June 16th 2025
Whenever an Agent, whether newly licensed or veteran, interviews with us to see what RE/MAX Garden City Realty Inc. has to offer, the discussion soon reverts to culture. Every real estate firm can provide an Agent with a business card, a sign, and a phone. All an Agent really needs. But each firm has its unique claim to fame as it were. Ours is our culture. You spend a significant chunk of your life at work. We want to be sure when our Agents walk through the front door it feels like home. The atmosphere is positive, supportive and inviting. And the key to our achieving that is our amazing support staff. From the front reception, through all departments like marketing, social media, technology and management right to our back office administration, they get it! Our Agents are our clients and we’re here to serve them.
But how do you let them know they are appreciated? A number of ways I suppose. 
But one way in particular comes by way of ‘Administrator’s Day’. Each year in April one day is universally set aside to honour the unsung heroes of our institutions who work behind the scenes and that is Administrator’s Day.
Over the years we’ve celebrated Administrator’s Day in a number of ways, but over the past few years it has become a theme party in the backyard of our Broker’s home, Wayne Quirk. And due to weather considerations, we’ve held Administrator’s Day in June rather than April.
This year, because of a conflict in schedules we weren’t able to do our usual June celebration, so we opted instead to have a dinner out together at one of the fine old established steak houses in St. Catharines. The Blue Mermaid.
As the name suggests, they serve a wonderful assortment of seafood. But their real claim to fame is steak. And of course, their table side prepared Caesar salad. Arguably one of the best in North America.
Our staff arrived at 5:00pm and were ushered into a side private dining room perfectly sized for our event. Drinks, food, even dessert were fabulous as always at the Blue Mermaid. And while sometimes it’s difficult to schedule an event that fits into everyone’s timetable, we succeeded. Not one of our staff was missing.
Over dinner we got talking about tenure. And while Susan was the longest standing employee at 29 years, Jillian and Cindy follow close behind at 28 years, and on their heels comes our Director of I.T. Jim Holiko with over 20 years. We’ve got a lot of amazing people and we are blessed to have them stay with us for such a long period of time. And even the more recent hires like Rachael came in with 20 years experience under the RE/MAX umbrella and replaced Debbie, our 
former transaction co-ordinator who retired after almost 30 years.
The evening event ended around 8pm. Far too soon for an event scheduled only once a year but I think it’s safe to say everyone had a wonderful time, and left knowing they are deeply appreciated, not just on Administrator’s Day, but every day
on the calendar. We enjoy a fabulous culture at RE/MAX Garden City Realty and that group of wonderful people are the reason why.