Presqu’ile Needs Some Attention

I've camped at Presqu’ile Provincial Park in Ontario every summer and at times in the spring and fall for over 40 years. It is a home away from home and holds a lot of great memories as a kid and an adult.

It has gone through a lot of changes over those years, as you would imagine, some for the better and some for the worse. I could write a book on these changes but will try to keep my thoughts as brief as possible.

It still remains a great park for camping with good sites however the CAMIS reservation system is not the best online. I spoke with many campers who are dissatisfied with how it works now and what appeared to be very slow servers. Twice while booking sites I was kicked off 3 or 4 steps into reserving the site and lost the site I wanted. I never had this issue in the past. I hope they upgrade before next winters reservation period.

For some reason, maybe to save on fuel costs, the park workers weren’t cutting the grass as often as they should prior to the lack of rain when it was growing a lot. Plus, there are a lot of areas that used to be kept cut that no longer are and this looks dreadful. I'm sure it has something to do with the naturalists wanting to keep the park a more natural setting. It just looks like they're lazy or too cheap to cut the grass the way it used to be. I’d say it makes it harder to spot the deer but that’s another story.

The main roads in the campground need to be paved or resurfaced properly right away. Not only have they been patched over and over and are very bumpy but the dust kicked up by passing cars is disgusting and an absolute disgrace. Anyone camped on the side of the road where the dust is blowing towards is constantly eating the dirt, having to clean their vehicles and must keep their tents and trailers closed up tight to avoid having everything covered in grit.

This has been like this for many years and so far the best solution the park staff have come up with is to pour a little water on the roads to try and keep the dust down but this happens infrequently and does little to solve the problem. Campers will even walk back and forth with jugs of water and will wet the road themselves for some relief. Not exactly what these paying customers had in mind for an activity when they booked their vacation.

For the amount of money that is spent in the park each year you would think they could afford to properly pave the roads most in need. At the very least, pave the main roads around High Bluff and Trails End where the problem is the worst. Use recycled asphalt on the other campground roads. But it seems the powers that be would rather stay under budget and continue to find temporary and cheap solutions that really aren't solutions at all.

One nice change recently was the addition of newly built comfort stations on High Bluff, The Pines and the Maples campgrounds. Although I guess they couldn't afford to put hot water into the Pines washroom. Now they just need to build one more with showers near Trails End.

I'd also suggest that as every camper registers upon entry, they be given not just the park newspaper that contains the rules but a separate piece of paper with five or six of the main rules that are constantly being broken. Among those are people cutting through campsites not their own and washing dishes at the fresh water taps where people get their drinking water.

And speaking of drinking water, what does the health inspector think about the dumping station being located only a few metres from the fresh water tap. While one camper dumps their septic tanks, another is filling their holding tank with drinking water. It would be a smart idea to move the location of the drinking water across the road where trailers could fill up with water in a much healthier location. Plus with the tanks being on different sides of the trailers they could set up the new water filling station so trailers could fill up on either side.

Finally, the biggest safety issue in the park is the speeding. How a child hasn't been killed or injured is just luck. The speed limit in the campground is 20 Km/h yet it is not uncommon to see cars doing 40-60 Km/h at times in the camp area. Campers can often be heard yelling at the speeders to slow down but if the security would set up on foot and catch and fine a few each weekend, it would go a long way towards solving that problem. It wouldn't take long to nab a few and they're easy to spot. You can see their dust flying from some distance down the road.

I know to some this all might sound like nitpicking but the back of every campers registration card that goes in the post at the campsite has a place where suggestions can be added and turned in. I have a sneaky suspicion that a lot of those cards are either ignored or just filed and forgotten. This might be a little more public and harder to ignore.

I love the park and spend a lot of time there with family and friends and I think these changes if implemented would go a long way towards improving the stay for each and every paying customer.

It's Election Season....Yawn!

The last time I was excited for an election was in 1986 when I was running for President of my high school, which I won by the way. I didn’t make any crazy promises that I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep. Instead I just promised to try and make school a more fun place to be, and I think I accomplished that with more school functions, spirit weeks, pep rallies and dances. Plus we tried to have a positive impact on the community and the world around us.

One of my happier moments came during the Rick Hansen “Man in Motion” tour when we quickly raised several thousand dollars and I was able to present the cheque to Rick as he came rolling by the school. At Christmas I dressed as Santa and visited lots of kids at many of the local Elementary schools. I remember at one point one of “Santa’s” white eyebrows came off revealing my brown one underneath without me knowing. A little girl on my lap asked why I had one brown and one white eyebrow. Thinking as quickly as I could I explained that due to the lack of snow on the ground, the reindeer kicked up some mud when we landed and it I didn’t have time to clean it all off. I think she bought the story.

In recent years I just haven’t cared about elections at any level of government because I figure I’m going to get taxed to death regardless and my opinions really don’t matter to politicians. They just say and do what they want anyway once they’ve been elected.

The upcoming local municipal election which should be of interest to me has nothing interesting to offer and to be quite honest, as someone who always votes, I just don’t see the point this time around.

I actually know many of the candidates personally but when you live in a town where those with money control what “really” happens, it seems pointless to cast my ballot. It’s not that I don’t respect these people. I appreciate that they are serving their community and give their time to sit on committees and council to try and effect change for the betterment of our city.

Honestly, I don’t know what I expect from these people but I certainly don’t expect much. At the local level I suppose as long as the infrastructure like roads and sewers are being upgraded and I can see or know that some positive work is being done, that’s all I can ask for. Of course, the street I live on has been desperately in need of resurfacing and new sewers for many years. I had been told the work would be done this summer but it never happened. I have since been told that it will now be done in 2011. We shall see.

On the Provincial level I don’t have a clue who I’ll vote for next year. One thing is for sure, it won’t be for the Liberals as Dalton “Pinocchio” McGuinty has got to go. I’m ashamed to admit that I actually voted for the Liberals the last time. When McSquinty campaigned and promised to not raise taxes if elected and then once elected the first thing he did was raise taxes…he angered a lot of people.

The guy I feel sorry for is the local MPP (Member of Provincial Parliament) who I actually know and like and would support again but by voting for him I’d be voting for McTaxy and I refuse to do it. So I will be voting in that election but I’ll be casting my vote for anyone but the Liberal party. Sadly the alternatives are limited there.

The alternatives at the Federal level are even more limited. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party still seem to be the lesser of three evils. I don’t live in Quebec or I’d say four evils with the addition of the Bloc Party.

The Liberal Party is being led by a guy with about as much charisma as a stick. In fact he makes Prime Minister Harper look like a party animal. Add to the fact that he seems shady and untrustworthy and it’s not hard to see why the Conservatives should feel pretty comfy once the next election call takes place. As for the NDP’s, do they even have official party status anymore?

When it comes right down to elections, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t vote. I always say, if you don’t vote then you don’t have a right to complain and if there’s one thing I like to do, it’s complain. So you can bet I’ll be grabbing my voter card and heading to the nearest polling station come Election Day and casting my vote for whoever has angered me the least over the last few years.