The Haliburton Kawartha Northumberland Peterborough health unit (HKNP) is seeking provincial money to advance an “innovative” youth substance use prevention program that it recently launched in Peterborough and plans to expand to Haliburton County.

Dr. Thomas Piggott, HKNP medical officer of health, said the initiative is centred on the Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM), which challenges people who have, work, or interact with kids daily to find different ways of engaging and educating on key issues.

Peterborough Public Health (PPH) began investigating IPM in 2019, before it merged with the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge district health unit (HKPR). Work was paused through the pandemic but picked up again in 2023. A launch event was held in Peterborough April 29.

Piggott feels the program is an “absolute need” rather than “nice-to-have,” given concerning trends in youth behaviour in Peterborough in recent years. The city has the highest rate in Ontario for Cannabisrelated emergency department visits and ranks sixth for self-reported underage drinking. Tobacco use among students in grades 7 to 12 is also above the provincial average.

“If we can find new ways to wrap our communities’ arms around children and really support them, we can send kids on a different trajectory than what we’re seeing for a lot of people now,” Piggott said.

The program is being led locally by health unit staffers Lora Keitel and Martha Faulkner, with about a dozen organizations actively coordinating, including the John Howard Society, United Way, the YMCA, the OPP, and Canadian Mental Health Association.

The team is also working with Planet Youth, an Icelandic-based firm that helps with start-up.

Planet Youth advocates for a 10-step approach. The first phase is all planning, focusing on identifying partners, finding funding sources, and pre-data collection. Faulker said staff has been working on that since last fall and will soon by ready to move onto community participation and engagement.

“We know adolescence is a critical stage in healthy development. Youth are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviors, and experiment with substances for a variety of reasons – social inclusion and belonging, poor mental health, challenges coping with life stress, and just wanting to enjoy something,” Keitel said, noting most of the supports currently in place for struggling youth is reactive, rather than preventative.

“We’re never going to treat our way out of the mental health and substance use crisis we’re in. We need to realign our focus and work to incorporate harm reduction for us to make impactful change in our communities,” she added.

The health unit has identified two secondary schools it will work with initially – Holy Cross and Kenner in Peterborough. Keitel said it’s important youth learn to adopt healthy behaviours in the four areas they spend most of their time – at school, socializing with friends, at home with family, and leisure time.

Faulkner noted there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, with staff to tailor its efforts to individual people and larger situations on a case-by-case basis.

She attended a Planet Youth conference in Iceland in March, where she spoke to people from communities in the U.S., Spain, Romania and South Africa who have adopted IPM.

“All of them have seen a decrease in substance use harms and an increase in overall wellbeing,” Faulkner said.

Faulkner said there will be regular check-ins with parents and youth, as well as community surveys to help form the program’s future direction. She told the HKNP board during a recent meeting there is an intent to expand the program to Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton and Northumberland counties.

Piggott warned it’s not the kind of program to deliver immediate results.

“This work will take years to decades to see the real benefits of, because the challenges we’re seeing today have been decades in the making,” he said.

What started as a practical joke between two buddies on Esson Lake has morphed into a new tradition that Norm DeMelo and Billy McKenzie say will support worthy causes across Haliburton County.

The pair joined forces back in March for an impromptu ice out contest, inviting other lakefront residents to guess what day the last shard of ice dissolved into the water.

Initially, the competition was to be for bragging rights, until DeMelo upped the ante.

“Billy is a guy on our lake who is always posting on [social media] about smoking briskets and pulled porks – so I volunteered him, saying Billy can cook something for the winner,” DeMelo said.

That piqued people’s interest, with more than 40 cottagers participating. Each of them donated at least $10 per guess, raising $500, with the funds to be donated to Central Food Network in Highlands East.

DeMelo said his wife, Allison, volunteers at the Wilberforce food bank and pitched doing something to help the organization in its time of need.

CFN’s executive director, Tina Jackson, recently told The Highlander that her operation is recording approximately 100 extra monthly visits now compared to prepandemic levels. Last year, CFN saw 4,128 visits to its food banks in Wilberforce and Cardiff, averaging 343 stops per month.

“Alison knows all about the demand and how demand has increased so much over the past couple of years,” DeMelo said. “She did her own swim marathon last year, where she asked people to donate and she’d add some distance to her swim. She did 10 kilometres open water swimming – people donated canned goods and other food. We were able to donate two big boxes of food last summer.”

McKenzie said he’s not one to shy away from a challenge, so, after being put on the spot by DeMelo, gladly obliged. He already has an action plan for a 20-pound brisket he’ll cook for the contest’s winner, Chrissy Mackintosh, who was one of three people to guess April 22.

“It will take about 17 hours. It will be seasoned with Billy’s secret rub, AKA ‘Billy’s Love’ and it will be smoked at 225 degrees Fahrenheit over charcoal and applewood,” said Sara Presson, McKenzie’s partner.

DeMelo has agreed to kick in a case of beer, while Mackintosh has invited the two men and their families to enjoy the brisket with them when it’s cooked this summer.

McKenzie, a cottager on the lake who lives full-time in Oshawa, said the contest has helped bring the Esson Lake community closer together. He’s never met DeMelo or Mackintosh in-person but is excited about forming new connections.

Presson said she hopes this will be the first year of many for the ice out competition.

“We think it would be a great tradition – it doesn’t take much time or energy, and it helps our community,” she said.

DeMelo added, “it’s just something fun to get people talking and excited about summer. It’s also about bringing awareness to CFN, our food banks, and the great work they do.”

About this time every spring, Larry Tompkins takes his boat onto Twelve Mile Lake and tests the water; for things such as temperature and dissolved oxygen.

It’s a volunteer gig using equipment purchased by Boshkung, Mountain and Twelve Mile Lake associations in 2019.

He’ll be back on the lake in the fall to take another set of 2025 measurements.

Demonstrating from his pontoon boat, Tompkins explains, “certain fish, primarily lake trout, can only survive at a certain oxygen level. It also gives you an idea of how much bacteria and algae is in your lake because algae eat the oxygen.”

He records his findings with pencil on paper and sends them to the Dorset Environmental Science Centre, as well as U-Links, which partners with 10 lake associations to monitor 24 lakes.

Tompkins is part of the province’s Lake Partner Program (LPP), which the Coalition of Haliburton Property Owners’ Associations (CHA), and the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations (FOCA) say could be at risk.

FOCA says the five-year agreement for the LPP ended in March, “amid turmoil due to a snap provincial election and the appointing of a new minister of environment, conservation and parks.

“Despite repeated reassurances that a new agreement was on its way to FOCA, we have now reached a critical point in the sampling annual cycle, and the 2025 data is at risk unless an agreement with MECP is confirmed now,” FOCA added.

Continuous, long-term data key for scientists

Gary Wheeler, a spokesman for Environment, Conservation and Parks told The Highlander May 12, “the program has not been cancelled and we intend to work with our partners to implement renewed agreements for the 2025 season.”

Jim Prince is with the U-Links program. He said he does not think the LPP will be cancelled, but that this is a preemptive strike by FOCA, similar to one done five years ago, to ensure the program continues. “The value for the cost is enormous and it gives the province the opportunity to say they’re doing something good about the environment.”

FOCA said, “the LPP provides immense value to the public and to Ontario as a whole. It is one of the largest long-term databases on water quality for freshwater lakes … essential for research and analysis conducted by universities, government, community groups, and scientists.”

The water sampling is done by 629 FOCA lake steward volunteers who monitored 546 lakes at 917 sites across the province in 2024. FOCA added although the sampling is done by volunteers, the LPP is not possible without the ministry’s involvement to conduct the lab analysis of the samples, and through financial support of a FOCA employee in Dorset who manages the hundreds of volunteers and coordinates requests for information and outreach about the program.

‘It’s a critical program’

Chair of the CHA, Paul MacInnes said he had sent emails to the MECP and MNR, as “most of the organized lakes in Haliburton County, as with everywhere in Ontario, use the Lake Partner Program, and have been using it for 15-plus years.”

MacInnes said consistency is key. “You need one lab doing all the lakes, 400 and some odd that are in the program in Ontario. It’s a critical program, and it can’t be done any other way.”

He added the timing could not be worse, as “you’re getting very close to the time where the test kits are sent out for the summer.”

He would hate to see the data disrupted, saying scientists need continuous long-term records. “That gives the scientists what they need, and we need those scientists to be coming up with some solutions.”

He said the CHA correspondence to government “focuses on the impact that unhealthy lakes would have on our economy in Muskoka, Haliburton, Kawartha Lakes etc. Our economies are based on healthy lakes.”

Back on Twelve Mile Lake, and Tompkins said he will still test the water this spring and fall, and send the results to U-Links and whomever else wants it.

“It’s still terribly important because without the data – being in business all my years – if you can’t track it, you can’t control it. Basically, it’s the same principle here. If we’re not tracking it, we can’t control it.

“It’s going to affect us as lakefront property owners. You’re sitting here looking at that beautiful lake, and you can’t use it. How frustrating is that going to be? And nobody is going to want to own something that they can’t use.”

The Haliburton Highlands Land Trust’s (HHLT) Joan Duhaime says there’s no guarantee the Dahl Forest will reopen to the public this summer.

The 500-acre site was “badly damaged” during the late-March ice storm, with hundreds of trees and two hydro poles felled, Duhaime said. While not live, she noted wires connecting 10 hydro poles on the property are still lying on the ground.

Because Dahl Forest is privately owned – donated to HHLT by Peter Dahl, his wife Jan, and Nana McKernan in 2009 – responsibility for getting power re-established falls on the property owner. The non-profit has insurance, so costs are covered, but Duhaime said it’s been a challenging few weeks assessing the damages.

“It’s quite a mess. All of the seven trails are impassable – there are literally hundreds of trees down,” Duhaime said. “My husband and I tried to walk in through one trail shortly afterwards. We climbed over two piles of trees, but the path ahead was covered as far as our eyes could see.

“There are quite a few dangerous situations where tree limbs have snapped off but are stuck on other branches 20-feet in the air. With power lines still down, we can’t reopen until we feel the area is safe. We’re estimating for later in the summer, but it’s a big, big question mark. A lot depends on getting hydro workers in.”

Not all of the approximate five-kilometre trail system has been inspected yet, with Duhaime saying HHLT members still can’t get to some of the deeper pathways.

Clean-up started May 3, with about 15 people helping to clear debris from around the Dahls’ home, which they still use part-time. Duhaime said Peter and Jan were home when the storm hit and were trapped for two days. Neighbours pooled together to clear their driveway, which also allowed Duhaime and other HHLT members to access the wider property.

The land trust isn’t responsible for financing repairs to structures and hydro, with insurance taking care of that, but will have to find the money to restore the trails. Duhaime said HHLT is aiming to raise $30,000 for the work.

“We have a lot of work that we need to hire an arborist for,” she said, noting the forest’s red pine population “took a pretty big beating.”

All of those trees were planted by Dahl and his father, William, over 60 years ago. Duhaime said the makeup of Dahl Forest has been forever changed.

“It will be emotional for a lot of people, because it will look different. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s nature. The forest will regenerate, and we’ll get some new growth in there, but it’s such a quick switch from what it was to what it will look like from now on,” Duhaime said.

Given the destruction County-wide, Duhaime said HHLT hopes to partner with U-Links Centre for Community Based Research and Trent University for a post-storm analysis of the Highlands’ red pine plantations.

“It will be really interesting to see over the next 10 years what’s going to happen in some of these areas that used to be densely forested, but now they’re not,” she said.

HHLT’s other sites, like Barnum Creek Nature Reserve, were minimally impacted and are open, Duhaime said.

Donations can be made online via haliburtonlandtrust. ca. Anyone wanting to assist with clean-up can contact admin@haliburtonlandtrust.ca.

The Ontario Fire Marshal’s (OFM) office has confirmed there will be no further investigation into the May 3 fire at the Wigamog Inn site in Haliburton.

Sean Driscoll, OFM spokesperson, told The Highlander in a May 7 email that the provincial watchdog was notified of the fire but will not be following up.

“The Fire Protection and Prevention Act mandates that the OFM conduct an investigation to determine cause, origin and, circumstances of any fire or explosion as deemed necessary,” Driscoll said, indicating the blaze didn’t meet the fire marshal’s criteria for further inspection.

On its website, the OFM states it investigates fires that result in fatality or serious injury; where the loss is significant to the community, at either $1 million in damages or twice the residential average sale price for the area; that involve illegal drug operations; or result in widespread public concern, with environmental hazards listed.

In a recent interview, Jerry Stokes, who resides in the neighbouring Silver Beach subdivision, said he and many neighbours are worried about the impact possible contaminants, such as asbestos and lead-based paints, could have on the atmosphere.

Driscoll did not respond to a follow-up asking if Stokes’ concerns constituted an environmental hazard, though noted in his initial response that police agencies take the lead in criminal investigations and have the power to make the determination of criminality, suspicious or otherwise.

Haliburton Highlands OPP cadet Victoria Preddy said, “police canvassed the area to see if anyone saw suspicious activity around the time of the fire. Police came back with negative results on canvassing… looks like the fire marshal declined to investigate due to no evidence of potential arson being present.”

Meanwhile, Gary Wheeler, spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation, and Parks (MECP), said nobody has contacted the ministry to notify them of the fire. Demolition of the property has been paused since June 2023 after MECP confirmed the presence of two at-risk species, bats and the eastern hognosed snake.

Site owner, Aurora Group, has been told it needs to complete more environmental testing to determine whether any of the species, or their habitat, exist at or near the proposed demolition activity before teardown can resume.

In a May 7 email, Wheeler confirmed that requirement is still in place.

“If demolition activities are still required, Aurora Group or whomever is conducting the demolition is responsible for determining whether the activities require authorization under the Endangered Species Act and take appropriate next steps,” he said.

Dysart et al mayor Murray Fearrey said the township is seeking legal opinion as council considers its next steps. He wants to see the remainder of the site torn down as soon as possible.

“It’s frustrating – council or staff, we’ve either fumbled the ball, or didn’t get the ball in the right position for this to have gone on as long as it has. We’ve got to be nearing the end here now. With this fire, I don’t know what we can do, but council is committed to finding a way to finish this job legally. We’re working on it,” Fearrey said.

With the roof of the main lodge caving in during the fire, the mayor expressed concern over the building’s structural integrity. He suggested any species that were living within the Wig’s confines likely aren’t anymore, questioning the MECP’s decision to uphold study requirements before demolition can proceed.

“Common sense has to prevail here sooner rather than later,” Fearrey said.