County Sets March 2014 Target For NF Ambulance Base

Jeff Green | Jul 25, 2013

For a brief few years in the 1880s, Robertsville was a thriving mining town, with a population of up to 300, with 28 duplex houses, a boarding house, and a store. There was also a blacksmith shop, a shoemaker, two wood dealers and a carpenter in town, all to support an iron ore mining operation.

Today, all that is left of the town site is a field and a cemetery. At the Robertsville mine site a processing plant remained and was in operation on a sporadic basis until a few years ago.

In 2006 the outbuildings for the plant were leased to Frontenac Ventures, a small uranium exploration company that was exploring some claims in the brush lands, which were accessed from trails that started at the site. A protest and occupation, led by the Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwan Algonquins and local anti-uranium activists, shut down the Frontenac Ventures operation, and during the summer of 2007 there was more activity in Robertsville than there had been since the Mississippi Mining company pulled out in the late 1880s.

Just like the Mississippi Mining company, the protesters eventually left, encouraged along by the Ontario courts, and Frontenac Ventures pulled out as well. The mine is completely abandoned now, and with the exception of a number of local families in the vicinity, Robertsville is once again an Ontario ghost town.

But sometime in the next six to eight months, if all goes as planned, Robertsville will be the home to a spanking new Frontenac County ambulance base. The call volume from the immediate vicinity may never get that high, but Roberstville’s location on Road 509 and its proximity to the arterial Ardoch and Elphin-Maberly roads, and particularly Highway 7 about 12 kilometres to the south, make it a target location for the long-planned northern ambulance base in Frontenac County.

In 2009, a consulting company, the IBI Group, completed a report for Frontenac County. Based on the locations and frequency of calls in the surrounding region over two years, it concluded that the preferred location for a base was the junction of Ardoch Road and Road 509, about two kilometres south of Robertsville, in Central Frontenac.

This report was criticized by North Frontenac Council and by then Mayor Ron Maguire, and this criticism led Frontenac County Council to reconsider moving forward. The Chief of Paramedic Services, Paul Charbonneau, proposed an alternative scenario. A new base was proposed to be built in Ompah in conjunction with a new fire hall that North Frontenac would build, followed by closing the existing base near Parham and relocating the service to a new base in Sharbot Lake in order to cover Highway 7.

When the ambulance base/fire hall project fell apart last year over costs, Frontenac County went back to the original plan.

With the purchase of a lot at Robertsville, the county now plans to proceed in short order to build a one-bay base on the site, for an estimated cost of $450,000. The money for the project is already included in the 2013 county budget, and Frontenac County planner Peter Young appeared before North Frontenac Council this week with a proposal to fast track the approvals process for the 1800 square foot base by waiving the site plan process and having county planners work directly with township staff.

“This will reduce costs for taxpayers, and make the process easier to complete. We have completed a water study, a Phase 1 site environmental assessment, and satisfied the requirements of the conservation authority,” Young said. “The project is also relatively minor in size, the size of large house and garage.”

Council approved the proposal.

Currently the northern ambulance starts its shift at the Parham base at 6 a.m. The vehicle is driven to the North Frontenac Township garage at Lavant Station. It then returns to Parham before the end of the shift at 6 p.m. When the new base comes on stream the shift will start and end in Robertsville, effectively increasing the northern service by almost one hour a day.

With this project now ready to get underway, a concern is satisfied that was first identified when Paul Charbonneau took over as Chief of Paramedic Services in 2004.

“The first thing I wanted to do was stop the northern ambulance from sitting in a driveway all winter, burning fuel so none of the equipment or materials in the vehicle would be destroyed,” he said.

In the end it will have taken 10 years to do that.