Each time I pass the Leslie Frost Centre on Highway 35 just south of Dorset I hear ghosts of the past.
They are ghost voices of Second World War veterans, laughing children and university students – all who came to the Centre to learn about forestry, the environment and nature in general.
The centre was built in the 1940s as Ontario’s primary forest ranger training school. It offered forestry training to soldiers returning from the war. The Ontario government closed it in 2004, supposedly to save $1.2 million in annual operating costs.
There were fears it would be sold to private enterprise, but instead was leased to Boshkung Lake cottager Al Aubrey, who proposed it as an educational summer camp, conference centre and location for environmental science seminars.
That effort did not work out and ended in 2010 and the Centre was put for sale.
The Centre’s dozen or so buildings have not been used since and are deteriorating. The government continues to pay to keep lights on, the grass cut and the snow ploughed.
Now there is news that it will try again to sell the Centre. Infrastructure Minister Laurie Scott’s office confirms that the government has been preparing the Centre for an open market sale. That preparation includes working on heritage studies to create a heritage easement as part of the sale.
A heritage easement commits a new owner to maintain the property at a certain preservation standard. The new owners can use the property as they please as long as ensuring its preservation.
What all that might mean for the Frost Centre remains to be seen. Could it be turned into a five-star resort with substantial marina facilities for small yachts while displaying historical photos and other artifacts to meet the easement’s heritage preservation requirements?
We’ll have to see the actual open market listing and the heritage easement to know exactly what the Frost Centre might look like under new owners, and how it would affect cottaging, camping and canoeing in the St. Nora Lake area.
The Frost Centre has 24,000 hectares of natural forest that includes hiking and ski trails. Whether parts of that would be included in the sale is unknown.
The Centre has a complicated history, which may or may not have interfered with the government’s earlier attempts to sell.
One hundred years ago, what was then the Ontario department of lands and forests decided to establish a ranger station on the west shore of St. Nora Lake.
Then in 1944 the Ontario government and the University of Toronto entered into a partnership to create a forestry technical school. The site chosen was the ranger station on St. Nora Lake where teachers and students would have access to the 24,000 hectares of government land and some forest area owned by the university.
The original agreement called for the government to pay the capital costs of construction, while the university would supply the teaching staff.
The purpose of the school was to train department of lands and forests employees, and potential employees, plus U of T forestry program students and forest industry employees from other parts of Canada.
Things changed over the years. The Centre became more of a natural resources centre where people came to learn more about nature and environmental issues. For many school children from the cities, a visit to the Frost Centre was their very first experience with being outdoors in a truly natural setting.
Eighty years ago, when Ontario was considering establishing the forestry school, Leslie Frost, then minister of mines and later premier, talked about the importance of education in conserving a healthy environment.
“The government believes that the best approach to the conservation and administration of our natural resources is to be found in education,” he said.
Let’s hope the folks preparing the new plan to sell the Frost Centre remember and believe in those words.
The best possible use of the Frost Centre remains as natural resource centre, where everyone can learn about nature and the need to behave differently if we are to save our planet.
We don’t need it to become yet another party place.
Before the sale, someone should pick up the beer cans and discarded cigarette packs lining the highway outside the place.
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