Nissan uses Central Frontenac roads to show off their Pathfinder

Jeff Green | Aug 11, 2021

Last week was peak summer in Frontenac County. The summer cottage season is in high gear, and tourists were filling up the parks and trails.

Still, a keen observer may have noticed some shiny new 2022 Nissan Pathfinders rolling the winding paved and gravel roads in Central and South Frontenac.

A group of auto journalists, 10 each day, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (August  3-5), were outfitted with a Pathfinder and a GPS route that took them up some iconic South Frontenac Roads, including Wolfe Lake and the Westport Road, up to Long Lake and Ducharme Road, in Central Frontenac, to show the Pathfinder’s capacity to handle twists and turns, inclines, and road surfaces. Some rainy weather the day before they arrived provided some muddy conditions, and the fact that GPS tends to be less effective on back roads, made the adventure complete for the journalists.

A series of articles are already starting to be published in the car sections of the Globe and Mail, the Star and others.

While the articles are about the capacity of the Pathfinder, Frontenac County makes an uncredited cameo appearance, not only in the photos, but in the text as well.

Frontenac County locals, and visitors alike, will be familiar with circumstances like the one described in Driving Magazine: “Heading onto the “off-road” section of the drive route I managed to get lost, so I turned to Molly of the Maps for help. It turns out Ms. Molly has a sense of humour. Rather than routing me back the way I came in, she had me wading through two rather large – and deep, as it turns out – water holes and scrambling up a steep, gravelly incline that was a true test of the Pathfinder’s ability to get the power down”.

We’ve all been in circumstances as described in that passage, and some of us have left our vehicles, or parts of them, behind.

In order to set up the experience for the auto journalists, a lot of background work had to be done, and the capacity of the local and regional tourism, and economic development teams made the visit to Central Frontenac possible. An event planning company working with Nissan contacted the tourism office in Kingston about coming to the region to show off the Pathfinders, on varied road conditions, with the kind of scenery that would make the photos accompanying the articles suitable. The Kingston office contacted Alison Vandevelde from Frontenac County, and she contacted Adriana Barbary, who is working on the Sharbot Lake Downtown Revitalisation project. Adriana drafted Central Frontenac Public Works Manager Tysen Myers, who is more than familiar with the roads in Central and South Frontenac to help out. Alison Vandevelde worked with the event planning company and Nissan representatives to put together a route, and Myers found a spot for the drivers to eat a catered lunch, and by the time the first ten journalists left their hotel in Kingston and headed north of the 401, everything was set to go.

“It was a nice change from the work I have been doing on the Sharbot Lake Revitalization Plan, and it is related because it explores some of the hidden capacity of the area to host varied events,” said Adriana Barbary about putting together the mini-event. 

“It was also sort of in my ‘wheel-house’ because I have experience in marketing, event planning and journalism,” she added.

The original plan was to set up the lunch at the Sharbot Lake Beach, “but it really is too busy in Sharbot Lake at this time of year,” said Barbary, so with the help of Tysen Myers, a more secluded, harder to find location was found on a local lake.

“I couldn’t even get there in my little car, so I had to borrow my father’s truck for the week, “said Barbary, “the Nissan people and the car writers loved it.”

Tim Cota of Cota’s Mobile Catering, a business that has been forced almost into hiatus by COVID, provided a full BBQ lunch (ribs, brisket, slaw, buns, dessert, etc.) to put the journalists into a good frame of mind when evaluating the capacity of the vehicle.

“We don’t know what the articles will say about Central Frontenac, if anything,” said Barbary. “But it builds awareness about what is here, it opens doors for the future.”