A Minden Hills council decision to disband its committee of adjustment has been criticized by existing members, although the town’s mayor says they are within their rights to make a change.

Committee members have received a phone call and follow-up letter, and the township is advertising for new committee members.

Two of five publicly-appointed committee members – Bill Blakes and Dick Schell – spoke with The Highlander on Dec. 1, as did mayor Bob Carter.

Blakes said he had been on the committee seven or eight years, and dealt with hundreds of applications, with no problems. He added while he suspects the move is because the committee went against the town planner on a couple of recent files, he claims the committee members were not given a reason for the decision.

However, he said his interpretation of bylaw 2084 s. 623 is that there has to be supporting rationale for the disbanding of a committee. “There was no reason given at all.”

Carter said, “I think it’s important that we didn’t fire them. We disbanded the committee with the intention of appointing a new committee. Anybody who was on the old committee could apply to go on the new committee. We can restart the committee at any time. It’ll come down to seeing who else in the community is interested and qualified.”

Carter added when they set up the committee following the last election, they wanted to be able to review its work. “This is sort of like a one-year review, and so, we’re going to reappoint for the upcoming year type of thing.”

Asked if they would reapply, Schell, who said he has been a township volunteer for 43 years and a member of the committee for 27, replied, “no, once bitten, twice shy.”

The committee – for which council chooses members – is looking for people to serve from 2024-2026. The deadline to apply is Dec. 8. The committee considers applications for minor variances from the township’s zoning bylaw as set out in the Planning Act. A minor variance may allow property owners to use their land in a way that does not comply exactly with the requirements of the bylaw. The committee comprises the town planner and five community members.

Carter added the committee is quasi-judicial and its decisions are final unless appealed.

“I’m not saying that everything has to be copasetic and there’s never going to be a disagreement… but they just seemed to be going in the wrong direction, so we want to see if there is a possibility of doing something different. Having said that, in a small community, you can’t make this just business, it’s taken as personal.”

Blakes and Schell said they are taking it personal as word spreads.

Blakes said during meetings, the members look at information from the town planner but also from consultants representing the applicant. He said they had recently voted in favour of the applicants on a couple of cases.

Blakes, who worked for the City of Toronto for 28 years and believes he is highly qualified, said, “they (council) may have authority to do it (disband the committee) but it’s questionable. There is something wrong with this.”

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) is investigating the ongoing demolition of the Wigamog Inn property in Haliburton.

Shannon Simpkins, MECP spokesperson, told The Highlander the ministry received a complaint in August and has followed up, with site assessment ongoing.

“The ministry was made aware of demolition activities occurring at the Wigamog Inn through public concerns related to waste disposal activities and potential impacts to species at-risk. We are currently assessing site activities to ensure compliance with the applicable environmental legislation,” Simpkins said.

Asked for specifics on the legislation, what the ministry was investigating, protocols used to determine if rules had been broken, and the potential punishments, Simpkins said, “it would not be appropriate to speculate” until the investigation is complete.

Hailey Cole, Dysart et al bylaw officer, has been assisting with the investigation. She said all remaining demolition and removal of debris is on hold until the MECP wraps up, with the municipality aiming for a tentative completion date sometime in spring 2024.

The Wigamog has been in a state of disrepair for years. Aurora Group purchased the property in March 2016, announcing big plans for the site. A proposal posted to the company’s website included reopening the inn and the Moose Bar and Grill. There was also talk of a new residential development, featuring 180 condos, townhouses, and detached homes.

Years went by without any action. Dysart’s previous bylaw officer, Robert Mascia, reported carrying out multiple inspections of the property between 2019 and May 2022, when he issued a remedial action notice to Aurora Group outlining 47 infractions of the township’s property standards bylaw. Issues varied from downed power lines to smashed windows, damaged doors, and collapsed decks.

At a property standards committee meeting in fall 2022, Aurora Group said they intended to demolish the 37 buildings that make up the Wigamog site. They then missed a deadline to submit a demolition permit, which led to the committee, in October 2022, directing Dysart’s chief building official, Karl Korpela, to issue an RFP to have the site torn down.

Staff were still working on the RFP in March when Aurora Group started the demolition process. To date, around a dozen buildings have been taken down.

The Wigamog was discussed briefly among Dysart’s elected officials Nov. 28, with coun. Barry Boice saying he’s heard there are squatters living inside the building.

“People are telling me there are lights going off throughout the night… someone found canisters in there that look like [they store] propane, canned food,” he said.

Cole said this was the first she had heard of people illegally residing on the property, telling council she would follow up.

Deputy mayor, Walt McKechnie, told The Highlander he was pleased the MECP had gotten involved, believing it will force Aurora Group into action.

“When you bring the ministry into the playing field, the game kind of changes a bit. You’ve got to start playing by their rules,” McKechnie said. “This is a really big concern. Every week we’re getting calls, all of council. I’m running into people in the street, in the store, and they all want to know what’s going on with the Wigamog… I think a lot of people will still not be happy, because they wanted action yesterday, but they’re going to see action soon.”

Aurora Group did not respond to The Highlander’s request for comment.

With Christmas just around the corner – and many feeling the need to tighten their budget this year – SIRCH is bringing back its repair café Dec. 3.

The event takes place at the SIRCH Bistro this Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“This event is free and welcomes young and old to enjoy a day of tinkering, fun and an opportunity to learn new skills,” said Repair Café coordinator, Dianne Woodcock.

Repair Café helps people repair broken items, such as small household appliances, toys, electronics, pottery and more. A team of volunteers with expertise in making things work will be on hand to assess items and get them working again.

This will mark the fourth Repair Café SIRCH has held this year. All have contributed to keeping reusable items out of landfills and helping the environment, Woodcock said. It also benefits the community by connecting individuals with their neighbours, teaching them new skills and saving people money.

“SIRCH Repair Café wants to help reduce the mountains of waste that our landfills experience. We have gotten used to saying ‘oh, it’s broken, I’ll have to buy a new one’ when what we’d like is for people to say ‘oh it’s broken – I hope it can be repaired’,” said Woodcock. “Many of us have forgotten that so many things can be repaired and SIRCH Repair Café wants to change that”

If you have children, Woodcock said you won’t want to miss out on the tinker table. In partnership with the Haliburton County Public Library, the tinker table allows kids to use their imaginations and try their hand at fixing things. This week, the tinker table will feature maker toys including Snap Circuits and 3D pens.

The SIRCH Bistro is located at 49 Maple Ave., Haliburton, next to Emmerson Lumber. For more information call 705-457-1742 or email info@sirch.on.ca.

An emotional night inside S.G. Nesbitt Memorial Arena Nov. 25 helped inspire the Haliburton County Huskies to one of their biggest wins of the season.

It was a full house Saturday as the organization held its second Pink in the Rink Huskies Conquer Cancer event. Hockey took a back seat pre-game as team president, Paul Wilson, welcomed Julie MacInnes onto the ice for a ceremonial puck drop. Julie’s husband, Wade, passed away in August following a battle with lung cancer.

Buoyed by an exuberant home crowd, the Huskies dominated the toothless Aurora Tigers 7-1, with a hat-trick from team captain Patrick Saini and further tallies from Nicholas Lamont, Adam Smeeton, Lucas Vacca, and Lucas Stevenson cementing the win.

“It was nice to see the guys playing with some confidence and putting up a big win. Smeeton getting his first of the season was a nice moment for him – we haven’t really had any secondary scoring all year, so that’s a nice thing to get, especially coming into a busy stretch,” said head coach, Ryan Ramsay.

The Huskies enjoyed lots of time on the puck in the first, regularly testing Yianni Karkoulas in the Tigers’ goal. Ian Phillips went close to establishing a lead halfway through the period, picking up speed coming out of his own zone and beating two Tigers players before flashing a wrister off the post.

With time ticking down, it appeared the Huskies would have to wait for their opening, but Saini had other ideas. After Phillips had found Charlie Fink in the slot, the 20-year-old saw his shot padded away by Karkoulas, but Saini was in the perfect position to slam home the rebound at 19:03.

The home crowd was back on its feet seconds later as Lamont notched his 10th goal of the season. After Stevenson skied the puck out of his own zone, Lamont expertly brought it out of the air while in full stride, went eye-to-eye with Karkoulas and beat him glove side at 19:40 to give the Huskies a two-goal lead.

Smeeton made it a three-goal game 1:25 into the middle frame, assisted by Raine Nadeau and Izayah Luddington, with Vacca adding a fourth five minutes later, finishing off a nice move that also involved Alex Bradshaw.

Luke Hampel netted a consolation for the Tigers at 7:49, but that’s as good as it got for the visitors. Stevenson got in on the action at 16:10, assisted by Saini and Phillips, before the Huskies captain potted an unassisted shorthanded tally at 19:52. He completed his hat-trick three minutes into the final frame, assisted by Stevenson and Phillips.

Ramsay said he was pleased to see his team get back to winning ways following a disappointing 4-3 loss on the road against the Lindsay Muskies Nov. 22. He noted this would be a big month for the Huskies as they look to improve on their ninth-place league standing and solidify themselves as championship contenders.

“We’re coming into a busy stretch here leading up to Christmas. These games are really going to make or break our season. Either we climb the ladder and start to put some pressure on those teams near the top, or we stay where we are [which is outside playoff contention],” Ramsay said. “It’s going to be a good challenge for the boys.”

The team lost 6-3 to rival Cobourg Cougars Nov. 27, and travel to Brantford Nov. 30 for a tilt with the 99ers. They play six more times in 17 days before Christmas, with three home match-ups – Dec. 3 against the Stouffville Spirit, Dec. 9 against the Pickering Panthers, and Dec. 16 against the North York Rangers.

Huskies in the community

Ramsay said Christmas is also the time of year his team likes to give back to the community. After participating in the Minden and Haliburton Santa Claus parades the past two weekends, the Huskies assisted the Minden Hills Fire Department with its annual toy drive Nov. 26.

The organization also partnered with the Haliburton Highlands Health Services Foundation earlier this month for a 50/50 fundraiser to help bring in money for a CT scanner and mammography unit at the Haliburton hospital.

“This community has been great with us since we arrived… it’s Paul’s and my vision to not only have a great hockey program in the County, but to work with our community and rally behind great causes to show you can bring good things to small towns through sport,” Ramsay said.

Haliburton author Janet Trull said her latest book, End of the Line, provides an interesting look at what life was like for early Highlands settlers when the first trains carrying new immigrants arrived in the late 1800s.

After spending the better part of three years working on the 252-page historical fiction piece, Trull is excited to share it with the community. It’s her first novel, following earlier releases Hot Town and Something’s Burning, two collections of short stories, and Once a Storm, a memorial book focused on oxycontin addiction.

“I started writing it during COVID. Originally, this was going to be a collection of short stories as well, focused on Haliburton and the many quirky characters that have called this place home, with a fictitious spin. I knew I wanted to set it historically in the late 1800s, and that was the time when the Victoria rail line came in,” Trull said. “Haliburton was a busy, quickly changing place then.

“I had fun creating characters based on what we know about the history of the Highlands. I was especially interested in the tension between those who established the village in 1865, and those who arrived by the trainload, lured by land grants, in the late 1870s,” she added.

The story is told from the perspective of Ona, a local entrepreneur who operates a booming comfort business for loggers and railway workers. She also runs a nunnery for women and orphans.

With Ona’s grandfather being an early Scottish settler and her grandmother Ojibwe, she has an understanding and knowledge of two cultures that give her a unique perspective on the community’s issues, Trull said.

The story kicks into high gear when a corrupt politician, Alex Smith, is murdered, leading readers on a thrilling ‘whodunit’ adventure.

“He was somebody in a position of power who took advantage of many, many people. So, when he gets murdered, almost everyone in town has a reason to kill him,” Trull said. “It was fun, because even I didn’t know who the actual murderer was until very late in the writing process.”

While some of the issues outlined were prevalent in early day Haliburton, Trull said the bulk of the story is complete fiction and shouldn’t be considered historically accurate. There are some connections people can make, though – a character resembling Haliburton’s first reeve, John Lucas, is included, so too a doctor based on a real-life physician.

End of the Line is available at Master’s Book Store in Haliburton, can be ordered online through Indigo and Amazon, and is downloadable on Kindle. A launch event was held Nov. 18 at Rails End Gallery. Trull was in attendance, alongside Shane Joseph, head of the book’s publisher Blue Denim Press, to discuss the book.

“I feel like I’ve created my own little library now – I don’t have a favourite, but End of the Line was a lot of fun to put together. I hope people enjoy reading as much as I did writing it,” Trull said.

She has already started on her fifth book – more personal, focusing on reallife memories she has growing up with her brother, who has schizophrenia, and the things, both positive and negative, families go through when dealing with a severe mental health issue. There’s no timeline for release.

It’s going to be a minimum of four to five years before a new performing arts centre is constructed in Haliburton County, says Dan Manley, board chair of the Haliburton Highlands Arts Centre Foundation (HHACF).

Speaking at the organization’s AGM Nov. 16, Manley said his volunteer team has yet to secure a location – the main requirement needed to move forward with grant applications and other funding requests.

“I hate to use the word pause. From the outside it looks like we’re not doing much, but from the inside we’re really busy with talks, emails, calls and presentations. Not having the location puts a lot of the other work we need to do in the future,” Manley said.

Last November, HHACF released details of an arts centre feasibility study, completed by consulting firm Janis A. Barlow and Associates, which determined the Highlands could support a facility with a capacity of between 300 and 400 people.

A follow-up survey with the community found there was a demand for a centre that could accommodate a variety of performing arts mediums, including acoustic music, opera, film, musical theatre, and dance. A proscenium lyric theatre with a pit was proposed, with a 300-seat main level orchestra and a 100-seat balcony.

On top of the performance venue, Manley said the public wanted to see a rehearsal hall, professional backstage facilities, front of house lobby with concessions, music studios and educational space included in any build.

At the time, though not releasing this number to the public, Manley said the project carried an estimated cost of just over $40 million. He told The Highlander last week that number had likely increased again due to inflation.

“It’s hard to say what it would cost us now,” he said, acknowledging any build would be dependent on securing major funding from the federal and provincial governments, as well as local contributions.

At last year’s unveiling, it was noted a new facility could generate approximately $1.14 million annually for the local economy.

HHACF has been working with Peterborough-based The Dennis Group for much of this year trying to find a path forward. Between October and December 2022, the firm interviewed and surveyed Highlands residents for a community assessment and planning study, which Manley said was designed to determine local “affinity” for the project and gauge fundraising potential.

Some concerns were raised during that process, notably the lack of a site and concerns over the project’s feasibility. There was also a call for HHACF to collaborate and develop partnerships with other organizations.

Since then, Manley said they have met with Places for People to discuss potential housing options that could be tied into any build, Point in Time for possible social service and youth supports, and Haliburton School of Art + Design.

With Dysart et al recently purchasing a 90-acre plot of land along County Road 21, and mayor Murray Fearrey indicating a portion could be used for recreational purposes, Manley said HHACF has sent a letter to the township outlining their interest in building an arts centre there.

“Finding and securing a location is our top goal… without one, a purpose-built performing arts centre exists only as a concept in a feasibility study, and a vision in our dreams,” Manley said.

“We just have to keep pressing forward and putting ourselves in the best position possible, keeping our eyes on what’s going on, so that we can be ready at a moment’s notice if some funding, or land, comes up. We have a study, we have almost all the pre-work done,” Manley added. “But we recognize, even if a piece of land showed up on our door next week… we’re still years away.”

Spending part of his youth in North Bay, new County of Haliburton CAO Gary Dyke said he was partially drawn to the top Highlands municipal job by the lure of returning to rural Ontario.

In recent years, he’s worked for some big municipalities, including North Grenville, the City of Kingston, the City of Cambridge, and Quinte West.

But what he has never done is work for an upper-tier government. The County of Haliburton is an upper-tier government to the lower-tier governments of Algonquin Highlands, Dysart et al, Highlands East and Minden Hills.

“I’m a rural person at heart. I grew up in northern Ontario. I like the rural side of things,” Dyke told The Highlander. “I’ve done rural. I’ve done large urban, and this seemed like a natural progression. The big draw was working at the upper-tier, which I hadn’t done before. So, let’s try something different.”

He said the contrast between being a city manager in a place such as Cambridge, with 145,000 people, versus a County with 20,000 permanent residents is it is more hands-on.

“I would spend 95 per cent of my day going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting and when you get into the smaller municipalities it’s much more tangible. You can physically say ‘I’ve done something’; you’re working on a specific thing versus just oversight.”

He’s also gone from a city of 113 sq. kilometres in Cambridge to a County of more than 4,000 sq. kilometres. He’s wrapping his head around that but it is not completely new.

“It’s what I remember of northern Ontario, or the near north, growing up as a kid. A lot of small communities. It’s about identifying how that positive actually leads to the challenges in today’s organizational piece, with the finances and operational needs and stuff like that, and expectations,” he said.

While he is still getting a handle on some of the challenges facing Haliburton County, he said from a 30,000-foot level, they’re similar to what other regional and rural Ontario towns are facing, namely resources, finances, and attracting and keeping employees.

He said one strength he brings to the job is organizational management. That’s allowed him to form contacts in the public and private sectors. He’s been a Rotarian. He’s always connected with BIAs, the building and development community. He said he has successfully used those contacts’ knowledge and skillset and implemented them in the municipalities he has worked at.

“Which was unheard of when I was starting out. They say the two can’t marry but I think smart ideas are smart ideas. You have to work together to be successful.”

He has been an economic development officer and has a planning background.

“Everything you do has an economic impact, from policies you pass, to your taxes, to your finances. I don’t partial it off as this is economic development. This is my mindset, when you are putting things together, give thought to who are our customers, what are their needs, how do our regulatory responses mesh with their needs so you’re creating a package that makes sense.”

He added he is a collaborative manager, involving everybody in an organization. “Use that knowledge and that information to leverage the strength around you to hopefully create policies and operational things that make sense.”

He is already rolling up his sleeves, reviewing the services delivery review.

“The next step is really going through and quantifying and monetizing those implementations… you have to prioritize them. It would be nice to do everything today but one, you don’t really have the capacity to do it and, two, people are still doing their core job. You throw change on top of it, it’s more work. You have to balance that piece out.”

Dyke said this is likely his last municipal job. “I’m a five-year guy in a sense. I believe people in my position; five years is a pretty good number. You can go beyond but you have to evaluate if you are still making positive movement in the organization. A friend and I say we never want to become custodial CAOs where all you’re doing is keeping the lights on. As long as I’m bringing value, that’s my goal.”