All about us.....

Extreme Adventures has been around since 1992.  Originally set up in Ontario with a focus on actually providing the extreme experience.  The first courses offered were in Scuba diving the great lakes.  Courses ranged from basic open water diving and advanced and speciality diving through to the assistant instructor level. These courses were taught in the communities along the north shore of Lake Superior and Thunder Bay.  Since then we have undergone some major transformations and business pivots as they are known.

1997 saw the opening of an army surplus store in Thunder Bay Ontario.  Along with the surplus we even dabbled in military vehicles for a short time.  This store operated for two years and out of which was born the custom design and manufacturing of adventure gear.  We continually had frustrated people trying to find the gear that was right for them.  We decided to create the outlet for their creativity and get them what would work for them.  This fine service continues today and offers a high quality answer to the plethora of low cost - low quality gear on the market today.  We specialize in custom bags, packs and load bearing vests.

1997 also saw the registering of www.extremeadventures.com and our first website was born to support the custom gear.

After a rocky road, refocusing and yet another pivot we are still here.  With the majority of our customers being established on the manufacturing side of the business it was time to revisit the web site and see what else we could offer.  2007 saw an explosion of new business ideas and the new direction that we could take.  The dream for our web site has always been to provide a place that is clean and non-inundating with ads for our clients, with a few other goodies thrown in there.

Our major big picture idea will remain a secret for now and you will have to wait for it, but in the mean time you can enjoy what we have already done.  We will be diligent at upgrading and enhancing our site for you.

Who’s  around........

Kevin Dunn – Co-Founder. I have been blessed to have had a very unique multi-national upbringing. Having been born in Zambia, Africa, where my parents were missionaries for several years and raised primarily in Northern India (interjected with short stints back to Canada), where my parents were teachers at Woodstock International School in Mussoorie, located in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, I have a very different outlook on life and the world than many Westerners who have not had such experiences. Living abroad and traveling with my parents around the world four times between 1970 and 1988, shaped my being and gave me an experience that I would not trade for anything.  This love for travel and the amazing life enhancing experiences that has come from visiting and living in third world countries, has brought me full circle with our business endeavour of Extreme Adventures Worldwide.

My business experience spans 20 years, since the age of nineteen, when I began independently teaching scuba diving courses for PADI International. I later continued my entrepreneurial pursuits as the owner/operator of Extreme Adventures Canada, an outlet specializing in Army surplus and custom designing and sewing, which I taught myself to do. I remain a conceptual designer and sewer of high quality, custom bags, packs, and specialty equipment to this day.

Through all of this I was in the Canadian Military Reserves, with the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment for 15 years, and the Ontario Provincial Police for almost 5 years.  These vocations have also added to my outlook on life and have given me some very valuable experiences.....Oh and I also got my black belt in Kuk Sool Won in 1996 and taught for a few years.  The military gave me lots of courses and the best one was the Mountain Operations Instructor course, see my blog and photo album on it.

I am now happily married to my wonderful and amazing wife Tracey, that I met through E-Harmony(just a plug here, and yes it does work).  Tracey's vision and passion for this company has been the catalyst for a number of changes, both personally and in business.  It was an idea that she had, that will remain secret for now, that has pushed us and this site to bigger and better things.  Our minds are going constantly and I know that this is only the beginning, so look out, get prepared, for you will never know what we have up our sleeves and what we will treat you too next.

Thank you for joining us!!

THE WEB GUY.......CRAZY GUY!

My name is Dan Krulikoski, and I am the web designer who helps transform the vision of Extreme Adventures founders Kevin and Tracey Dunn into a visual reality.

After years and years of tinkering with computers, I decided that I needed to start a business that deals with computers, the internet, and interacting with other people who want to create. Web design offered these opportunities to me, but it came with a heavy learning curve.

I remember toying with an ancient program called Microsoft publisher (not sure which version!). It contained a website editor that simplified the HTML editing process, by making it more like a drag and drop newsletter template organizer. Since it was 1997, it was difficult to publish anything to the web... None the less I had a blast making 'local' websites, that were really just a few pages of teenage nonsense.

I started my family young. When I was 19 I had my first daughter with my wife Holly. We got married in the summer of 2005, it was a relaxed event with many bottles of wine... Or so I am told???

We relocated to the shiny town of Simcoe, Ontario where we planted roots that would grow into a family of five by 2009! With the birth of our son Zander in 2006, and Wade in 2009.

During the summer of 2007 I started tinkering again with web development. This time I had the resources to actually publish, engage, and enlighten. Starting with a friend of mine, we toyed with many concepts... Many beyond our reach, scope, and ability. It does not hurt to dream, and dream we did. The first idea that actually turned into a website was a video real estate site named Peekahome. The site allowed agents, and private sellers to upload virtual tours of their homes to a levelled playing field, where realtors, and private sellers fought for the same audience.

After working on multiple personal projects, I felt I was ready to produce products for others to consume. I managed to talk to a real estate agent friend whom I went to elementary school with, he happened to be interested in starting a site. Thus, the beginings of Simcoe Web Creations. From there I tested the waters with Kijiji, and Craigslist. The later being too American based, and limited in it's visual engagement. Kijiji helped me fine tune my self promotional skills, as well as taught me how to hunt for prey...I mean clients hahah. By responding to wanted ads, I managed to wind up in touch with Extreme Adventures founder Kevin Dunn, and after a month or two of conversation, we launched the updated, and evolved Extreme Adventures.com.

Look for exciting new updates as time goes on!!!!