Ontario bakery around for nearly 80 years saved from closure by former employee
Nearly 80 years of history nearly came to a close in spring 2026 when the owners of a beloved Ontario bakery filed for bankruptcy — until a former employee swept in to save it.
Since the day Don Lloyd minted his Bala Bay, Muskoka bakery in 1947, Don's Bakery has been an inextricable fact of life for cottagers and year-round residents alike. Death, taxes and Don's donuts.
Toronto resident Lily McDonald, who grew up summering in Bala, is one such self-described "Don's baby."
"My mom worked at Don's, and she met my dad here. She spent her summers up here working behind the counter, and it was my first job too. In Bala, that's kind of what you do: you start at the bakery, and then you might graduate to the Kee or the pub or whatever," she tells blogTO. "I would say that it's kind of been a part of my life forever."
So, when she drove up to Bala in April 2026 to try to return a wedding cake (long story) and learned that the bakery was about to file for bankruptcy and its owners were looking to sell, she knew she had to act quickly.
Then a jeweller by trade, with her only baking experience being the seven summers she worked at Don's, McDonald concedes that swooping in to purchase the 79-year-old bakery was a leap of faith of epic proportions, but one that she had to see through.
"I reached out to my old bosses, and I was like, 'What's going on? How do I save this place? It's kind of always been a dream of mine to do this thing,'" she says. "That was on a Thursday, and then by Monday, I had quit my job and moved up north, and kind of started chipping away to try to open three weeks from that day."
By May 15, the bakery was back up and running. Without McDonald's swift action, it had run the risk, after nearly eight decades, of not opening this summer at all.
No good deed goes unpunished, though.
Upon news of McDonald's purchase breaking, former Don's owners Jana and Bryan Foster went on the record, denouncing McDonald and her business on social media.
Later, in an interview with Muskokaregion.com, Jana Foster claimed that McDonald "didn't buy anything and she didn't own anything. All she has is a new lease agreement for use of the premises."
McDonald, on the other hand, explains that, due to the bakery's bankruptcy proceedings, the purchase couldn't take on as cut-and-dried a process as usual. First, she had to take over the lease and incorporate a new company, then retrieve all the original Don's recipes from the community and former employees, and finally, in late July after operating the bakery for two months, she was officially able to purchase all of Don's assets through bankruptcy.
In mid-June, the time of Foster's interview with Muskokaregion.com, McDonald was still in the weeds of the official ownership process, so, while neither was technically wrong, McDonald is now — officially — the owner of Don's.
Though McDonald tells blogTO she was immediately "disappointed" by the Fosters' public outcry against her, she is ultimately empathetic to them.
"I was just trying to open the doors to this beloved place that would have not opened this year, but I understood that they felt slighted, so I think more than anything, I just knew I had to rise above, and I believed in what I was doing, and I knew what my intentions were, and my intentions were to do the right thing the whole time," McDonald says. "There just is due process in things like this."
blogTO attempted to contact Jana Foster for this story but, at the time of publication, has not received a response.
Still, the challenges did little to quell the community's excitement and support for Don's once McDonald was able to open it back up.
"I think overall, we've had so much support from the community. I'm overwhelmed by how busy we are and by all of the products we've gotten thrown into making, which is a beautiful thing," she says, adding, "I would say we've had way more positive feedback than negative."
McDonald has even been able to introduce the bakery to a growing, younger audience by posting "Day in the life" TikToks, showing the good, bad and ugly of operating the bakery: waking up with the rooster, managing a staff team of nearly 40 people, weekend rushes and slow, rainy mornings.
"It's surreal, honestly, to play this role," McDonald says. "It's a daunting task. This job, this business is running 21 hours a day, [...] but it's been a beautiful thing to be a part of, and I am really proud."
Don's Bakery is located at 3119 Muskoka Rd. #169.
