Proponents of the Granite Shores development on Centre Lake in Highlands East brought a revised plan to council May 14 in hopes of getting the stalled project back on the books.

John Ariens, of Arcadis, said the purpose of his delegation was to present the altered drawings, he hoped, “will address the concerns raised by council and members of the public previously.”

He asked council to consider his slide deck, “and the benefits (the development will) bring, and hold another public meeting, and obtain public input, and make a determination of the desirability of this project either with or without a Crown reserve being in place, and, of course, also to make a final determination on a road closing that’s required.”

He was representing a GTA-based client who has owned the property for more than 10 years. “Their goal has always been to develop a seasonal cottage development along Centre Lake, looking to use the balance of the land for a maple syrup harvesting facility.”

Ariens said the client has other developments in the region, including on Bigfools Lake in Hastings County and in Bancroft. The Highlands East property is just west of Cardiff, and comprises three separate parcels, separated by a road allowance. It’s just under 1,100 acres, and along the lake is a 200-foot wide Crown reserve.

He said the plan fits in with the County’s and township’s official plans.

One of the obstacles has been a 200-foot Crown reserve on the lake, which Ariens said was established when the province sold mining rights, to protect the lake from mining activity. He said his client had since purchased the mineral rights, donating them back to the province.

“So, the need for the Crown reserve is no longer there to protect the lake from any mining activity. The only real function that the Crown reserve has is that it does provide public access to the lake.”

The original paperwork called for cottage development along Centre Lake with a couple of backlots. There was a block of land earmarked for a resort and wellness centre and spa, which would have included about 60 suites and 28 lots for a total development of 88 units. A Hwy. 118 commercial block was also in the original plans.

At a public meeting on the Crown reserve disposition a few years ago, concerns were raised about public access to the lake, possible destruction of the natural environment, the scale of the development and potential impacts from radon gas.

Council did not support removal of the Crown reserve, or the Crown land use policy amendment. It said the development was too intense, and while access points would remain open, the character of the lake would change, with potential for negative adverse impacts.

Ariens said ever since, “the application has stood still.”

However, he said they have been working on the redesign. They have removed the wellness centre and resort and spa component, added a few more shoreline lots, and now sit at 33 lots.

He also addressed public access to the lake, saying it’s now a narrow, steep driveway, with no real parking area and poor sightlines.

“What our client is prepared to do is to enhance that public access by coming in off the condominium road to provide direct access to the lake together with a parking area, picnic area, possible camping spots, and really enhance the public access to that particular lake.”

Deputy mayor Cec Ryall said the public was concerned about not just access to the lake, but a developer over-developing the shoreline.

Ariens said there could be setbacks established, “preventing boathouses, gazebos, that type of encroachment and maintaining that vegetative shoreline, which is so important for maintaining the quality of the lake. The removal of the reserve doesn’t automatically mean that people can go nuts on that particular shoreline, they would still be subject to normal and proper environmental controls.”

A group of Haliburton Highlands Secondary School (HHSS) students were attracted to the Haliburton Crew booth at the Haliburton County Home Builders Association (HCHBA) job fair May 8.

Handed a set of plans, and instructed to use Styrofoam blocks, they began building a basement foundation.

Allie Todd was one of them. In between placing blocks, she said, “I think it is actually really fun and interesting. I had no idea how to even think about building a basement. It’s a great way to show kids what this job would really be about. I thought it was a great learning experience.”

Todd said she has considered working in the trades, and wants to learn more about the prospect. She still has questions but, “I’m really a hands-on person. I don’t like textbook stuff. This might be something I’m kind of interested in doing.”

The HCHBA’s Aggie Tose said 32 companies attended the job fair in the high school gym last Wednesday.

“It’s been very successful,” she said, with companies looking for co-op students and apprentices.

She added the home builders and school had communicated well in advance so the high school knew who was coming, and what they were going to be offering.

Commenting on the new fast-track skilled trades program, Tose said there would be room for students “that want to work” in construction.

Angie Horner-Xerri was there from Quantum Passivhaus in Minden.

“It’s a community thing and it’s outreach to kids to know what is possible in terms of work, whether it’s with us or someone else,” Horner-Xerri said of the business’ first time attendance.

She added, “we like people to know prefabricated building is an industry of its own. Also, because we’re in Minden, and one of the local folks that do it, we want people to know we’re here, and this is a great opportunity for us as well to meet all the kids.”

Quantum Passivhaus’ human resources person, Jenna Terrill, said while they now employ 24 people, they are looking for carpenters, project coordinators, and project managers.

Horner-Xerri added they enjoyed talking to the other construction professionals as well, so the day served as a networking platform for employers.

And it wasn’t just those in the construction and renovation industries looking for help. Included in the vendors were Dysart et al council, EMS, Fleming College, Into the Blue Pizza and more.

Tori Hawley credits the education she received at Haliburton Highlands Secondary School, as well as J. Douglas Hodgson Elementary School, with springboarding her towards her goal of international law work.

Now 25, Hawley recently completed an internship with the head judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

She is now back in Liverpool, UK, the city in which she graduated with a university law degree, and is working towards her qualification exams, and becoming licensed. She is also toiling for a start-up firm, with hopes of joining a larger outfit in London in the next year or two.

Speaking with The Highlander from Liverpool recently, Hawley talked about her “amazing experience” with the European Court of Human Rights, where she interned for four months.

Going into it, she didn’t know what to expect. “I was going to be an intern. I would say my expectations were more like, ‘I’m going to be getting coffee,’ but that was so not it.”

The daughter of Sean and Marilyn Hawley said the European Court of Human Rights is a “huge institution that is super busy, so their interns are really important.”

Within her first week, she was editing a speech for the president of the court, Siofra O’Leary, who has both judicial and political responsibilities. Hawley said she mostly supported the political functions. That first week, she also prepared answers for an interview O’Leary was preparing for.

She recalled being afraid of the responsibility that comes with editing the speech of such a high-ranking world figure. Within two to three weeks, she was writing “from scratch, to ambassadors and judges, or briefing notes if political figures were coming to the court. It was incredible.” She added, “the level of responsibility, and the significance of the tasks, was way beyond what I thought it was going to be.”

She felt the University of Liverpool law school had prepared her, though.

The work of the Court is weighty. When Hawley was there, they heard cases concerning Russia and Ukraine. The entity is still dealing with Russian cases even though the country has now been expelled from the European Court of Human Rights. “There’s individuals challenging governments, but there’s also governments challenging each other, so there’s these really complicated cases.”

One ongoing case when Hawley was there stemmed from six Portuguese youth filing a complaint against 33 countries, alleging the respondents had violated human rights by failing to take sufficient action on climate change, and seeking an order requiring them to take more ambitious action.

“It was a super, super busy day at the court, which was full of people coming to watch. I was greeting journalists and showing them where they would be viewing the hearing. It was a really big deal.”

She also experienced life in Strasbourg, where she met peers from all over the world.

“Growing up in Haliburton, I have a bit of a preference for smaller cities. I just find them a bit easier to get used to. Strasbourg was perfect because it’s very quaint. But there’s so much going on at the same time. And you’re so close to everything.”

She’ll continue with the start-up in Liverpool with plans to move to the London firm in a year or two to gain more on-the-job experience towards getting her license. Her dream remains international law.

“I think that growing up in Haliburton, I always had this curiosity about the rest of the world. I’ve always just been a really motivated and ambitious person. I’m career-oriented. I like having big goals. And what bigger goal could you have than an international career? It’s exciting to me.

“I also love people. It’s just really powerful and beautiful to connect with people who have such different backgrounds. It’s just an amazing experience to realize how similar we all are even though we have all of these differences that make us so unique.”

She thinks she is in the perfect field. She says she is eternally optimistic but also realistic. She said the law is intellectually rigorous. “You’re thinking really hard about these systems and how they’re working and where they’re going. But, at the same time, you’re thinking about the solutions to problems. I want to do good in the world and I want to use my skills for that.”

When Hawley graduated from HHSS, she wrote a letter to her Grade 7 teacher, Laurie Bowker at JDH. “She had made such an impression on me.” She thanked the teacher for giving her confidence and said her goal was to work in an international court. “It’s really cool that I pulled it off.”

When Doug Tindal told his boss he was going to retire in a year’s time, the Algonquin Highlands writer says, “literally, the next day, I started having a creative outpouring. I would wake up early with ideas that had to be written down.”

Although he had a degree in journalism and had written magazine features, fiction was a relatively new foray.

Sitting in the living room of Oakview Coliving, he adds that he wrote all kinds of things; plays, started novels, poetry, short stories. He was in a writer’s group.

When he presented the first Wine on the Porch short story, the group told him he had found his voice.

After a while, he wrote another one, and another one. “Eventually, it occurred to me there might be a collection there.”

He had about eight stories, 35,000 words in total, and went to a writer’s conference. He spoke with editors and agents and received advice on how to proceed. He left the conference with a goal to pen another 50,000 words and have a manuscript ready in a year.

“That was February of 2020,” he says with a chuckle. “I kept writing, but I couldn’t write another Wine on the Porch story for four months because I had to decide, ‘is this a universe in which COVID doesn’t happen, or has it not happened yet, or has it already happened?’ And we didn’t know what we were dealing with.”

Instead, he wrote dystopia. In the end, about one-third of the stories are pre-COVID, one-third during, and one-third after.

The manuscript was completed by August 2022 and published in February 2023.

“The basic setup is, this is a group of seniors, and a couple of seniors-in-training, who have decided to set up a coliving situation.”

He and his wife were attempting to do that in Toronto. So, he used that as a model for the stories. The characters are fictitious. “It’s the adventures of this group of seniors living together.”

He adds the easiest way to describe it is for people who remember Stuart McLean’s The Vinyl Cafe on CBC radio. “The kind of stories Dave and Morley might have told, if they’d had the chance to grow old with their friends.

“They have the kind of challenges that you might imagine of a whole bunch of people who are mostly strangers, making a decision to live together, and then having to figure out how to make that work.”

He said the feedback he gets is that readers laugh out loud. That being said, there are serious topics. For example, one story involves a discussion about natural burials.

He said people do not always think about their older years. “They have a vision of themselves in vigorous retirement, and then they cut to an image of themselves drooling in a wheelchair, and they don’t think anything about how they’re going to deal with the interim.”

He is passionate about the coliving model. He wanted to show in the stories what it might look like to help people imagine it.

He is now working on volume two, with six stories complete. He is also working on a play, and acting.

The paperback is available from Master’s Book Store. Paperback plus ebook are available from Amazon.