The chiefs of the County’s four fire departments are working on a proposal they hope to present to their respective councils this year advocating for improved collaboration between local stations.

Dan Chumbley, who heads up the Dysart department, told The Highlander he tries to assist on calls in Algonquin Highlands, Minden Hills, and Highlands East when needed, via a loose mutual aid agreement – but he feels there’s an opportunity for more enhanced partnerships.

The proposal is for an immediate two-department response for certain calls, such as structure fires, wildland fires, and specialized rescues. He said the idea is the two closest units to an incident would respond. A sixmonth pilot was carried out last year.

“The intent is to get more firefighters for larger-scale incidents responding sooner, by drawing from a bigger pool,” Chumbley said. “The increased number of call outs make it harder for the current firefighters to attend everything.”

The Dysart station responded to 444 emergency calls in 2024, up around five per cent from 2023 and 15 per cent from 2022.

The department is staffed almost exclusively by volunteers, who often rush from their day jobs, or from home, to respond when calls come in. Chumbley said he has a full quota of 28 members, having added three last year to replace retirees. All volunteers are paid an hourly rate.

“Some can reorganize their workload and respond after a short delay, but it is still a delay,” Chumbley said. “Call outs can happen at any time and for a large variety of reasons. We sometimes go days without hearing our pagers, and then we will have a short burst of activity all at once.”

That was the case the weekend of Jan. 18 and 19, with Dysart firefighters logging over 130 hours responding to seven calls. The situation is a little more desperate in Algonquin Highlands, according to its chief Mike French. Addressing council at a Jan. 16 meeting, he said the department was having issues responding effectively to calls through Station 80 in Stanhope due to a lack of volunteers.

“We seem to have an open door going through – we lose one, we gain one. Every time we seem like we’re making some progress, another person leaves,” French said. “I don’t know the reasoning behind it.

“Station 60 (Dorset) and Station 70 (Oxtongue Lake) get good responses to all calls. We are low for Station 80. We don’t have the numbers we anticipate we should have.”

French noted medical-related response times are good, with those requiring four-to-five volunteers. Fires are a different animal, though, usually requiring at least double that amount.

As such, any time a call comes through Station 80, French said Dorset-based volunteers will also respond. He noted there’s also an agreement with Minden Hills for added assistance. French said that’s reciprocated any time there’s an emergency in Minden.

There was a 4.7 per cent increase in call volume in Algonquin Highlands in 2024, up to 334 from 316 the previous year. Of those, 45 were fire-related responses.

Minden, HE ‘steady’

Don Kruger, chief of the Minden department, said it has been a steady couple of years – reporting the exact same number of callouts in 2023 and 2024, with 376 emergencies. He estimated about 50 per cent were medical.

There is one volunteer vacancy, with 24 of 25 roster spots filled. Being the closest department to the City of Kawartha Lakes, Kruger said he also has a mutual aid agreement there.

It’s been a busy start to the new year – Kruger said over the past five years the department has averaged 16 calls in January. As of Jan. 20, they were already at 23.

In Highlands East, chief Chris Baughman said there are around 300 calls annually. He estimates 55 to 60 per cent are medical related.

His department has an active roster of 45 volunteers but can carry up to 50. “We are always interested in adding a befitting new candidate,” Baughman said.

He believes there would be a benefit to instituting a permanent two-department response in the County.

“It’ll be up to councils to decide,” he said.

Adventurer Jim Baird said the Haliburton Highlands stands up against any of the breathtaking landscapes he’s seen traversing some of the country’s most renowned natural havens – including the Canadian Arctic.

Familiar to fans of the National Geographic series Home in the Wild and the History Channel’s reality series Alone, where he was the season four winner, Baird has forged a reputation as one of Canada’s top outdoorsmen over the past decade.

A northern Ontario native, residing on the Magnetawan River north of Parry Sound, Baird has been a frequent visitor to Haliburton Forest recently – taking in annual trips to the 100,000-acre nature reserve. He spent three nights sleeping under the stars on MacDonald Lake, one of the property’s northernmost water bodies, Jan. 13-15.

Baird said he was filming content for his YouTube channel ‘Jim Baird-Adventurer’, which boasts 193,000 subscribers.

“I do a lot of expeditionary-type trips in remote areas – I’ve done a lot of Arctic treks, distant parts of northern Ontario, and out in Alaska… but in terms of the myriads of beautiful lakes, opportunities for ice fishing and sledding, it’s kind of hard to beat the Haliburton Forest,” Baird told The Highlander last week.

He spent time traversing the property with Steve Lukacic, an ice fishing guide with Yours Outdoors who runs excursions at the Forest. Baird said the pair have been friends for years after connecting while both freelanced for Outdoor Canada, a monthly fishing and hunting magazine.

They visited numerous lakes, catching lake, brook and rainbow trout – the biggest about three-and-a-half-pounds, Baird said. The pair ate some of what they caught, frying the fish the old-fashioned way – skewered on some sticks over a hastily thrown together fire. “They looked pretty gnarly, some people would have been questioning it, but the smoky flavour was just phenomenal,” Baird said.

His first visit came in 2022. Wanting to get an up-close look at Canada’s largest privately-owned nature reserve, he brought his wife and two children along for a relaxing family vacation. The reality was anything but, he recalls.

An ice rainstorm hit the morning of their arrival, making their foot journey to the offgrid cabin they’d rented particularly dicey. “The road was so slick you could have ice skated on it. Fortunately, we had cleats,” Baird said.

They eventually made it to their destination and spent a few days exploring the property. “One of the best trips we’ve done… and we later learned we had almost the entire place to ourselves,” Baird said, with the Forest cancelling all other reservations due to the weather.

The secluded spot he set up on MacDonald Lake is a new feature, with the Forest expanding its camping options last week. Baird was the first to try it out.

There are lots of other trips planned this year – remote ice fishing in Algoma District, a solo canoe trip in the Northwest Territories, and moose hunting in Newfoundland. Baird is also taking his brother, Ted, to the Grand Canyon and Hudson Bay.

As is becoming tradition, he’ll return to Haliburton County next year.

“Most of the time when someone is looking to experience nature, to find top quality ice fishing they don’t drive south – Haliburton is about two hours down for me, so that should give you an idea of how good that spot really is,” Baird said.

From facing road rage, to white knuckle driving experiences, and a near-miss lightning strike in Glebe Park, Richard van Nood has seen it all in 35 years at the helm of Haliburton County’s only driving school.

After leaving the military as a radio operator, van Nood was perusing the classifieds in an Oakville newspaper when he came across a job looking for someone who loved driving. “I’ve always loved driving,” he says in a chat at Castle Antiques in downtown Haliburton. He applied and got the job with Young Drivers of Canada in Mississauga in 1983. He won instructor of the year twice at that office; became an in-class instructor in 1985 after logging 2,000 hours of car work; and taught other instructors.

He and wife, Shelley, moved to Haliburton in 1988. Shelley was born and raised in the Highlands.

At the time, the high school offered driver training that was subsidized by the Ontario government, so van Nood got into commercial printing for a spell. He then took on part-time work teaching in-class and in-car based out of Hal High in 1990. It was in 1996 that he opened The Driver’s Edge Driver Training after the NDP government cancelled funding of driver education in the province.

Since then, he said he has no idea how many people he has taught to drive. When it is suggested “thousands” he said that could be right. He is now teaching the children of his first students, and former students have come up to tell them how many years they have been driving accident-free.

At the time of the interview, he had 37 students on the go; and was about to launch a new course to add another 20.

While many are 16 and 17-year-olds, he said he has some older students, including people who have moved to the Highlands from the city and now have to drive as there is no public transit.

“I meet people from all walks of life, 16-year-olds to 80-year-olds, male, female, new Canadians.”

Despite the busyness of the full-time job, van Nood said he loves that he can pick his own hours, which was handy when he and Shelley’s children were growing up.

“For the most part, I have enjoyed all of the students I have taught. Some are more challenging, as they may have no concept of driving and are back-and-forth on the road.” He finds kids in Haliburton have better driving sense as they are exposed to motorized vehicles, such as four-wheelers, snowmachines, and even tractors, before getting behind the wheel of a car.

Memorable moments

His most “white knuckle” experience was when a student driver in his Mercury Mystique was driving on Bobcaygeon Road and hit the ditch in winter; “next thing you know, a hydro pole was going past.” After that, he added skid control to her lesson.

Another time, his student driver was turning in downtown Haliburton but was taking a bit long, forcing a driver behind to slow down. The other driver tailgated them to the high school, cutting in front and jamming on his brakes. After, van Nood followed the guy; to tell him it was not a great idea. Clearly it was a student driver and they could have panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake.

“He didn’t give me a chance; up one side and down the other side of me, shouting ‘you should be banned from teaching. I should report you to the police.’ Van Nood walked away, knowing, “I’m not going to make headway with this gent.”

There was a fateful day after a driving lesson on the gravel road in Glebe Park. The skies opened up as van Nood was about to pick up pylons. He got back in the car just as a lighting strike hit the ground by the nearest cone. “You could smell the burning from the lightning strike. I made the right choice.” Early in his career, he also got the chance to teach a deaf student. But first, he had to learn some sign language for words such as turn and brake. Because the student was born deaf, van Nood said he had excellent observation skills. He got his license.

Changes

He has seen a lot of changes in the industry over the years. Probationary driver is now graduated licencing. There must be 10 hours of car work, up from eight. Government bodies have changed and the Ontario government sold driver testing rights to DriveTest.

He would like to see tougher testing standards, noting tests are just 17 minutes long; improved quality control for driving schools; and more parent involvement. He said parents tell him they are too nervous to drive with their teens, but seem content to let them drive on their own after 10 hours in a car. He added parents have to be driving role models. He allowed his kids to get behind the wheel of his car on their property. Mind you, his car had dual brakes. However, they would do a serpentine course around the trees.

He’s asked if it’s easier to learn driving in rural and regional areas, such as Haliburton County but says the intersection of Hwy. 118 and Highland Street in downtown Haliburton is a challenge, particularly in summer and Christmas holidays.

He’s asked if kids are more distracted, and tells the story of seeing a driver in the GTA behind the wheel while reading a novel. “Distracted driving has always been there and is always going to be there.”

As for car features that make it easier for students, he notes they can’t use things like automatic reverse park when doing driving tests.

Looking back on his career, van Nood says, “It’s not going to make me rich, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the freedom of being my own businessman. I like the fact I meet so many different people. I like the scenery from my office. I think it would drive me crazy being in an office looking at the same four walls all day long. I get to drive around. I’m everywhere.”

Honourary Highlanders, Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan, will be sharing the story of a winter renovation they did on Drag Lake when Paramount+ debuts Colin & Justin’s Sub-Zero Reno starting Jan. 31.

According to Farpoint Films, the series showcases “the relentless pursuit of perfection as the designers face numerous obstacles, including blizzards, dangerous roads, and a rapidly ticking clock.

“From fraught deliveries and icy conditions to the custom designs required for the new space, every step of the renovation is pressure-filled. But the two are no stranger to adversity and are determined to overcome delays, unpredictable weather and their own demanding personalities.”

Known for Hotel Hell, Cabin Pressure, Great Canadian Cottages, Reno Rumble (Australia) and their Globe and Mail book Escapology, the new series follows the couple as they embark on renovating their dream home in Haliburton during winter; a first for the veteran designers.

It is a six-part series following their purchase of a dilapidated cabin.

McAllister and Ryan said, “the challenge nearly destroyed us physically, emotionally, and financially. As temperatures plummeted, it seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, but we had a dream of turning this cottage into the home of our dreams.”

Vanessa Case, vice president of content at Paramount+ and Pluto TV Canada added, “we are excited to bring beloved design duo and honourary Canadians Colin and Justin to Paramount+.

“Renowned for their incredible renovation work and eccentric personalities, this series takes their talents to a new extreme, set against one of Canada’s most beautiful wilderness backdrops.”