The Robinsons have opened up an entirely new chapter of life — one filled with fantastical art projects and an eye-catching backyard creations
Rita and Dean Robinson retired in 2022 after running the popular Candy Shoppe on Highway 11, just north of Orillia, after owning and operating the popular shop for 23 years.
Rita and Dean have not been bored in their retirement. They have been busy building their estimated 40-foot-tall sheet metal dragon and her baby — among many other creative pursuits.
The increasingly popular dragon, which is visible to boaters navigating the Trent-Severn Waterway, is not their only retirement project.
The Robinsons also have many unique antiquing finds and tinkering projects in their three-car garage, originally used to store candy for the shop.
“We had 800 cases of candy in here,” recalled Rita. “Just rows and rows. It was all business. It was all candy and business.”
They had steel racks filled with soda pop and cases of candy as high as Dean’s chest. Every morning, they would drive the candy they needed from their garage to the shop in their own cars.
Now that they have retired, the space is filled with sweet goods of a different kind: creative projects and antiquing finds.
Dean says he and his wife have very different tastes when it comes to antiquing. He looks for “garage stuff,” as he calls it: boat motors, old gas pumps, car parts, old snowmobiles— anything technical that he can tinker with.
On the other hand, Rita’s interest lies in artistic pieces that can inspire her creativity. Her finds line the upstairs room of their garage, right above Dean’s workspace.
“I went, ‘OK, this is the idea I have in my head. I want to do a 3D painting that you can walk into.’ So, the upstairs is just a fantasy, just a lot of fun,” she says.
She worked on her walk-through painting throughout the COVID-19 lockdown. Rita says the room worked as an outlet for her, something she could work on for a few hours here and there.
Rita and Dean Robinson’s most impressive creation can be seen from the Trent-Severn Waterway. “It looks like a huge gold brooch when you’re out on the water,” Rita says with pride. Abigail Noble for OrilliaMatters
“It took time to do it piece by piece, but it was one of those things you could kind of think of and just work at, come up here and play with it,” she says. “It kind of evolved with whatever we found.”
The couple’s retirement has enabled them to explore their creative ideas more freely, but it was not an easy decision to walk away from the business.
“We started saying goodbye to people, and we had kids coming and grabbing us, and hugging us, crying. It was months and months of people making a special trip just to say goodbye, because they’d seen us for 23 years,” says Rita. “It was really weird. It’s like being at your wake, but you’re still alive.”
They say their 23-year stint at the store brought them close to their community, which brought them a lot of joy.
Their biggest project since retiring from the Candy Shoppe is, without a doubt, the giant steel dragon wrapped around a tree in their riverfront backyard.
“We may not have the biggest house on the river, but we definitely have the biggest lawn ornament,” Rita says. “I’m so pleased with how it turned out.”
The dragon’s head alone is five-and-a-half feet long.
“It was a process,” Rita says. “I didn’t realize how big it looked, but when you’re on the water and you’re sitting and looking up, it looks like the thing is twice the size of my house.”
The dragon’s body wraps itself around their half-cut tree. It is made up of a series of rings, held together on a frame and covered in scales made of sheet metal. Dean reinforced the tree with metal rods to make sure it could withstand the dragon’s weight.
“It was done section by section,” Rita says. “When we actually got into doing all the scales and stuff, that was literally draw and cut, draw and cut, on sheet metal.”
The dragon’s details called for some expert creativity from Rita.
The dragon’s eyes were made with car reflectors set into metal bowls. The detailing on her wings comes from cut up cookie trays. Her nose is a potato masher. The sun detail at her jaw covers a hinge that lets her mouth open in the wind; Rita bought it from a dollar store.
The dragon’s baby was born last spring. Rita says Dean began building the framework for the baby’s egg after some serious convincing.
The baby uses most of the same parts as its mother, down to the dollar store sun ornament. Aside from size, key difference between the two is the bright shiny metal of the smaller dragon.
“We spray painted the baby with lacquer, so it won’t rust. So, it looked like a newborn,” says Rita.
She already has more plans for projects to fill their yard.
“I’m bugging him with what I want him to do next. I want him to do a giant five-foot hummingbird,” she says. “He said no to the Ogopogo coming in and out of our lawn.”
With inspiration coming from all around them, Rita and Dean’s artistic and engineering teamwork will surely continue.