FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY

FEATURE Ken Lawday, Trail Director Bruce Trail Conservancy Iroquoia Club PO Box 857 Hamilton, ON, L8N 3N9 Contact: Erin VanderVeen Phone: (613) 868-3804 E-mail: erin.vanderveen@mohawkcollege.ca

Iroquoia Club has their work cut out for them due to ice storms and urban expansion
Hamilton, ON March 18, 2014 Imagine one, small, mud puddle. Now, imagine hiking along a beautiful trail. Its April; winter has passed and you are enjoying the beginning of what feels like a perfect spring season. You are under a canopy of trees, surrounded by birds chirping and a warm breeze brushing against you. Suddenly, you come across that one, small, mud puddle. Do you choose the strenuous and oh-so-difficult option and jump, over the puddle, risking the chance that your heel may not make the full hurdle and the mud splatters that will follow as a result? Or, will you go around the puddle? This option involves making your own path, one that veers off the course laid out for you. But in doing so, you have saved yourself the energy that it would have taken to jump and the cost of cleaning mud off your shoes and pants. What do you choose? Ken Lawday spoke of this scenario as a way of explaining the importance of trail maintenance. Lawday is the Trail Director for the one of the Bruce Trail Conservancys nine clubs, the Iroquoia Club, and has been volunteering for the Club for over 20 years. Lawday explains that if a puddle is not taken care of, it will spread and ruin that piece of the trail. Fortunately, the Iroquoia Club is around to not only maintain the Trail, but to preserve the Trail amidst urban expansion. -more-

FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES

For months, the Trail has been mainly inaccessible due to the December ice storm that caused over 400,000 people in Ontario to go without power for days and took down thousands of trees. Since the beginning of January, Club volunteers have been out every single week to clean up the mess the ice storm had left behind on the Trail. This is not a simple task. The Bruce Trail is 890 kilometers long from Niagara to Tobermory and, according to Lawday, the hardest hit section of the trail happened to be in the Iroquoia Clubs section. The Clubs part of the trail is 160 kilometers long and is found between Grimsby and Milton. As a Club, we have spent 1,100 hours combined, cleaning up the Trail and clearing all the blockages, states Lawday. It has been three months since the ice storm and the Trail is finally cleared. That amount of time may seem like a lot but that is until you understand the amount of effort it takes to clear an area. The Club goes out in work parties of about 15-20 volunteers each week and they spend hours clearing the Trail. However, the ice storm made this years cleanup one of the worst Lawday has seen. A lot of the problem and work has been that stuff came down during the ice storm, and froze into the ground, says Lawday. Therefore, not only are work parties cutting what they can see, they either have to try and tug everything out of the frozen ground or they have to cut up every little twig in order to free it. Lawday goes on to say with humility and with a tiny bit of pride coming through, that, It was at 3:30 p.m. on Mar. 11 at Kelso Conservation Area, that the Iroquoia Clubs clean-up volunteers finally finished cleaning the trail from the December ice storm.

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FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES

Unfortunately, trail maintenance is not the only challenges Lawday and other Club volunteers have had to deal with this year. The Iroquoia Club has far more of an urban setting than the other clubs, says Lawday. Right now, one of my biggest challenges is to preserve the Trail given the amount of urban expansion that is happening. One example of urban expansion that affects the trail is Waterdown. Waterdown is in the process of putting in many major subdivisions, thereby creating a need for major road development. Two-lane roads will become four-lane or even seven-lane roads however; parts of the Trail go across these roads. Ken spends a lot of his time now involved in environmental assessments with municipalities and trying to fight for the preservation of the trail. His goal is to impress upon the municipalities the importance of the Trails. A lot of the municipalities, as well as looking at urban development, are also at the same time, trying to expand their active transportation initiatives, which includes getting people out walking. The Trail is an essential part of that active transportation initiative. So, its really about trying to impress upon them that its not just us trying to tell them what we want; its really what they are also trying to promote. One solution Lawday is looking at is the development of bridge over the lanes. Unfortunately, that is a costly project and it will involve a lot more discussions. Finally, what happens if you decide to walk around the mud puddle? It spreads. The path you make around the puddle will join with the mud puddle to create a bigger puddle. Eventually, people walk around that puddle. Then, that new path joins with the puddle to create an even bigger puddle. In time, that one, small, mud puddle, will have developed and expanded into something that people will no longer be able to get around. The good news is, there are organizations like the Bruce Trail Conservancys Iroquoia Club and people like Ken Lawday, who volunteer their time and their efforts, to take care of and maintain the expansion. -30-