Earl Rumm is a trim 54-year-old developer who drives a flashy black SUV and likes fast boats. As head of Markham-based Geranium Corporation and its affiliate, Kimvar Enterprises, he has built homes across southern Ontario, from Cobourg to Windsor. He has deep pockets, powerful partners and is quickly becoming the most successful, if controversial, developer in the province’s booming Simcoe County. He currently has a stake in several big development proposals, including a subdivision in Hillsdale, northwest of Barrie, and a 20,000-home community in Bradford–Bond Head.

Nearly seven years ago, Rumm entered into an agreement to buy an old marina and a large tract of gently rolling farm and forested land on the shore of Lake Simcoe, right next to the small cottage community of Big Bay Point. There, he proposed to build a $1.5-billion four-season resort with a championship golf course. The project he had in mind was far larger than anything he’d done before, and bigger than any development of its kind on Lake Simcoe.

There was a problem, though. Someone else had designs on the land. The nearby Big Bay Point Golf & Country Club was looking to expand and was eyeing the property close to the marina to add another nine holes to its course. A group of club members, led by a Toronto investment manager named Murray Brasseur, purchased a 20-acre parcel next to the marina. But the parcel wasn’t big enough, so they set about acquiring more land.

Brasseur, who owns a home on Big Bay Point, is also the founder of Middlefield Group, a Bay Street investment company with more than $4 billion under management. Shortly after Brasseur and his investors closed the deal on their 20 acres, they began meeting with Rumm to discuss various partnership scenarios, from building a brand new 18-hole course to acquiring additional acreage for the golf club expansion. Plans for the 18-hole course floundered when the two camps couldn’t agree on terms, and Brasseur and his team backed out.

In July 2002, Rumm sent Brasseur a letter confirming his offer to sell the Big Bay Point Golf & Country Club a 20-acre slice of the marina lands, on the condition that the club would support his resort project. Brasseur said he’d have to put the offer directly to the club’s board. He passed the offer on, the club was cool to the idea, and nothing came of it.

Rumm’s failure to establish a co-operative working relationship with the Big Bay Pointers was a fateful moment in what has become one of the messiest and most acrimonious development sagas in recent history. He eventually bought the marina, but over the next six years, the cottagers, pillars of the Big Bay Point community, have formed the core of one of the most organized, determined citizen armies since the Stop the Spadina Expressway brigade. Their unyielding opposition has turned Rumm’s resort project into an epic battle over who controls real estate development in cottage country and, ultimately, the rest of the province.