guy has way too much confidence,” clarifies Dominique smiling. “I asked my mom and some friends on set about him, and they sorta swooned and said he was great. That only made it worse.”
So how did they warm up to one another? Over the next few days, during breaks in filming, they started chatting about all sorts of things, but a mutual love of card games shone through. Dominique’s mom gave Conor her number, while telling Dominique that he was newer to Winnipeg and wanted to grow his circle of friends.
“I love to play cards, and that’s really what drew us together,” says Dominique. “He came over and we just sat down, started chatting and ended up playing cards for hours.”
“We were kind of inseparable after that,” she says.
They travelled together and while sitting on a beach in Thailand, eating fried bananas, they invented a trick-taking card game for two players–something neither of them had seen before.
Years later, when Conor was building his board game company, he needed another game idea and Dominique reminded him of Two Fried Bananas.
“Although I thought it was a great idea, I couldn’t remember all the specific rules of the game. Dom told me to hold on as she ran upstairs. She came down moments later with our travel journal, and flipped it open to the back page. Apparently, she’d written all the rules down!”
This would become Gorus Maximus, and later Sea Change (a family friendly retheme game).
Conor and Dominique decided to return to Thunder Bay to settle down for the long-term. Conor was making trips back to see his mom, who is battling cancer, and to help his dad build their retirement home. During these trips, Dominique fell in love with the city. “It was actually her idea to move back here,” explains Conor. “She loves the size of Thunder Bay, the natural beauty and that we can raise our kids in French here.”
Both Conor and Dominique are bilingual and have embraced the French community in the city. “We just hosted a game night at the French high school where people of all ages came, learned the games and played in French and English,” says Dominique. “Once our kids started going to school, it became easy to find community, and the games helped even more in that regard.”
“We are also very outdoorsy, we love camping, hiking, the big sky and the big lake.”
Inside Up Games started after Conor pivoted from working in construction. The company started in 2016 and now has 10 employees, most local and some across Canada and in the US.
Conor created the first handful of games, but as it has grown, he does not always have time to invent new games. “Game designers approach me with games and we try them out and if we like them, we offer them royalties to sell the game the same way a book publisher would with an author.” Their biggest hit game is called ‘Earth’, and it exploded on Kickstarter and gained massive popularity in 2022-23.
“Growing up, my mom didn’t allow us to have a TV in the house, so we played a lot of cards and a lot of board games,” says Conor. “Through our time in film, Dominique and I would go to a friend’s house and have game nights, which kind of reignited our love for games. It’s such a fun thing to do when you’ve had a busy long day, and there’s so much focus on technology these days.”
Conor and Dominique have both found their unique niches in the city - and they still manage to fit in a game night every so often.