Among its assets, The Point Park in Sydenham has a fenced in court, which has fallen on hard times.

“Right now it is not being used at all,” said recreation Supervisor Tim Laprade this week.

In the 2019 township budget, $8,000 was set aside to paint lines, do some surface work, and install tennis nets to turn it into a functioning tennis court.

All that changed when an anonymous donor offered the township $25,000 on the condition that the scope of work on the court includes a more premium resurfacing process, extra coats of paint on the surface and the lines, and crucially, the creation of two Pickleball courts in addition to a tennis court.

Laprade said that Pickleball has become very popular in South Frontenac, and the courts at Centennial Park in Harrowsmith and Gerald Ball Park in Sunbury are very well used.

It is a case of if you build it they will come, as far Sydenham is concerned, Laprade thinks

“This donation will likely result in a lot more use for the court,” he said, “a lot of Pickleballers from South Frontenac are playing in Kingston and would prefer to play closer to home.”

Although this will give the township three locations in the warm weather seasons, it does not solve the problem of late fall to early spring, when indoor courts are required.

Southern Frontenac Community Services organises Pickleball in the gym at the Harrowsmith Free Methodist Church, but the gym is not available all the time, and there is a demand for an alternative somewhere in the township.

The possibility of putting courts in at the Frontenac Arena has also been discussed, but that would only be in the summer season and there is a heat factor as well since the arena is not air conditioned.

A proposal regarding an expedited process to sole source contracting out the $32,000 project on the Point Court went to Council on Tuesday night.

While Councl rejected that proposal on procedural grounds, it is still the township's hope that the project can be completed this fall.

Southern Frontenac Community Services has been serving South Frontenac and rural Kingston for three decades, and in July 2020 the organization will be celebrating thirty years as a charity. The Board of Directors is looking for volunteers who are interested and able to commit to helping plan special events up to and including the big day, July 4, 2020.

“We know that many people have been positively impacted by the services provided through SFCSC over the years,” says Executive Director, David Townsend, “and we’d really like to hear from them as we plan for the year ahead.”

SFCSC is looking not only for folks who have been touched by their programs, but also for those who have skills they are willing to share to enhance the events. “If you have marketing acumen, design skills, or special event expertise, we’d be delighted for your support,” adds Townsend.

Interested volunteers are asked to review a Terms of Reference for the committee that are posted on the organization’s website at sfcsc.ca under the “Get Involved” tab. Directions for submitting an Expression of Interest are also on that page.

Volunteers are asked to submit a maximum 500-word letter as an Expression of Interest to sit on the planning committee, no later than Friday, August 16, 2019. In the letter, applicants are asked to suggest one idea they have to recognize the anniversary, and describe their skills and interest.

Applicants will be notified by the end of August, and will meet in September

Southern Frontenac Community Services has stopped providing services through a program that is designed to find housing for homeless residents of Frontenac County and help those who are precariously housed to stabilise or improve their situation.

“It was a regrettable decision that we had to make to stop offering this service,” said SFCS Executive Director David Townsend, “but we had no real choice because we could not maintain the proper staffing for the program. It is an important service to the community but we were no longer able to provide it. It was also a drain on our resources as an organisation.”

The Homelessness Prevention Program in Frontenac County was set up as part of the 10-year homelessness prevention strategy by the City of Kingston.

In 2014, SFCS took the lead, along with Rural Frontenac Community Services and Addictions and Mental Health KFLA, in answering a request for proposal to provide services in Frontenac County. The bid from the three agencies was successful and the program started up in 2015. It was tweaked a couple of years later, after being reviewed by City of Kingston staff.

Last year, The United Way of KFLA provided funding for a part-time youth homelessness prevention worker based in Sydenham and another part-time worker based in Sharbot Lake.

“The program was most successful when we had social workers who understood the needs in our rural area,” said Townsend, “but our ability to keep our workers was hampered by our own pay grid,” said Townsend.

Qualified workers can make more money doing similar jobs in the City of Kingston than they can working for Southern Frontenac Community Services.

“It would not be fair to the rest of our employees if we paid the homelessness prevention workers on a different scale,” he said.

The situation came to a head this spring, when 2 workers left for other jobs in the region and an attempt to recruit new workers proved unsuccessful.

Townsend said that Home Based Housing, the agency that runs the homelessness prevention program in Kingston, is providing some service in Frontenac County. People seeking service are encouraged to call them directly at 613-542-6672

“We are concerned about the impact in Central and North Frontenac,” said Louise Moody, Executive Director of Rural Frontenac Community Services, based in Sharbot Lake. ‘We are continuing to offer services for youth at risk of homelessness through the United Way program, but there is a fair bit of need in our communities for the kind of services that this program offered.”

A new request for proposal for the provision of the service in Frontenac County will be prepared in the coming weeks, Moody has been informed.

“For our agency, it would be best if the territory was split and we could prepare a proposal to serve the region from Verona north, but we understand that this will not happen. AS far as we know, it will be same territory as it was before, all of Frontenac County. We do serve all of the county with the EarlyOn program, so we know the territory, but it would be a stretch for us. Our board will decide if we can reasonably provide this service as well, and if we have the administrative capacity to take on another program.”

In the meantime, Frontenac County residents who are homeless, at risk of becoming so, or living in inadequate housing, do not have the kind of direct support in navigating the system or accessing resources, that has been available over the last five years.

The City of Kingston is undertaking a five-year review of the 10-year homelessness prevention program, which had the elimination of homelessness as its stated goal.

To a certain extent, one of the biggest secrets on last weeks South Frontenac Community Services Garden Tour was right in their own back yard — the Food Bank Community Garden.

It’s actually been up and running for seven years, having been started by Master Gardener Janette Haase when she lived in the area. And its been a success on several levels, according to current garden steward Alan Macdonald, whose day job is teaching at Loughborough Public School.

“The Food Bank doesn’t tend to get as many donations in summer and that’s when the demand seems to be highest,” Macdonald said. “For one thing, kids do often get fed at school and when it’s not in session, they still have to eat.”

The garden/greenhouse goes a long way towards bridging that gap, he said.

But a community garden does a lot more than put food in hungry mouths, he said.

“A lot of our volunteers are students,” he said. “And it goes a long way to empower them, giving them a method for change by teaching them how to grow their own food.

“It also shows them that what’s on your plate is as much effect as what’s in your driveway.”

He said the garden is as much a classroom as any other.

“They learn about soil biology,” he said. “This is one of the few classrooms where results are measured by who has the dirtiest hands.”

It also meshes well with many in-class subjects such as learning how to cook and meal planning, he said.

“And some of these kids are potential food-bank users of the future,” he said.

And it teaches them to deal with problems that arise, often in creative ways.

“We’ve had a problem with battling Colorado potato beetles,” he said. “We’ve brought in some parasitic wasps and praying mantis eggs.”

They’ve also learned about things like floating row covers, which protect against bugs but also extend growing seasons.

Finally, they learn a lot from the adult volunteers that help out, many of whom are retired seniors with a love of gardening and lifetimes of experience.

“It’s very much an intergenerational story,” Macdonald said.

Volunteers get together on Tuesday mornings at the gardens on Stage Coach Road. If you’d like to become part of this, they’re always looking for more people and you can do so by contacting Heather Rogers at The Grace Centre (614-376-6477), or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

There are farms. There are gardens. And then there is Robert and Sue Clinton’s back yard, a ‘garden’ that rather defies description, unless of course that description is “awesome.”

The Clintons’ spread was one of the eight properties featured in this year’s (2nd Annual) South Frontenac Garden Tour, a fundraiser for Seniors Services of Southern Frontenac Community Services consisting of a tour around their service area highlighting notable horticultural pursuits and a lunch provided by Chartwell Conservatory Pond Retirement Residence.

“It’s not a farm, it’s a folly,” says Robert Clinton. “I refuse to spray or water but there’s not a blemish on my (Asian) pears.

“The stuff that works, I plant more . . .”

And there’s a lot working here.

Technically, the Clintons will admit to having adopted the permaculture philosophy, which (according to Wikipedia) is a set of design principles centred around whole systems thinking simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems.

To that end, they have an entire field dedicated to a series of earth berms that provide and retain water.

Their garlic plants use a hugelkultur approach, which is the practice of burying large volumes of wood to increase soil water retention. They have about 500 garlic plants that appear to be doing quite well.

But while they do grow things most would associate with farming in this area (beans, flowers for their honey operation, plums, grapes and such), there is also an eclectic mix of things you probably wouldn’t expect to see in a South Frontenac farm/garden.

For example, they have thriving paw paw trees, which are normally associated with the Carolinas and the Southern U.S. They have three kinds of currents (red, white and black), shitake mushrooms, Asian pears, mulberry trees, heartnut trees (just like it sound, the nut is shaped like a heart), spindle trees (which were once used for making spindles on spinning wheels).

“The heart nuts and pine nuts are for the next generation,” Robert said.

They also have haskap berries, which is a sweet/sour berry that looks something like a large blueberry that’s shaped more like a football.

“They’re also called honey berries and they’re the new super berry,” Robert said.

In total, the Clintons have 1.7 acres of main garden/arboretum plus another four acres of woodlot/solar panel farm/berms etc.

“This was all furrowed fields when we bought 26 years ago,” said Sue. “Now, I do berries and vegetables and he’s the tree guy.”

Well, he is. He’s recently begun grafting Asian pears onto Barlett trees and it looks like this too will turn out to be a successful experiment.

But, while Clinton may have “always had the bug” to grow things, he’s getting to an age now where he’s adopted a particular philosophy as to what he’s doing.

“I’m not in the business of growing fruit,” he said. “I’m in the business of building soil.”

And doing it rather well, if the scores of fascinated visitors Sunday were any indication.

When contacted, tour organizer Nona Marriotti said the tour was “very, very busy this year. We sold over 100 tickets, and it was really, really good. People came from the United States, Kingston, over by Yarker and from South Frontenac,” she said.

One surprise bonus this year was that Chartwell Homes provided the lunch for tour participants.

“They provided box lunches, which was a bonus because people could sit and eat their lunch at the Grace Centre or they could take it with them with if they were in a hurry to visit the gardens.”

The tour includes gardens in the Inverary, Latimer and Sydenham areas, and Mariotti is hopeful that it will expand into other parts of the township in future years.

It is a fundraiser for Southern Frontenac Community Services, for which

Chartwell Homes – Conservatory Ponds. They were going to bring some people. Offered to provide the lunch. Could coe, pick it up and go, pr they could sit and eat it.

Chartwell provided boxed lunches for us. Everybody seemed very happy and very pleased with places. Asking for next year. I would like to see it go through and hit the whole county. Same day as the Sydenham Triathlon. Slowed a few people town. One of our gardeners had a sign in. Some people were from the states, Odessa area, kingsotn area. People who didn’t know South Frontenac said “they did not realise how beautiful it is here. “Very pleased with how it all turned out, and somebody really had pull with the weather. Sunday was the cool off day.

All has been quiet on the Queen’s Park front in recent weeks, at least as far as creating a new template for municipal governance in the province is concerned. A review of how regional governance is working in municipalities across southern Ontario is ongoing and that may lead to some changes. As to what the provincial government is planning for Eastern and Northern Ontario, particularly for small, rural municipalities, is not the least bit clear.

There have been hints, however. Changes in administration are still being planned for services such as Public Health, Paramedic Services, Libraries, and Child Care, which are all overseen by municipalities and partially funded with municipal dollars. And there is a clear direction from the government, they want to see larger and larger entities covering larger swathes of territory.

In March, there was one-time funding allotment for small, rural municipalities in the spring. It came with no strings attached but was earmarked to be used to find efficiencies in the delivery of municipal services, with no indication about what those inefficiencies might be. There is every reason to believe that rural municipalities will be the next sector that will be addressed, and the push for larger entities is the likely outcome.

The time frame during which such changes are likely to be initiated is now pretty narrow. If it is going happen before the next provincial election, we will likely know something about it before the end of the year, if not earlier.

In the context of change, there is another question that should be asked, at least in Frontenac County, and that is whether we are well served by the municipal arrangements that are currently in place.

When the current system was established in 1998, responsibility for the delivery of municipal services was split between the Frontenac Townships (roads and bridges, building and development, recreation, finance, waste, etc) and the City of Kingston (social services: child care, Ontario Works, Housing, etc) with ancillary institutions such as KFL&A Public Health, the Kingston Frontenac Public Library and others operating at arms length by boards appointed by the municipalities. The Frontenac Management Board (FMB), overseen by the four Frontenac Mayors, was set up in order to facilitate all of the relationships between the townships, the City of Kingston, and those boards. It also operated a long-term care facility, Fairmount Home, and later won the contract to provide Paramedic Services in Kingston and Frontenac.

The FMB then renamed itself Frontenac County and has taken on some of the land use planning and IT functions for the Frontenac Townships, and has established a small economic development department.

The fact that our municipalities do not deal in any direct way with services aimed at alleviating poverty, at keeping people housed and healthy, and supporting our aging population, makes us something less than a full-blown municipality.

We have been lucky enough in Frontenac County to have two community-based agencies, Rural Frontenac Community Services and Southern Frontenac Community Services, providing the kinds of supports that people rely upon, but each of these agencies is facing constraints from an increasingly fickle provincial government. In place of the moral support and minimal funding they receive from the municipalities they serve, a true partnership needs to emerge to ensure they can provide the kinds of services that we decide are necessary, instead of the services that the provincial government decides to fund.

In order to comply with the Policing Act, Frontenac County requires a Community Safety and Well-Being Plan. The Frontenac Townships are working together on this, and are setting up an advisory committee to develop the plan. This exercise could result in an empty shell of a plan, or one that starts to expand the scope of our municipal services.

Perhaps the Province of Ontario will decide how our municipal future will unfold, perhaps not.

But it is high time that we begin a conversation about developing a comprehensive political structure devoted to the needs of all Frontenac County residents. In my view, a single Frontenac Township is necessary to take on the needs of the 28,000 permanent residents and almost as many seasonal residents. By pooling all of our physical, administrative, and human resources, we can begin to serve the particular needs of our residents. If the opportunity arises, we would be in a position to make a case to the provincial government for the establishment of such a political body.

The status quo is not a solution any more, and if we do not make an effort to build our own future, based on our shared history and the land that we occupy, or someone from the outside is certain to do it for us.

If you are looking for a day out in the country, try the 2nd annual South Frontenac Garden Tour, on Sunday, July 7th. Organized by volunteers including Nona Mariotti and Shirley Joyce, the event is a self-driving tour to visit eight beautiful private gardens across South Frontenac.

“We are grateful to residents who have agreed to welcome the public to visit their gardens,” says Nona Mariotti. “We ran the garden tour last year and the response was highly favourable – people asked us to do it again.” The gardens will be open from 9:00am to 3:00pm.

The Garden Tour highlights the natural and cultivated beauty of the region, and also raises funds for Southern Frontenac Community Services Corporation. “Many of us have benefitted from the many seniors’ services and programs at SFCSC, and this is our way of giving back,” says Mariotti.

The Grace Centre, home of SFCSC, is also a stop on the tour, where guests can see the volunteer-run vegetable garden, greenhouse, and new memorial walkway. In addition, it will play host to a drop-in lunch generously catered by Chartwell Conservatory Pond Retirement Residence.

Ryan Wilkinson, Retirement Living Consultant at Conservatory Pond says, “We are so very delighted to support Southern Frontenac Community Services and surrounding areas. We truly believe in making people's lives better, and are really fortunate to be able to step in where we can to help. The greatest reward is seeing our communities come together and flourish.”

Tickets are only $10 per person, and are available at a number of local merchants, the SFCSC office in Sydenham, and online through www.sfcsc.ca/gardentour2019. All ticket purchasers will receive access to an online map of locations and descriptions of the garden, or will receive a paper copy with their tickets. The details include the degree to which locations are accessible to people with walkers and wheelchairs.

For more information, including where to purchase tickets or to purchase them online, go to www.sfcsc.ca/gardentour2019.

Under what was likely the first ideal day of the season, keen Pickleballers from the Frontenac Pickleball Assocation were out in full force for the 9am – 12pm session at Centennial Park in Harrowsmith last Friday morning (June 7)

They took a short break to pose in a photo-op to mark a $1,000 donation that they, and the affiliated Kingston Pickeball Association, has made to South Frontenac Township to help cover the cost of defibrillators for Centennial Park and Gerald Ball Park in Sunbury, the other outdoor Pickleball location in South Frontenac. But they were soon back on the courts.

Even it is a relatively low-key recreational session at the park three mornings a week, the level of competition on each point is pretty high. Pickleball is popular with seniors partly because it requires less running than tennis or badminton, two of the sports that it is loosely based upon. But that does not mean that the players aren’t competitive, or that hand eye-coordination, court positioning, and killer instinct aren’t keys to success.

Kelli McRobert is an Inverary resident who handles promotions for the Kingston Pickleball Association and is a passionate advocate for the sport, and she sees a massive potential for the sport in South Frontenac.

“Pickleball is a sport that anyone can play, and it has become very popular with the young senior population, and with South Frontenac’s growth and its demographics, that’s a lot of people. We tell the township that if they provide us with the facilities to play, we will fill them with players, both from Kingston and South Frontenac,” she said.

She explained as well that Pickleball really has nothing to do with pickles.

“The man who invented the game, Joel Pritchard, had dog named Pickles who would take the ball whenever it came his way, thinking it was ‘Pickles ball’ – hence the name of the game.”

As the game has developed as an organised sport, there are levels of play, which Pickleballers call Ladders, and that allows players to start at a more gentle level and progress in the sport.

Pickleball is also inexpensive. It costs $5 to drop in and only $20 a year to join either the Kingston of Frontenac associations and play all year.

Kingston Pickleball will be hosting the national championships later this month at the Invista Centre, which will raise the profile of Pickleball in the region.

Ashley Bates, the recreation co-ordinator for Southern Frontenac Community Services, has organised Pickleball at the Harrowsmith Free Methodist Church and worked with the township to get the Gerald Ball Park tennis courts marked up for Pickleball as well.

The township is paying attention to the potential to offer more opportunities to local residents to enjoy the sport.

Recreation Co-ordinator Tim Laprade said that the township is looking at improvements to the surface at Gerald ball Park and at fence coverings for both parks to keep high winds from hindering play. As well, the possibility of developing a multi-use court at the Point Park in Sydenham for Pickleball, tennis and basketball is being looked. And then there is the arena.

“They are also interested using the Frontenac Arena for Pickleball in the off-season, and any way we can get more use from the arena would be a good thing,” said Laprade.

For more information about Pickleball, contact Lesley Inglis as 613-449-1757

Matt Walker lives north of Madoc, but he works in Addington Highlands and in North and Central Frontenac. He runs the Compassionate Care Program, which deals with a broad range of needs for individuals who are faced with a “life limiting illness”, and for their families as well.

“The services we offer don’t begin at the very end of life, and they don’t end when a life ends either. People can live, and live well, with life limiting illnesses, and we offer support for them and their families every step of the way. And we offer grief counselling as well.”

One of the programs Compassionate Care is known for is volunteer visits. Part of Matt Walker’s job is to recruit and train volunteers, match them with patients, and provide support.

Compassionate Care is also available to provide free equipment loans, (hospital and lift beds, bed rails, wheelchairs, walkers and canes) etc. and to advocate for patients as they navigate the healthcare system.

“Anything that we can provide to keep people living in their own home or with their families, even as their illness progresses, we try to do. And the best way to do that is to work with other agencies and services in communities. We don’t want to duplicate what anyone else is doing,” Matt Walker said, in an interview in Sharbot Lake this week. He works with agencies such as Land O’Lakes and Rural Frontenac Community Services who provide Community Support Services in the same region as he covers.

As part of this work, Walker has been making presentations to councils about his services, and this week he appeared before the Central Frontenac Council. Since his territory basically covers the highway 7 corridor, he was joined in Central Frontenac by Sandy Whaley from Southern Frontenac Community Services (SFCS). She oversees Visiting Hospice and Bereavement Services for SFCS, a similar program to Compassionate Care, for people living in South Frontenac and the southern part of Central Frontenac.

“We have a very good working relationship with Sandy and Southern Frontenac Community Services, and since both of our programs are based on volunteers, we make sure that everyone is covered,” he said.

Walker has been working at Compassionate Care for a year, and has learned a fair bit about the communities in Addington Highlands and North and Central Frontenac.

“People are very connected to their local communities and townships in both North Frontenac and Addington Highlands. They care for their neighbours. Keeping them in the community, with support, even when they are getting frail, is worth the effort.”

Twice a year, the Community Foundation of Kingston and Area (CFKA) makes grant announcements for community groups and not-for-profits in Kingston. Most of the time, Frontenac County based groups receive grants as well.

There was an exception in late November of last year, when all of the grants went to Kingston. With its spring grant announcement, the CFKA has made it clear that those fall 2018 grants were not the beginning of a trend. This time around, fully one third of the grants, representing over 25% of the $160,000 that was divvied out went to programming for Frontenac County residents.

And the money is going to every corner of the vast county.

The six Frontenac recipients were: the Elbow Lake Environmental Centre (Perth Road area) $9,000, the Clarendon-Miller Archives (Plevna) $6550, Wintergreen Studios (Bedford) $3283, South Frontenac Community Services Corporation (Sydenham) $10,041.20, Rural Frontenac Community Services (Sharbot Lake) $5,500, and RKY Camp (Parham) $8946.06 – over $43,000 in all.

The Elbow Lake Environmental Centre grant is for the "Navigating the Landscape" program. The program will provide the opportunity for youth to actively experience their local environment while learning how to use GPS technology, with the money going towards equipment and bus subsidies to bring youth to the centre.

The Clarendon Miller Archives grant is going towards the "Unravelling History - One Tombstone at a Time" project and the creation of a worldwide searchable on-line database providing historical reference and research of the local cemeteries in North Frontenac, with images to link families with their ancestors and village settlements via a website.

The Wintergreen Studios grant is going to Project Bee. It will help establish an apiary at Wintergreen, which, coupled with year-round workshops, will educate the general public about maintaining healthy bee populations. Project Bee will also enable local schools to join the Bee City Canada school network. Students will have an opportunity to exchange knowledge with beekeepers in Saudi Arabia through a school in Riyadh.

The Southern Frontenac Community Services grant is going to enhance the agencies home making services program, to enable more physically and financially vulnerable seniors to remain living at home safely.

The Rural Frontenac Community Services grant will be used to help fund a ride sharing program, enabling more seniors to attend social events, medical appointments and shopping so more people can participate fully in the community.

The RKY camp grant is going towards the purchase of a new 36” flat top griddle with an oven and holding cabin, to help in the preparation of 600 nutritious and delicious meals to active RKY campers each and every day during the summer camp season.

“A common theme we saw this round in the applications were projects that aim to create a sense of belonging in our community,” says Community Foundation for Kingston & Area (CFKA) Executive Director Tina Bailey. “We know that providing opportunities for engagement, inclusion and participation are some of the strategies to decrease social isolation. This is particularly true for some of our neighbours, especially youth, newcomers, seniors and those with disabilities.”