For 10-year-old Atom hockey player Tavia Harris, participating in the all-girls M-Power Hockey summer camp in 2017 was a strong learning experience.

“That was around the time I just started playing hockey. We figured it would be a good experience for me,” Harris said. “It was really fun. We had a lot of ice time and it was just fun playing with a lot of different girls.”

The week-long camp was run by M-Power Hockey founder Mandy Cronin. The Toronto-based hockey school launched its first-ever overnight summer camp in Haliburton in 2017, renting Hockey Haven facilities and using Hockey Haven’s booked ice time at A.J. LaRue Arena.

Cronin said she was drawn to the locale due to its outdoor recreation. Besides hockey skills, the camp also sought to offer campers leadership development, Cronin said.

“I started this business so I could make sure all these young girls would have access to all of us females who now can play professional female hockey,” Cronin said. “A lot of lack of confidence in young girls. My goal is to have more of these camps where we can have young girls come and their mutual connection is hockey.”

The camp in Haliburton succeeded in 2017, Cronin said, attracting approximately 30 attendees.

“Everybody loved the camp, rave reviews, couldn’t wait for the next summer,” Cronin said.

But next summer never came for the camp.

Cronin said there was a split with Hockey Haven. Efforts to secure facilities and ice-time through Hockey Haven did not work out.

Hockey Haven owner Troy Binnie said M-Power wanted to run a camp program different from Hockey Haven’s. He said outside groups that use Hockey Haven’s camp facilities are expected to use its camp programming but can be independent with on-ice activity.

“I like Mandy, I have no problems with her, but I’m running a business,” Binnie said. “I’m also running a brand and our brand is Haliburton Hockey Haven.”

M-Power Hockey instead made arrangements to use Bark Lake Leadership and Conference Centre for camping in 2018.

However, when it came to ice-time at A.J. LaRue Arena, which Hockey Haven had booked for 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. throughout the summer, Binnie said he could not give the time up.

“We use the ice every day,” he said. “Our programs are running all day long … so I’m not going to give up my ice-time.”

Without Hockey Haven, Cronin reached out to Dysart et al to secure summer daytime ice. She said those efforts proved unsuccessful, due to Hockey Haven having daytime ice booked throughout July and August.

“Very disheartening that going all the way up the ranks in this municipality and nobody can negotiate to get us just two hours of ice a day for our girls,” Cronin said.

However, the municipality did offer evening ice-time. After weeks of back-and-forth, Cronin said she was provided with an evening ice slot, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Dysart et al Mayor Andrea Roberts said summer ice would not even be in place at A.J. LaRue Arena were it not for Hockey Haven’s usage. With respect to M-Power Hockey, Roberts noted they were offered some ice time.

“They were offered ice time last year and didn’t take it,” Roberts said in an email.

But Cronin said the evening ice slot was problematic as it would impact the camp’s night activities, as well as being difficult logistically due to the drive from Bark Lake.

Ultimately, Cronin said she had to cancel the 2018 camp due to how long the process took to secure the ice, with prospective campers already signing up for other camps.

Haliburton cottager Christine Jurusik sent two daughters to M-Power Hockey camp in 2017. She said they loved it and were devastated when they found out they could not go back in 2018.

She said girls sleepaway camp is an “entirely different experience” than a co-ed camp and can help teenage girls more easily be themselves.

“I’m saddened to think the people who make the decisions about appropriating ice-time wouldn’t reserve a portion of the ice-time exclusively for girls hockey,” Jurusik said. “Traditionally, girls hockey has taken a second seat to boys hockey with ice-time.”

Binnie said Hockey Haven attracts about 70 girls to its programs each year, offers female instructors and also has girls teams use its facilities. The camp reportedly had a growing enrolment of 650 campers total in 2016.

Binnie said Hockey Haven has not really considered a girls-only hockey camp program like M-Power Hockey ran in 2017.

“There’s a need for those (camps) that are just girls. We’re just not really set up for it,” Binnie said. “You shut down a week, then the boys don’t get to play … how would you do a good balance? The only way you can do a proper balance, I think, is to keep it co-ed and the options are open for anybody.”

Trying to get ice-time for summer 2019 has also proven difficult, Cronin said. She said she first asked the municipality about getting that ice in February 2019, without response, to try to avoid a repeat of 2018’s cancellation.

In an e-mailed comment, Roberts said because of their contract, Hockey Haven still had daytime summer ice booked.

When Cronin reached out to the municipality again in September 2019, she said she was told no ice was available – not even evening ice.

At a Sept. 24 council meeting, Dysart et al council voted to proceed with a new contract for Hockey Haven, which extended their ice-time to include both daytime and evenings in 2019.

Elizabeth Foote, Harris’s mother, said it is a struggle to get fair play for girls hockey in the County of Haliburton. She added ice-time should be allotted for M-Power Hockey’s camp.

“This is just disheartening in 2019,” Foote said. “We’re supposed to be beyond that. We’re supposed to include everybody.”

Residents of Highland Wood Long-Term Care Home were all relocated by Feb. 7 due to leaks in the facility from melting snow and ice.

In a Feb. 6 press release, Halliburton Highlands Health Service (HHHS) said due to the leaks, several Highland Wood residents were being relocated to other parts of the building and neighbouring long-term care facilities. In a follow-up press release Feb. 7, HHHS said all Highland Wood residents were being relocated after a detailed inspection of the roof.

HHHS president and chief executive officer Carolyn Plummer said the leaks in the facility have been extensive.

“In multiple areas, including hallways and resident rooms,” Plummer said in an email. “Our maintenance team has been working around the clock to divert water off the roof and to monitor leaks inside the building as the ice melts and the rain falls. Despite this, there is a risk for more leaks to occur. For this reason, it is no longer safe to keep residents in the facility.”

The roof of the building was scheduled to be repaired in the spring, Plummer said. It is too soon to know the cost of the repair, she further said.

A total of 28 residents in the facility have been relocated to other facilities in the northeast part of the Central East Local Health Integration Network, Plummer said. For privacy reasons, she said she could not provide more details on specific locations.

The Feb. 7 press release said the residents were being “relocated into facilities that will provide the same comfortable home environment that they experienced at Highland Wood.”

Plummer said in an email it is too soon to know what the root cause of the leaks was, but it is likely due to the snow and ice build-up melting with recent milder temperatures and rain.

It is also too soon to know when Highland Wood residents will be able to return, she said.

“We will be doing everything we can to have Highland Wood operational again as quickly as possible, Plummer said in an email.

There has been no relocation at the facility like this before, Plummer said.

She added there has been an outpouring of support from the community in response to the situation.

“Staff from across all departments of the organization, as well as many of our volunteers and the HHHS Foundation staff have stepped in to help out, and we’ve had support from the municipality, EMS, fire department, the team at Extendicare, and many others in the community who have reached out during our time of need,” Plummer said. “This is an incredibly caring and generous community, and I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am for everything that has been done to support us and our residents.”

As Tim Laurence tried to get feeling back in his fingers, after climbing out of the freezing water at Bark Lake, he described the shock as he leapt in.

“Like a slap across the entire body. Just suddenly was on fire,” Laurence said. “Pretty much just disconnected from everything else. It was like 100 per cent focused on the cold.”

It was an experience Laurence willingly exposed himself to as part of the working and playing on ice training course held at the Bark Lake Leadership and Conference Centre Jan. 30. The course, done in partnership with Wilderness Rescue Solutions, offered participants a full day of lessons on safety precautions around frozen bodies of water and how to self-rescue in the event you fall underneath the ice.

The course’s participants were primarily Bark Lake staff but did feature two students from the general public. Wilderness Rescue Solutions operations manager Scott Hembruff said the company has been trying to get more people in the general public to take the course.

“Every night, turn on the news, another snowmobile went through the lake,” Hembruff said. “There’s a real kind of struggle to get that message across to people so they don’t go out on the ice.”

Bark Lake assistant general manager Maria Paterson said the course has been run intermittently at the camp for the past eight years. She said the course offers important skills, especially considering the limits on some firefighting services to do ice rescue. “Cross-country skier, snowshoer, if you’re an ice fisher, if you just enjoy being out on the ice, the safety is in your own hands,” Paterson said.

Laurence said he wanted to take the course as someone who spends a lot of time travelling on ice surfaces.

“This has inherent risks and I do my best to manage those,” he said. “Any additional information is valuable.”

Hembruff also offered a demonstration of self-rescuing after falling beneath lake ice. He said the technique is based on the principal of one-10-one: one minute to control breathing, 10 minutes to pull yourself out before muscles stop working and one hour before hypothermia sets in. He also said it is important to take proper precautions to measure ice before stepping onto it.

Rapid changes in temperature make that important, he added.

“It’s plus five degrees for a week and then its minus 20 for a week,” Hembruff said. “There’s a lot of change and with that change, it’s not as easy to predict what the ice is going to be.”

Laurence said he thinks he is better prepared to handle himself around the ice – and what to do if he falls under it.

“I have a better sense of what’s at play,” he said. “I have a better sense of kind of the magnitude of what I’m dealing with and the thought process involved.”

The City of Kawartha Lakes is seeking community input as it plans for its next decade of work on housing and homelessness in the region.

The city is undertaking online and public consultations to create an update at the midway point of its 10 Year Housing and Homelessness Plan. The plan outlines a broad and strategic direction for addressing housing and homelessness in the area.

Housing Help program supervisor Michelle Corley said the city wants to make a plan that can address a wide range of housing issues.

“The plan is really to drive some of our planning around housing across the whole housing continuum,” Corley said.

The update is mandated by the province and comes five years after the last 10-year housing strategy, started in 2014. That strategy has included goals of increasing the supply of affordable housing, integrating homelessness prevention programs to use resources more effectively and ensuring the long-term viability and affordability of existing social housing.

Corley said the city and county have made good progress on those goals.

“We’ve accomplished a lot, if not most of all of our goals initiated, contained originally within the plan,” Corley said, adding the strategy update will feature new goals. “We’re going to have a lot more outcomes and measurables attached to those goals so we can report back very transparently.”

In 2017, the Kawartha Lakes-Haliburton Housing Corporation assisted 900 households in retaining their housing through homelessness prevention and assisted 32 previously homeless individuals and families in finding housing, according to an annual report on the plan. The plan also looks to set targets on the development of new affordable housing units, such as a three-storey apartment building in Minden Hills slated to be occupied in 2020.

The online survey, going on until the end of February, asks respondents about their details and housing situation while offering a chance for them to provide feedback on any challenges they have faced dealing with any housing problems.

Corley also said the city plans to hold a public consultation in the County of Haliburton about the 10-year Housing and Homelessness Plan March 14, 9 a.m. at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 129 Haliburton.

The data from the survey and consultation will be used to help steer the corporation’s plan update and new goals, she said. The plan will also now extend to 2029, according to the survey website.

“We’re going a little deeper into some things. We want to make sure we’re addressing special populations such as Indigenous,” Corley said. “We are going a little bit deeper on the homelessness side, that is a priority of ours.”

The new plan is expected to be delivered in June, Corley said.

The online survey is available at www.kawarthalakes.ca/hhp.

Dysart et al’s Economic Development Committee is planning to press forward to decide on rules around short-term accommodations.

The committee met for the first time in the new term Jan. 23 and decided to make the issue its first priority.

Committee member and Coun. John Smith said Dysart should press ahead on the file and not count on the actions of neighbouring municipalities.

“Many people in this community are looking for us to take a position on short-term rentals,” he said. “Are we going to continue to allow the wild west or are we going to put some limits and constraints on that?”

Committee member Glenn Evans said short-term rentals remain a big concern.

“This did need to be tackled,” Evans said. “It sort of bubbled to the surface on the last committee and then it just bubbled back down again. It never did get the attention that I think it should have gotten.”

Committee member Dennis Casey noted Highlands East was the reason behind that, as the municipality opted to wait for how Highlands East handled the subject. Highlands East ultimately decided against proceeding with a proposed short-term accommodations bylaw for the time being.

Smith pushed for the committee to aim for a summer 2019 timeline to get new rules in place.

“If we just let it lie for many months, another whole year of the wild west that exists today is, from my perspective, unacceptable,” he said.

However, deputy mayor Patrick Kennedy replied with the need for public consultations, such a timeline would not work. He instead suggested the committee have something to put forward by the start of the new year.

Committee chair Walt McKechnie said it would be a great accomplishment if the committee could start moving to address the issue, adding the number of cottage rentals can impact water health.

“It’s something that has to be addressed right away,” he said. “It’s so important to our community. We’re sitting on such a tremendous amount of water.”

Committee considers new strategy

The committee also reviewed the municipality’s economic development strategy, discussing ways to adjust it and narrow down its 16 separate priorities.

Casey said there is a chance to do something different and improve on the poor reputation the municipality has in business.

“Dysart has a bad reputation of not doing their thing well in terms of how business is being helped,” Casey said during the meeting. “I don’t think there’s anybody in this room that will deny that.”

Nobody on the committee denied Casey’s statement.

He recommended the committee discus how it feels about its business community before adjusting its strategic plan.

“Let’s decide where we’re going and let’s decide what we can do and then put a budget number on it to make the things happen that we want to make happen,” he said.

County council expressed uncertainty over implementing a new transportation system Jan. 23 as it opted to push a decision to budget deliberations.

Council received a final report on a public transportation implementation plan from consultant IBI Group. The report details the methods and costs for the county to create a new public transportation system, which would primarily service Haliburton and Minden but also extend to Dorset and Wilberforce.

In a discussion after the report, Coun. Carol Moffatt said there are a lot of unknowns about proceeding with the project.

“This is a very big and serious topic and a financial hit as well,” she said. “We’d be committing to an unknown, in theory, to build on.”

The presentation from IBI Group highlighted the challenges a new transportation service will face, including an ageing demographic, a sparse population distributed over a large area and dispersed travel patterns which are difficult to service.

A booked, shared ride service was recommended by IBI Group, to be handled by a contractor. The proposed service would run six hours per day, six days per week in a core coverage area around Minden and Haliburton, and three hours per day into Dorset and Wilberforce through Gooderham.

IBI Group senior associate Chris Prentice said the service would have its limitations and require focus to be successful.

“Really got to focus on the area in which the greatest success will occur,” Prentice said. “You really want to walk before you run. You really want to make sure the service is going to be used first before you start adding to it.”

The cost for the county is about $162,000 over a full year of service. This assumes the province provides the maximum gas tax contribution toward the transportation project of $141,654 annually.

County director of planning Charsley White said getting that funding requires a long-term commitment, at least three to five years with an expectation the program would continue beyond that.

“I don’t hear from any member of council that we’re there or anywhere near there,” Warden Liz Danielsen said in reply.

Coun. Andrea Roberts said the county has to be aware the costs could be higher than presented.

“There are lots of variances,” she said. “We know the purpose is a service to the community and so there’s going to be a cost. But I think we need to acknowledge the cost would be much greater than what’s indicated today.”

Roberts also said the Dysart et al council would have to discuss its own DYMO bus should the transportation project go ahead. The implementation plan notes the bus could be repurposed for the new transportation system.

Council voted to receive the report for information.

Danielsen said council would have to look at the structure around the transportation task force and possibly forming a committee on the issue made up of council and the task force members.

“We may want to see how the overall budget stacks up against this and where our priorities are going to be for this year,” she said. “It may be this has to go on a little bit of a slower timeframe.”

County of Haliburton municipalities are calling on the province to give proper consideration of rural and northern municipalities as it undertakes a review of the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund (OMPF).

As of Jan. 24, all four lower-tier municipal councils have voted to send letters to Minister of Finance Vic Fedeli in regards to the review of the OMPF. Fedeli wrote municipalities Dec. 21 that the province is reviewing the OMPF, the province’s main assistance grant to municipalities, as part of its efforts to reduce its deficit.

County of Haliburton Warden Liz Danielsen said the fund is a significant revenue stream for municipalities.

“The thought of losing all of or any substantial portion of our Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund contributions remains of extreme concern to all municipalities that rely heavily on this source of funding,” Danielsen said in an email. “It can amount to as much as 25 per cent of a small municipality’s revenue stream and that loss would have a significant impact on taxes or levels of service being provided.”

In response to Fedeli, Danielsen wrote a letter dated Jan. 14, with all four lower-tier municipalities voting to support it and draft their own similar letters at their latest regular meetings. The letter notes the county and its municipalities receive a total in excess of $7 million in OMPF funding and it is hoped the renewed program will continue to support rural and northern municipalities.

“We understand the program is not functioning as it was originally intended and we must do our part to address the fiscal challenges we face as a province,” Danielsen wrote. “We respectfully request, however, that rural and northern communities continue to receive transfer funds that reflect our different needs and challenges.”

The review has led to a delay in the details on the allotments each municipality reviews under OMPF. Fideli said in the Dec. 21 letter the amount of deficit incurred by the previous government was unsustainable.

“This is why we’re making every effort to restore fiscal balance to the province,” he said. “While we will be operating within a smaller funding envelope, we want to work with you to return the program to what it was initially intended to do – support the Northern and rural municipalities that need it most.”

At the Algonquin Highlands council meeting Jan. 17, treasurer Tammy McKelvey said the delay in the OMPF allotment is affecting budgeting.

“We would normally know about this funding in November, so it has a huge impact,” McKelvey said. “It makes it difficult to move forward with budget.”

Algonquin Highlands Mayor Carol Moffatt said there is some confidence rural municipalities will be safe but they will have to see.

“We’ll wait with bated breath,” she said during the Jan. 17 meeting. “The timing is critical to get the letters in while the review is undertaken.”