Family Day at the Frontenac Community Arena grounds has become the largest gathering of people from across South Frontenac each year. Unlike Canada Day, which is a local community celebration.

“One of the things I love most about Family Day is that it is a township wide event,” said Amanda Pantrey, one of the organisers of this year’s celebration of the winter season.

This year’s event features all of the activities that have made Family Day popular, including horse drawn wagon rides, a winter obstacle course, Scandinavian kick sledding, snowshoe races, free skating in the arena, games, a free BBQ courtesy of the township, and free milk courtesy of the Frontenac Dairy Producers.

As an added bonus this year, many local businesses have donated items for a prize basket that will be raffled off at the end of the day. There is no charge to enter the raffle, entrants just need to sign in to get a ticket.

And at 3pm, the South Frontenac Stocksport club will be doing an Ice-stock demonstration in the arena. It will be both a demonstration and an opportunity to try out the sport (bring ice grippers if you can).

It all kicks off at 11am on Monday, the 17th. Come early or be prepared to park along the road as the parking lot fills up early.

The Frontenac Arena is located in Piccadilly, at 4299 Arena Boundary Road, halfway between Verona and Godfrey.

Last year, we had our bathroom renovated. We saw an ad on TV, called the advertised company and signed them up. A friend dropped by while the drive-way was full of rubble.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Getting the bathroom redone”, I replied.

“Guess you didn’t know I do bathrooms”, he said.

I didn’t know he did bathrooms but I knew he was a carpenter and that he did good work. I should have known; I just never thought to ask. So, I hurt both my friend and my community.

Shopping local is more than just buying groceries at Mike Dean’s, though he does bill himself as a local grocer. Shopping local is looking for a supplier in this community for whatever your needs might be. And there are lots of suppliers. For example, there are at least seventeen businesses boasting skills in building trades that do business in the north part of Frontenac County. These range from handy man services to licensed trades such as plumbing and electrical; from interior design to general contracting. There are five hair dressers in that same area and ten or more retail outlets (not counting the Beer Store and LCBO).

Are these suppliers perfect? Not by any stretch but we all play a role in the imperfections. A small-town grocer can’t possibly carry the same variety and freshness you would expect from a city Farm-Boy outlet, especially in winter when volumes are down anyway. But we would not want to see that store disappear and the higher that small grocer’s volume is, the better equipped he’ll be to meet your needs. That volume comes from our support. The same is true of skills we might hire. If all the work goes to people from Northbrook or Kingston, then those tradesmen get all the experience and all the opportunities to learn and improve.

Of course, buying on price alone does not help. Volume in larger centres often allows a retailer to sell something for less but going to get it is not free. With a reasonably efficient car (say 30 miles to the gallon) a round trip from Sharbot Lake to Perth will cost nearly $10.00; Arden to Northbrook will be about $7.50 and Sharbot Lake to Kingston will be $17.00. These costs have to be added to the purchase price. And shopping local has the added advantage of dealing with a person you know rather than a stranger in another town. I once saw a sign in a country store that said “If you want nice clean, fresh oats, you’ll have to pay a fair price. If you’ll settle for oats that have been through the horse, that comes a little cheaper.” It’s your choice.

So, my New Years resolution is not altruistic; it is selfish. In the long run, I think I get a better deal shopping local first. I don’t really need strawberries in February and all my other needs are met. As someone pointed out to me recently, “If Bob’s Petrocan doesn’t have it, you probably don’t really need it.”

With Central Frontenac Township scheduled to provide direction to staff concerning proposed mandatory septic inspection Oct. 24, here’s a look at just how widespread septic failure is.
First, in consultation with Central Frontenac Treasurer Michael McGovern, the Frontenac News looked at just how many septic tanks there are in the Township.
To do this, we looked at the tax roll.

There are just under 6,000 tax bills sent out every year.
Of these 2,050 are for seasonal residences, 206 are for farm residences and 1,047 are for permanent residences. In total, this comes to 4,103.
In addition, there are 127 commercial bills but some of these are combined with residential so we (with McGovern’s input) estimated that number to be about 100.
We rounded the number off to come up with 4,200 septic tanks in Central Frontenac.
Next, we consulted with Gord Mitchell, Public Health Inspector for KFLO&A Public Health.

If a septic system fails, they’ll be the ones to know about it because they’re the ones who issue permits to have it replaced.
Mitchell said that it’s not hard to tell when your system has failed. Either you won’t be able to live with it (smell, mess, backflow, etc) or your neighbours won’t and will let Public Health know.
While it is possible for someone to simply walk away from a property after a septic fail, it is extremely rare and not statistically significant.
Now the following numbers are for replacement septic systems. Not all replacements are necessarily for failures as some represent renovations, and/or additions.
In 2016, the Sharbot Lake office issued 86 permits for septic system installation. Of these, 21 were for replacement systems. In 2014 there were 87 permits issued, 5 of which were for replacement systems. In 2015, there were 82 permits issued with 5 replacements.

For comparison purposes, the numbers at the Cloyne office were 80 permits with 10 for replacements in 2014, 70 permits with 7 for replacement in 2015 and 80 installation permits with 16 for replacements in 2016.
So looking at the Sharbot Lake (ie Central Frontenac numbers) over a three-year period, there were 31 replacement systems permits issued or on average 10 systems per year.
If all of those replacement systems were for failure of the previous system, that would be 10 of 4,200 systems replaced per year or 0.24 per cent.

Mitchell also added that by far and away the bulk of their work is around cities, not strictly rural areas. He said that not only are there a lot more systems in areas in and around cities but those systems also tend to be a lot older, more than 40 years old in many cases.