New Effort to Sell Frost Centre Lands

It’s official. The For Sale sign is up at the Frost Centre on Highway 35 just south of Dorset.

Workers were out early last Saturday morning assembling a huge sign offering the 40-acre historic site as available to buy. The property is listed by the CRBE (Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis) Group, a worldwide commercial real estate company.

A check of various CBRE websites did not reveal any listing details, like price and conditions, but perhaps they are still being drawn up.

The Frost Centre lands, and presumably its dozen or more empty and rotting buildings, apparently have been for sale for the last decade. But this is the first time, apparently, that the property has been listed with a real estate company that will work actively to find a buyer.

I say apparently because the Ontario government never has told taxpayers, who have paid hundreds of thousands of hard-earned tax dollars to keep the empty places heated and lighted while its exterior rots, much about what is happening.

For example, as a working journalist I asked Laurie Scott’s office twice over the last two months for information on what is happening with the Frost Centre lands. I have never had the courtesy of a reply. 

Also, a friend who is a taxpayer on St. Nora Lake where the Centre is located, has asked Scott’s office for information. No reply.

Scott is MPP for the area, as well as the cabinet minister responsible for dealing with the Frost Centre.

A major worry of many people is what a new owner will do with the Frost Centre. They worry that it might become another party palace resort (hello Trump International!) destroying yet another natural and heritage resource.

There is no need for weeping and gnashing of teeth over what might happen to the hiking and canoe/kayak trails on the Frost lands. Carol Moffatt, mayor of Algonquin Highlands Township, tells me the township has a long-term agreement with the province that allows it to operate its trails system.

The overall Frost Centre area is huge, covering roughly 26,000 hectares stretching far east and northeast toward Algonquin Park. The 40 acres up for sale were severed from the larger package some years back and cover the area surrounding the buildings on Highway 35. 

The province apparently is trying to do something to protect heritage and natural resource aspects of the Frost Centre. Again, ‘apparently’ because the government has not told us what those protections might be and how it intends to see that they are accepted and observed by any buyer.

Exchanges of property can include heritage and conservation easements, which legally bind a new owner to maintain and protect the heritage and conservation aspects of the property.

Mayor Moffatt said she believes there are heritage easements on parts of some of the buildings, but does not have the details.

That is interesting because it could mean that the easements would prevent a buyer from bulldozing all the buildings to put up a sky-piercing resort and marina.

However, there are ways around easements. For instance, a building with a heritage-protected fireplace used to warm Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, could be demolished if the fireplace was left standing and incorporated into the new building. It could be incorporated into a barroom or a pantry and still satisfy the easement.  

So, the 40-acre Frost Centre site on St. Nora Lake might undergo dramatic change, but at least Algonquin Highland’s terrific trail and camping system will continue. It has been increasingly popular this year as more people seek distance from the Covid pandemic. 

The tragedy of the Frost Centre is that it likely never again will be what it once was for the people of Ontario – a natural resources centre offering education and experience in understanding nature and how we should live as a part of it. 

Leslie Frost, the Ontario premier for whom the Frost Centre was named, felt strongly about the importance of education in understanding and protecting our natural environment.

“The government believes that the best approach to the conservation and administration of our natural resources is to be found in education,” he once said.

 Good words, unfortunately not taken to heart by his successors.

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When the red, red . . .

 Now you see them, now you don’t. 

The robins were everywhere until recently. Listening and pecking for worms beside the house. Flitting branch to branch back in the woods as they searched for any remaining mountain ash or other berries. 

Hardly a day would pass without seeing several or more. Now there is none to be found.

 Some say the disappearance of the robins foretells an early winter. When they sense snow and cold moving in, they move out.  I’m not sure that is totally accurate. 

Although robins are considered migratory birds I think of them as nomads. They don’t follow the consistent north-in-spring, south-in-autumn paths of most birds. They wander off track stopping wherever they find food. 

That’s why I was seeing so many of them earlier this month. Rains and morning dew brought out the worms, and there were still some berries left on bushes. Colder temperatures and some frost have changed that, so the robins have moved on to find more profitable locations. 

Many people see robins as delicate, pretty little birds that travel south early to avoid dying in the cold. However, they are tough birds who are being seen more often in northern regions during winter. 

Their outer feathers block wind and snow, while softer downy inside feathers provide insulation that helps them maintain their body temperature, which is 104 Fahrenheit. 

Project FeederWatch, a research project gathering data on winter bird populations, has reported that more robins are hanging around later in northern regions.   

It said that during the 2015-16 winter robins visited 11 per cent of winter backyard feeders in northern parts of Canada and in Alaska. That compared with only six per cent of winter visitations in 1989-90. 

One of the reasons could be climate change, and the fact that Canadian winter temperatures have been getting milder over recent decades. Urban landscaping might be another reason why more robins are being seen later in the year. 

Fruit trees and berry-producing shrubs and bushes have become popular with people  landscaping their town and city homes. Robins are mainly fruit eaters in winter, so if there is more of it to be found in built-up areas, they will be there. 

Robins originally were a forest species but they have adapted well to a changing landscape, which has seen forests shrinking and urban areas expanding. 

Many of us see robins as fairly solitary birds, hopping about alone, or sometimes with a mate. But serious bird watchers say that they tend to flock during the fall months. In southern areas they have been seen in flocks of hundreds. 

Flocking gives robins more eyes and ears to find food and some extra warmth if they crowd together in trees. 

Being in a crowd also offers some protection from predators. Although it is hard to imagine anything wanted to hurt these friendly songbirds, they have enemies, including crows, jays, hawks and a variety of other aggressive birds. 

Robins don’t seem to fear humans, although they are cautious and will attack if someone approaches their nest, especially if it contains babies. They have been known to come close to humans exposing worms when the dig in a garden or water a lawn. 

They do pose an indirect threat to humans because they are carriers of West Nile virus. 

Other West Nile carriers such as crows and jays die quickly from the virus, but robins survive it longer, therefore passing it along to more mosquitoes, which can infect humans. 

The robin also is an impostor, although not through its own fault. It is named the American Robin, but in fact is not a robin at all. It is a thrush and has no relation to the European Robin. 

Early American settlers who first encountered the bird called it a robin because of its reddish breast, which was similar to the European Robin commonly called Robin Red Breast in England. Other than that, there is little resemblance to the European bird, which is a member of the flycatcher family. 

If climate change does bring more milder winters we may see more robins during the winter months. That’s a good thing because there are few birds that provide as much pleasure with their vast repertoires of song.  

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Stand tall. Stand firm

 Young people are getting much of the blame for the soaring number of infections in what is being called the second wave of Covid-19.

You know, the private house parties, those crazy car rally gatherings, the eating out and flocking to the bars. Ignoring all the advice about avoiding large gatherings, social distancing and wearing masks.

I wonder if the young would act more responsibly if the rest of us older, so-called full-blown adults were setting a better example for them.

More than 31,000 young Canadians age 20 to 29 had contracted Covid-19 as of the end of last week, according to federal government figures. That’s 18 per cent of the total 178,000 cases reported across the country.

However, the statistics show that despite a high number of infections, few people 20 to 29 get seriously ill from the virus. Since last February only 309 people in that age category have been hospitalized across the country. Only 149 have ended up in Intensive Care Units, and 11 have died. Total Canadian deaths now are approaching 10,000.

So, no great danger, no great fear. Many older folks say the young are being irresponsible because, although their risk of getting very sick is small, they can infect others who can become deadly ill.

If we are going to criticize the young, we need to think about what kind of example we have been setting for them.

Consider the case of Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the prestigious Notre Dame University in Indiana.

Jenkins, a well-educated Catholic priest, ignored his university’s Covid protocols when he attended a White House gathering announcing the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett is a Notre Dame graduate and a member of its faculty.

Notre Dame requires all its students and staff to wear masks and observe physical distancing.

Jenkins attended the White House event without wearing a mask and did not observe physical distancing. In fact, he shook hands with several people. He was one of at least a dozen people who tested positive for Covid after attending that event.

It didn’t take long for Notre Dame students to pick up on Jenkin’s irresponsibility. There were calls for his resignation and discussion of a ‘no confidence’ motion among faculty.

Jenkins has been highly embarrassed and apologetic.

“I failed to lead by example, at a time when I’ve asked everyone else in the Notre Dame community to do so,” he wrote in a letter to university students and staff. “I especially regret my mistake in light of the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many, particularly our students, in adjusting their lives to observe our health protocols.”

The tragedy of Jenkins is that he allowed himself to be sucked into the weak-willed crowd around him. Many of the people at the event were allies of a U.S. president who has mocked the wearing of masks.

Wearing a mask at that event would make anyone stand out as someone opposed to the group think; someone open to mockery.

Real leadership is about standing tall and firm in your beliefs, no matter how large or powerful the opposing group surrounding you. Jenkins obviously failed to do that.

He is not alone. Many of us will back off from Covid protocols because we don’t want to appear rigid or fanatical.

It’s not easy to tell someone NO! when they start to enter your elevator without a mask. Or, when someone decides to speak to you from a distance of two or three feet.

But all of us need to be firm if we are ever to get out from under this terrible virus. You have to be brain dead not to see and understand that relaxing Covid protocols has resulted in an explosion of second wave infections throughout the world.

If all of us stood firm in observing Covid protocols we would set an example that the young, and others, would find hard to ignore.

Humans don’t learn from being blamed and yelled at. We learn from example.

We don’t have a vaccine, or proven, readily available drugs to prevent or knock down the virus. But we should have the intelligence to be setting a good example.

Welcome to October, a nice month with a reputation for pre-winter fun gatherings, fall beauty and okay weather.

This October is different. Octoberfests are out. Crowded Thanksgiving dinners are not recommended. Hallowe’en is looking to be the night of the empty streets, and that’s really scary.

The second Covid-19 wave has arrived, carrying in its wake the fears and social restrictions that we experienced during the initial outbreak of late last winter and early spring.

New cases are rising throughout much of the world. Ontario had two record-breaking days of new cases last week and Quebec’s new cases increased steadily, reaching more than 1,000 in 24 hours late last week.

October never has been a good news month for health. Temperature swings bring on colds and flu season. Ailments like sinusitis and arthritis are more prominent. Allergies increase misery as they take their last desperate gasps before winter.

Also, the American Heart Association says there are complications for those with heart problems as our bodies work to adapt to lower temperatures, icy rains and cold winds.

Add to that a Columbia University study of New York city health records showing that people born in October have increased disease risk.

One of the deadliest disease months in history was October 1918, the year of the Spanish flu pandemic. In the United States roughly 200,000 people died of the flu in the 31 days of October.

All dark news indeed. Plus, the expectation that Covid cases and deaths, and all the madness that comes with them, will increase even more before October ends.

But let’s not focus on the darkness. Remember that old saying: It is always darkest before the dawn.

There are glimmers of light. Every single day the medical community learns more about this virus - how to lessen its spread, how to treat it and how to make it less deadly.

Last week scientists studying Covid cases in India reported that eight per cent of people carrying the virus were responsible for 60 per cent of all new infections. On the flip side, 71 per cent of people with Covid-19 did not spread it to anyone else.

That is encouraging news because our chances of encountering it are less than first feared, if we follow the advice delivered regularly by the medical community: Avoid people, keep your distance from those you can’t avoid, do not meet in enclosed places or tight groups and wear a mask.

After eight months of this everyone is exhausted. Exhausted from worry. Exhausted from working to maintain some necessary normalcy without creating more opportunities for the virus to spread and further damage our lives.

Exhausted from thinking about what can be done to help the front-line workers, put at risk every day, and the business owners and others suffering disastrous income losses.

No matter the exhaustion, remember that dawn will crack the darkness, providing the light needed to illuminate the lessons we need to follow for rebuilding better lives.

A key lesson is to shut up and listen. Listen to the medical experts who deal in scientific facts and know that injecting politics into a life crisis is really bad medicine. Ignore the politicians, who need to talk less and spend their time designing non-partisan policies helpful to everyone.

Especially ignore the social media goonies and the unintelligentia who say their rights are more important than a nation’s health.

Ignore also the United States, which no longer has anything positive to offer about building a strong, better society for the future. It is a country of self-serving individuals, while Canada is a society of communities looking out for others.

While waiting for the darkness to recede completely we can enjoy thinking about all the good things that will return when the light appears and the darkness is gone. Like the joy of walking up to someone, asking them how they are and giving them a hug.

This October will bring not only some gloom and unhappiness, but expectations of good things to come. The October winds and rains now taking down those beautiful leaves of autumn also are blowing away the craziness of the Covid-19 pandemic, and all the madness of the year 2020.

Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

Only individual passion can save the planet?

“All the rainbows in the sky

Start to weep, then say goodbye
You won't be seeing rainbows any more . . . .”

I was listening to those lyrics when I opened a newspaper to a shocking new United Nations report on the state of nature. The lyrics are from Roy Orbison’s 1964 rock ballad ‘It’s Over.’

When I finished reading the UN report I feared Orbison was right – it is over. We are well on the way to having destroyed our planet. 

I admit that listening to Orbison can cause someone to view the world darkly. His music often was dark, sad and lonely, much like the singer himself. 

Orbison had reason to be sad. His first wife, whom he divorced because of her infidelity then remarried her, died in a motorcycle accident. A couple of years later two of his sons died in a house fire. 

For all his troubles, Orbison did not have to worry about pollution and climate change destroying the world. They were not big issues back then. 

They are now and the just-released UN report - Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 – says that in the past 10 years the world has not fully met a single target to slow the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems. 

Twenty targets to reduce pressures on our natural world were agreed to by 193 countries meeting in Japan in 2010 for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Despite some progress, says the report, a large number of species are threatened, natural habitats continue to disappear and governments still offer hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that allow environmental damage. 

Also, the Living Planet Report 2020, produced by the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London, reported that earth’s wildlife populations have declined dramatically because of human overconsumption. 

There was an average 68-per-cent decrease in mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish populations between 1970 and 2016, said the report. 

It adds that nature is declining at a rate unprecedented in millions of years. Deforestation and conversion of wild lands for agriculture were cited as two main reasons. 

“The way we produce and consume food and energy, and the blatant disregard for the environment entrenched in our current economic model, has pushed the natural world to its limits,” Marco Lambertini, WWF director general, writes in the foreword to the report. 

All this has led to humanity at a crossroads, says Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the UN’s biodiversity head. It’s a crossroads that will decide how future generations experience nature.

“Earth’s living systems as a whole are being compromised,” she says. “And the more humanity exploits nature in unsustainable ways and undermines its contributions to people, the more we undermine our own well-being, security and prosperity.” 

What is needed urgently, says the Living Planet report, is a deep cultural and systemic shift to a society and economic system that stop taking nature for granted and “recognises that we depend on nature more than nature depends on us.” 

The countries signed on to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity are supposed to meet next May in China to finalize targets for the current decade. 

The meetings continue, the targets get set and the reports flow, but little changes. 

Real progress is hampered by the bureaucratic blob that feeds off slow-moving governments and institutions like the UN. 

The changes needed are to our lifestyles and they won’t come about quickly through government and its bureaucracies. They will happen if people passionately want them to happen and begin taking individual actions that lead to group action. 

Margaret Mead, the American cultural anthropologist prominent in the 1960s-70s, had that figured out long ago. 

“Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems,” she said. “All social change comes from the passion of individuals.” 

The recent reports are depressing enough to put Orbison’s ‘It’s Over’ on replay. 

However, another report, released this month by Newcastle University and BirdLife International, says 28 bird and mammal extinctions have been prevented by conservation efforts in the last 27 years. 

Hopefully Margaret Mead’s faith in individual passion will be proven out and more extinctions will be prevented as people decide it is time to become stewards of nature, instead of simple users.

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Cottage country facing change?

The annual lull after the storm of summer visitors to cottage country doesn’t seem to have materialized as fully as in past years. 

Lake access parking lots still hold plenty of vehicles. Town and village streets remain relatively busy. Post Labour Day traffic hasn’t lightened as much as might be expected. 

More people seem to be lingering this year. Perhaps it’s the weather, or maybe it’s a result of Covid-19. 

If the latter, I’m wondering whether we will see some dramatic changes in the future of cottage country. 

The Covid pandemic brought some changes with its late winter appearance. Concerned people bailed out of cities to head north and take refuge in cottages. Many were retirees, especially concerned because the virus was affecting older people more than others. 

Then businesses began closing to lessen spreading the infection, leaving some folks out of work, others forced to work from home. Many of them found themselves free to move to cottages while waiting for the virus threat to pass. 

The virus prevented people from travelling very far. In some cases, money saved from cancelled travel went into making cottages more comfortable, or had people out looking for cottages to rent or buy.

Covid aside, more people in general are yearning for an escape from modern realities and a return to nature, a simpler past and slower and safer lifestyle. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that 39 per cent of urban dwellers in the United States are thinking about moving to rural areas because of the pandemic and the increasing chaos of urban life. 

You can find more evidence of this on the Internet where the hashtag #cottagecore is driving millions of searches for old-fashioned cozy cottage lifestyles. 

Perhaps all this is temporary, just a panic-twinged reaction to the chaotic events of 2020. When Covid is controlled and memories of other chaos begin to fade, most people perhaps will settle into the life they had before 2020. 

However, if the interest in rural and cottage country living continues, and more and more people opt for it, the changes will be dramatic. There will be benefits, as well as disadvantages. 

More population means strain on services, including hospitals, policing and various utilities. More strain will require more staffing, which could bring more extensive medical care and other servicing. 

Population growth also will spur more business activity, which will require more employment. More people mean more homes, more building, more renovations and therefore more construction-related jobs. 

Larger populations also bring the problems that many urban dwellers now would like to leave behind – crowding, crime, horrendous traffic and pollution. 

Some people will favour any change. Others will be unhappy with disruption of life as they have known it. 

Whatever happens, whether it be small or huge, there will be change. It is inevitable, as we have seen in the past. 

My introduction to cottaging a long time ago was to one-room cabins built of logs hewn by hand and with spaces stuffed with moss to keep out critters and cold. Water came from pails hauled from the lake, and light came from coal oil lamps. 

That was in northwestern Ontario where cottages were (and still are) called camps.

Those very basic cottages, or camps, have evolved into mega-cottages with modern electrical or gas appliances and electronic gadgets that connect us to the outside world. 

The world evolves, and evolution naturally brings changes. We can’t avoid changes to many of the physical aspects of cottage country. But what we can protect from change is the most important and most valued part of cottage life – the cottage country state of mind. 

The cottage always has been a place to take a mental break from urban life. It’s the place where simple things like the call of a loon or the breeze rustling tree branches remind us that nature is our most precious asset. 

Nature is our greatest teacher. It reminds us who we really are and what our place really is in the greater scheme of things. It is constantly showing us what is right and what is wrong. 

Every teacher needs a well-equipped classroom, and nature’s classroom is cottage country. 

Misinformation: The cancer among us

It was a pleasant late summer day. A perfect day for some relaxing recreation, so a buddy and I hopped on ATVs and headed off to Sherborne Lake, one of the county’s most beautiful areas.

The lake’s sand beach at the end of the Sherborne access road is a relaxing place to sit, stare out over the sun-kissed water and think.

 

On the beach were two fellows who had just disembarked, beers in hand, from a pickup truck. We exchanged greetings and chatted about the beauty of the place.

 

One of the guys turned the conversation to the greatness of America and how Donald Trump had made it even greater. Americans now were enjoying tax cuts, the flood of Chinese products had been stopped and even Canada had been put in its place with a new North America trade agreement.

 

I felt sick to my stomach and said I had to leave because there were a lot of trees I had to see before the afternoon faded.

 

It wasn’t the reference to Trump that turned my stomach. Americans can elect or not elect whoever they wish. It’s their country, not mine.

 

What turned my stomach was that nothing the guy (a Canadian from southern Ontario) said was based on fact. It was yet another example of misinformation passed along by someone who had not bothered to get properly informed.

 

Organized misinformation and disinformation campaigns, plus individual lying, have hit epidemic proportions in our society.  

 

“Forget allergy season – it’s heightened lying season,” celebrity life coach Lauren Zander is quoted in the June issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

 

She’s not kidding. Snopes, the fact-checking website, reports record-breaking traffic this year. During the period from late February to late March the site had 37 million visitors, a 43-percent increase from the previous month.

 

Some of that increase can be tied to the confusion caused by the politicization of the Covid-19 pandemic. When it comes to their health, people want clear-cut facts, which they have not been getting during this pandemic.

 

But Covid-19 is not the only reason why Snopes and other fact-checkers are getting more business than they can handle. Lying is becoming a major part of 21^st century living.

 

Experts who study lying say the number of lies told by the average person has been increasing. One study early this year said the average person tells 1.65 lies per day.

 

In its May issue, Forbes magazine had an article by a professor whose research found that U.S. President Donald Trump told an average of 23.2 lies each day.

 

Serious lying has become a significant tool for politicians and their parties. That was evident in the 2016 U.S. election and the United Kingdom Brexit votes and elections around the same time.

 

So evident that the Oxford Dictionary chose ‘post-truth’ as its 2016 word of the year. Post-truth is an adjective denoting the effectiveness of appeals to emotions and personal beliefs while ignoring the actual facts.

 

Assisting the spread of false or inaccurate information is the decline of professional news media jobs. The Canadian Media Guild has estimated that 10,000 media jobs have been lost in recent years, many of them newsroom jobs in which reporters and editors work to deliver factual stories.

 

The Pew Research Centre reports that in U.S. newsrooms employment dropped 23 per cent between 2008 and 2019.

 

Also, various research indicates that more than one-half of people get their ‘news’ from social media sites such as U-Tube, Twitter and Facebook. Yet, most of the ‘news’ on social media is at best unprofessional without fact checking or, at worst, pure gossip or deliberate misinformation.

 

The good news is that more people are becoming aware of the cancerous spread of misinformation and the danger it presents to democracies. One group of concerned folks has formed a movement promoting the Pro-Truth Pledge which asks politicians, government officials and people at large to commit to truth-oriented behaviour and to protect facts and civility in debates.

 

Each one of us must do what we can to stop the misinformation epidemic. We need to speak out when we see and hear politicians, government officials, advertisers - even friends - distorting the truth.  

 

Truth builds bonds that make a society great. Untruths break those bonds.

 

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