Cultural Divide Along The Trail

Jeff Green | Aug 02, 2023

When it comes to trails in urban areas like the City of Kingston, the idea of ATV’s motoring up and and down on public hiking, walking, and biking trails is crazy. With roadways clogged with trucks, cars and buses, parks and trails are the only place where people can safely walk without being constantly exposed to risk of being hit, and with the smell gasoline fumes wafting though the air.

Even bicycles can be seen as a problem, particularly now that e-bikes are becoming more and more popular.

In a rural community like Ompah, the idea of banning ATV’s on trails is equally a non-starter. People access their homes via trails, they travel from township to township, a hundred kilometres or more. The Ompah ATV runs have not only been the largest fundraising events for the Ompah Community Association for many years, they have been cultural events bringing the entire community together. The fact that they have had to be cancelled again and again since 2020 because of the pandemic and weather events is much lamented, and the hope that the fall run this year will proceed is strong. The Ompah ride does not use the K&P trail, which runs to the east and is still being developed by Frontenac County, held back in Snow Road by three new expropriation processes at this time, but the plan for that trail, once completed, is to link with popular mixed use trails in Renfrew County under the auspices of the Ottawa Valley ATV club.

It has been clear since the K&P trail development began in earnest 15 years ago, that somewhere between Snow Road and Kingston, there has to be a dividing. From the Central Frontenac border north, the trail was used by vehicles, not only ATV's and snowmobiles but cars and trucks accessing rural properties (and avoiding roadways for various reasons) since long before the Frontenac County K&P trail initiative got underway. Even through the developed part of Sharbot Lake, shared use between dog walkers, cyclists, hikers and runners and ATV's is not seen as any kind of problem by a strong majority of users. That is not to say some pedestrians would not like to have the trail all to themselves, but they do not see it as something that is necessary or attainable.

Until not that long ago, the Craig Road boundary, north of Verona, has always been an obvious location for the boundary. It is just north of Verona, the gateway to what used to be known as 'North Frontenac' before amalgamation came along in 1998, and it avoids Prince Charles School and the village of Verona.

The decision to extend ATV use of the trail into Verona was taken for a couple of reasons. One reason was that a piece of property was available for a trailhead within the village, offering a convenient place to unload and ride ATV’s to the north. It provides a boost for Verona businesses, and is favoured by the Verona ATV Club, which has become a huge supporter of the K&P trail since it was founded just a few of years ago.

Also, there has been concern over ATV’s running into the playground at Prince Charles Public School for a very long time, even though they were not supposed to be using the trail at all, so part of the logic of allowing them was to be able to police them better.

The extension of the trail into Verona, which was set up as a trial, is subject to review still, particularly with plans for a senior’s housing complex along the trail route.

So, when Marc Moeys, founder and President of the Verona ATV Club, asked if Frontenac County would extend the boundary for ATV’s on the trail further south to Harrowsmith, it was a surprise to many, including Frontenac County officials.

The process that it unleashed has brought about a loose coalition of Harrowsmith residents and the Friends of the Cataraqui to the forefront, and since the argument made by the Verona ATV Club for the extension has a coulpe of major flaws, and at the end of a public meeting on the issue in early July, even Marc Moeys seemed to have accepted that the ATV trail stops in Verona. In fact, the effort to expand trail use south of Verona might make the still uneasy local acceptance of the extension from Craig Road to Hardwood Creek a little more uneasy.

But politics aside, the stark difference between what trails are all about once you get 10 or 15 km into the countryside, and what they are all about in not only urban areas, but in some village setting closer to urban areas, says something about the urban and rural culture that we straddle in Frontenac County.

And for the development of the K&P trail, which has dominated efforts by the small Frontenac County Economic Development department, it makes marketing a challenge, because there are two, mutually exclusive, target markets on different parts of the trail. Ideally, the trail would be run by recreation departments in each township with marketing support from Economic Developers, but aside from South Frontenac the human resources are not available, and recreation is outside of the Frontenac County mandate.

So, in addition to revealing the urban-rural divide, the ATV debate around the K&P trail also points to a longstanding concern about the amount of time the Economic Development department at Frontenac has devoted over 12 years, to a piece of recreation infrastructure with only a tangential connection to the core mandate for an upper tier Economic Development department.

And with a two-person department charged with promoting Frontenac County, the idea that the Manager, Richard Allen spends something like half his time on trail development, and the Community Development Officer, Debbi Miller, spends a good chunk of her time marketing the trail, it makes you wonder what other economic development opportunities are being missed?