On my daily walk the other day along one of the many branch lanes that connect the Grants Settlement Road with our beautiful Ottawa River, I heard a vehicle approaching from behind and so I ducked my head down behind a log until they were past me. I don’t usually bother hiding but thought it might be appropriate. I haven’t yet bought my seasons pass. Access to the river has never been sign-posted except through privately held enterprises such as Wilderness Tours and Owl Rafting, yet it exists on all sorts of surveyed roads and its free. But these days, Kayakers cannot find the river after a long drive, and cyclists who gave their time and energy to build trails that attract more cyclists have been told to stay away from those trails.
Not that I resent paying. I am happy to pay Wilderness Tours the $250 for access to their many, many shorelines and properties, and I wish to indemnify them from injuries resulting from my actions. But a walk is not a day out. It’s a spur-of-the-moment thing, and so I often find myself adrift in the wilderness without a tours pass.
I wonder if the many prospective new buyers of suddenly very profitable Whitewater Region real estate are aware that they cant actually get to the whitewater after which our region is named without shelling out extra cash.
Perhaps we should open up some of these old surveyed roads to the river. Many are not easy, cutting through farmers fields and hitting the river atop formidable cliffs, they are a nuisance and in some cases rather risky. But there is a need to provide free access to the river for hikers, paddlers and bikers who can not (or will not) pay for the excellent services and facilities that WT and OWL provide.
Tourism has long been a favourite of beaurocrats wishing to ‘revitalize’ economies whose dynamism went south (literally) along with their jobs. It was thus with our latest batch of elected officials whose inherited ‘Plan’ suddenly made it all so-so clear, and then along came Covid and you might have thought the opportunity would have grown rather than shrunk because walking in the bush is about as Covid-safe as a person can get in this province. Every day I walk all about this region, jumping fences old and new and wondering why I am the only one here.
It does appear that the kayakers are finally getting organized (40-odd years for that). It also appears that larger bodies are becoming interested in our local issues spearheaded by the lovely new cyclists. Theres also a lot of bad blood and downright Trumpian here as well, and it appears that we may see Pinkertons and Rednecks in these thar hills soon (thanks for the clarification, Meandering Bob). Im gonna keep ducking that big head of mine, even with a pass.
Simon Tunley.
