Terms & refund policy

BorealBound is an independent research tool for planning fishing and hunting trips in Canada. We compile facts about lakes and about the lodges and outfitters that operate on them, and we present them in a way that makes trips comparable.

What we are not: we are not a booking agent, travel agency, tour operator, or reseller. We do not take reservations, hold deposits, process payments on behalf of any lodge, or receive commission from one. We have no contractual relationship with the operators we list, and being listed is not an endorsement, a partnership, or a guarantee of anything. Every arrangement you make is directly between you and that business, on their terms, and any dispute about a booking, a deposit, a cancellation or the trip itself is between the two of you.

We are independent of every operator listed, and we say so on purpose: it's the reason the comparisons are worth reading.

Everything here is compiled from public sources — government open data, published regulations, and operators' own public pages — and normalized so it can be compared. We work hard at it, and it will still sometimes be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Lodges change their rates and their seasons. Governments change regulations, limits, sanctuaries and advisories. Our figures are a snapshot of what a source said when we last read it. How it's all put together is written up in the methodology.

Two things you must confirm yourself, every time. Prices and availability — with the lodge, before you send money. Fishing and hunting regulations — seasons, limits, size restrictions, sanctuary exceptions, licence requirements and consumption advisories — against the official regulations summary published by the province you are fishing or hunting in. Regulations carry legal penalties, they change between when we read them and when you travel, and the official summary always governs. Nothing on this site is legal advice, and we are not responsible for a fine, a seizure, a charge, or a spoiled trip that came from relying on our copy of a rule instead of the real one.

Ice-out dates are explicitly modeled, not observed — the model, its inputs and its error are documented on the methodology page. Treat them as a planning aid, never as a forecast for a specific year.

Accounts are passwordless: you sign in with Google or with a six-digit code we email you. Keep access to that email address secure — anyone who can read it can sign in as you. Tell us at hello@borealbound.com if you think someone else is in your account.

One account is for one person. You can share a read-only trip comparison link with anyone — that's what it's for — but sharing your sign-in so several people use one Pass is not permitted.

You can close your account at any time by emailing us. We may suspend or close an account that breaks acceptable use; if we do that and you had unused paid time, we refund it pro rata unless the reason was extraction or resale of our data.

What we collect and who processes it is in the privacy policy.

A large part of the site is free and stays free: the map, lake pages, which lodges operate where, and one lake watch. The Season Pass adds the comparison, planning and alert layer. There are four ways to buy it, all charged in US dollars:

• Season Pass — $49.99 USD. A single charge that grants access for one year and then simply expires. It does not renew and never charges you again.
• Season Pass (auto-renew) — $39.99 USD per year. Renews automatically each year until you cancel.
• Monthly — $7.99 USD per month. Renews automatically each month until you cancel.
• Founder Lifetime — $129.00 USD. A single charge for ongoing access, sold in a limited number and only once. It does not renew. “Lifetime” means for as long as BorealBound operates — see changes, which is the honest limit of any such promise from a small independent business.

Payment is processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. Prices may change, but a change never affects a purchase already made, and for renewing plans we will tell you before a new price applies to you.

Features evolve. We may add, change or retire individual features of the Pass; what we won't do is hollow it out and keep charging. If we materially reduce what the Pass does, you may cancel and ask for a pro-rata refund of the time you paid for and haven't used.

Two of the four plans renew automatically, and only those two: Season Pass (auto-renew) ($39.99 USD each year) and Monthly ($7.99 USD each month). Each is labelled as renewing at the point of purchase.

The other two never renew. The Season Pass is a one-time charge that expires on its own, and the Founder Lifetime is charged once. Neither will ever bill you a second time.

How to cancel: open your account and use the billing button, which takes you to Stripe's billing portal — cancel there in two clicks, no email required and no retention gauntlet. You can also simply email us and we'll do it.

Cancelling stops the next charge. It does not cut off access you've already paid for: your Pass keeps working to the end of the period you paid for, and then stops. We do not automatically refund the period you're in the middle of — but see refunds, because we usually will if you ask.

Before each annual renewal we email you a reminder with the date and the amount, in time to cancel first.

Thirty days, full refund, no reason needed. If the Season Pass isn't worth what you paid, email hello@borealbound.com within 30 days of the charge and we refund it in full. You don't have to explain, and we won't try to talk you out of it.

This applies to every plan, including the Founder Lifetime. It applies to renewal charges too: if a renewal catches you by surprise, tell us within 30 days of that charge and we refund it.

Refunds go back to the card you paid with, through Stripe. They usually appear within five to ten business days depending on your bank. Your Pass access ends when the refund is issued.

The one limit: this is meant for people deciding the product isn't for them, not as a way to use a season of research for free every year. We may decline a repeat refund on a repeat purchase by the same person. We've never done it and would rather not, but it's the honest boundary.

If your provincial or state consumer law gives you a stronger right than this policy, that law wins — nothing here takes away a right you have by statute.

Please email us before disputing a charge with your bank. A chargeback costs us a fee on top of the refund and takes weeks; an email takes a day and gets you the same money.

Use the site for planning your own trips. Specifically, don't:

• Scrape, crawl or bulk-extract the database, or use automated tools to pull data beyond ordinary browsing. The compiled operator data is the one thing here that cannot be regenerated, and it is the product.
• Republish, resell, sublicense or redistribute our compiled data as your own.
• Share account credentials so several people use one Pass.
• Attempt to break, overload or circumvent the site's security, rate limits or paid-feature gating.
• Use the site to harass any operator or to post anything unlawful.

Underlying government data (Ontario GeoHub / MNRF, OpenMB, NHN, CGNDB, NRN) is open data under its own licences and stays open — those licences are credited in the footer and nothing here restricts your rights under them. What's ours is the compilation, normalization, editorial summaries, and the site itself.

Operator pages are compiled from each business's own public pages, and every page carries the sources it was built from. Summaries are written in our own words; we don't copy operator prose or photographs.

If you run one of these businesses: a correction from you outranks anything we compiled. Email hello@borealbound.com and we'll fix it, or remove your listing entirely if that's what you prefer. No fee, no negotiation, no listing tier that changes the answer. Details on the contact page.

This is a small independent business, and honesty about that is worth more than a clause promising permanence. We may change the site, and we may one day stop operating it. If we shut down or discontinue the Pass, we will give notice and refund unused paid time pro rata — including, for a Founder Lifetime holder, a fair pro-rata amount rather than nothing.

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights, we'll email account holders and update the effective date at the top before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that means you accept the new version. The current version always lives at this URL.

The site is provided “as is”. We don't warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any particular fact on it is accurate or current — see accuracy, which is the substance of this and worth reading properly.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses — a trip that disappointed, a booking that fell through, a lodge that closed, travel costs, or lost time. For any claim relating to the site or these terms, our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (which, if you use the free site, is nothing).

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law, including for fraud, or rights you have under consumer protection legislation.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the laws of Canada that apply there, and the courts of Ontario have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer law where you live, or of the right to bring a claim in your own local courts where that law gives it to you.

Questions, corrections, cancellations and refund requests all go to the same place: hello@borealbound.com. Our mailing address and the rest of our details are on the contact page. One person reads it.