Duddy starts a romantic relationship with another hotel employee, French Canadian Yvette. One day, Yvette takes him on a picnic beside a lake. Duddy is stunned by the beauty of the setting, and his ambition crystallizes: taking to heart his grandfather's maxim that "a man without land is nobody", he decides he will buy all the property around the lake and develop it. Because Duddy is under 21, then the age of majority in Canada, and the current owners might not want to sell to a Jew, he gets Yvette to front for him.