From Picture Frames to Puzzle Pieces: Rick & Mary’s Cross-Canada Jigsaw of a Life

If you’ve ever stood on a windy cliff in Newfoundland and thought, “You could point a camera anywhere and nail it,” you already know the secret sauce behind Rick and Mary Schmidt’s second act. They weren’t just the founders of a startup…they followed a hunch, a horizon, and decades of gift-trade experience. When the pandemic swept in, living rooms rediscovered puzzles, and their hobby became a small but active Canadian enterprise: photographs turned into jigsaw puzzles, calendars, magnets, and postcards - one puzzle at a time.

Rick is the guy who sees evening light and goes quiet. He’ll wait for shadows and sunset to stretch over Sauble Beach or the sun to rise and hit the mountains with a brilliant yellow and reflect on Moraine Lake, then set up the shot - sometimes with a drone, sometimes balancing on a log. Great images rarely happen at noon with a coffee in one hand. Mary, meanwhile, is the chief test pilot. She loves puzzles. Every photo gets judged by the same question: Would someone actually enjoy assembling this… or fling 200 pieces of blue sky into the recycling? If it’s a wall of sameness, it doesn’t make the cut.

They didn’t stumble into this. For over 25 years, the couple worked the gift-show circuit of Toronto, Edmonton, Ottawa Halifax - first with picture framing, then a whole line of “Gifts from the Heart.” Those shows built a contact list, a sense of what moves in shops, and the courage to knock on doors in towns where the Chamber of Commerce still matters.

Mary’s parents lived in Providence Bay on Manitoulin Island for over 30 years . Consequently Rick and Mary amassed over 50 years of family trips and vacations to a place where ferries replace roads. That history gave birth to a very successful puzzle of the island known as the Manitoulin Collage. The first run of 200 sold out in 7 days after contacting stores on the Island. The second run of 200 sold out in 8 days and they are now on their 4th run of 200 and have added 2 more designs of Manitoulin Island - Explore Manitoulin Map and Bridal Veil Falls. Yes people buy one for themselves and one for a gift.

As mentioned, Covid was the catalyst. Friends kept saying, “Make puzzles from Rick’s photos.” The first order? Four images, 250 copies each - the minimum thousand, shipped from China because North American runs demanded five thousand per image. Was it nerve-wracking? Absolutely. It’s one thing to source locally and have a full view into the manufacturing process. It’s another to place that order with a country on the other side of the world that you know very little about.

They’ve since learned what sells. Niagara Falls sells anywhere; horses -Rick’s soft spot from childhood—don’t. Local collages fly in places like Manitoulin, where every landmark means something personal. And if a gas station in Waterton, AB declines a puzzle featuring its own storefront, a nearby shop will happily stock it and sell out. It’s all been a learning and growing journey they have gone through. For people that are supposed to be in “retirement” I think it’s fantastic.

Quality is a quiet obsession. Mary is a puzzler, so the substantive feel of a thick and heavy piece defines the quality of a good puzzle. . Flimsy pieces that sag are a non-starter. Their puzzles are sturdy. Their puzzles even come with letters on the back to define the section of the puzzle where the piece is to be located - so beginners (like me) or grandkids can “cheat” ... .and the way Rick does it according to Mary. And box design is deliberate too—bright covers that pop on a shelf, plus a back panel with a tidy story and credits. The difference between a box that gets picked up and one that gets passed by is the difference between “order another case” and “why did we ever print this?”

Production stays flexible. Puzzles are mass-made offshore at sane minimums. Calendars get printed in London, Ontario. Magnets come from near Montreal. Postcards? Local, fast, and easy to reorder when tourist towns clean them out in August. On the side, a few custom runs for places like Banff and Peggy’s Cove -small batches with the shop’s story on the box. It’s the same Canadian ingenuity you see at farmers’ markets: scale where you must, keep it local when you can, and never pretend you’re bigger than you are.

Family floats in and out of the frame. A granddaughter with a good eye. Teens who take photos when sports aren’t calling. Adult children in Alberta and Kingston, cheering from afar. Mentoring happens in little conversations: a high school business class here, a shared photo walk there. Pride is the throughline. Mary lights up when she talks about the Manitoulin map puzzle—they layered in the island with micro-landmarks (digitally) only locals would recognize. It’s a love letter disguised as a pastime.

They’ve also navigated the fine print. Early on, a competitor of sorts, Springbok Puzzles, licensed two of Rick’s images for U.S. Puzzles which was a helpful payday that seeded their first run. The company wanted exclusivity on the images and Rick and Mary said yes to the first deal for 3 years. 3 years later Springbok wasn’t happy that they declined the second offer. Months later Springbok came back friendlier, still buying the one image but not the exclusivity they initially requested. Rick and Mary discovered that they could do business but on their terms.

None of this is as breezy as a lighthouse at sunset. Forty-pound cartons don’t lift themselves and neither one of them is still in high school so age related symptoms do play a role. It’s at those times they fall back on help from their friends, unpacking skids of puzzles that have arrived. Much appreciated help from good friends! And what really drove home the reality of what they were doing was the conversion of their garage into a mini warehouse/distribution center. Fascinating.

What I love most about Rick and Mary’s story is how ordinary decisions of when to order, what to order, what to photograph and where to photograph it, have added up to an extraordinary lesson for anyone semi-retired and still curious. Reinvention isn’t a cliff dive. It’s a series of small, stubborn choices that turn a camera roll into inventory and a trunk full of boxes into Tuesday’s bank deposit. It’s learning HDR in Photoshop after supper. It’s knowing when to switch from blue canoe to red. It’s driving to Penetanguishene with eight sample boxes and coming home with none.

And it’s profoundly communal. These puzzles are not abstract art. They’re home. Mountain lakes or rural businesses. A Waterloo Park bridge and a Manitoulin ferry. When a scene you love becomes a thousand tiny pieces on your dining table, you don’t just pass the time, you reconnect with a place, a memory, a version of Canada you can hold in your hands…. and heart.

So if you’re sitting on a lifetime of “little nothings” - a hobby, a knack, a phone full of photos and maybe it isn’t nothing but maybe it’s the start of something local, useful, and quietly beautiful.