Ontario Trails News - Trailhead Hastings, Trails and Events Added, Be a Friend of Trails and more about Ontario Trails!

Ontario Trails Adds More Events!

The Ontario Trails Council is pleased that our event calendar continues to have a healthy living focus and we would like to thank The Running Room for their timely submissions.

Is your New Year’s resolution to quit smoking? Whether your motivation is to get healthy or save money, to quit smoking for a loved one or for yourself. The important thing is you’ve made the decision to quit. Exercising to quit smoking?

Yes! The program has been shown to help smokers cope with discomfort and cravings through its simple step-by-step approach to building up walking or running stamina while cutting down and quitting smoking.

This year, walk or run to a smoke-free life by joining Run to Quit at: The Running Room Whitby 80 Thickson Rd South Whitby, ON L1N 7T2 Start Date: April 11, 2017 For more information visit runtoquit.com or call (905) 665-2060.

Also try their Virtual Run to Quit Program!
http://www.ontariotrails.on.ca/connect/events/view/5142

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Ontario Trails Adds More Trails!
The Ontario Trails Council is pleased to be continually updating its website with more trails, this week we are adding Merv's Landing, Wemtagoosh Falls Trail and Hardy Lake Trail in the Township of Muskoka Lakes. Thanks to all the great folks that continue to add trails to our inventory for everybody to access!

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Merv's Landing

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Hardy Lake Trail - Township of Muskoka Lakes

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Wemtagoosh Falls Trail

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Trailhead Hastings!

In Canada and Ontario, Trails are big business. Trailhead Hastings will bring the business of trails into local and county focus.

In Ontario there are 430 communities with trails, in all regions, supporting over 20 types of activities.
The annual provincial economic impact of recreational trails is approximately $9.4 billion – hiking $1.32B, snowmobiling $1.2B, other motorized, $1B, fundraising through trails, $1.5B, equestrian, $2B, and the Trans Canada Trail when connected – $2.4B.

Join us at Trailhead Hastings to ask and get answers to questions such as – What’s the capitalization on value of Hastings Trails? Is Hastings generating its portion of the trails economy relative to the rest of the province? Are we keeping pace with other places? Are we ahead or behind?, are we generating our fair share of investment? Where is the trail travel dollar going? – Belleville, Centre Hastings, North Hastings, Bancroft -or out of the county? How are we, and who is, measuring and supporting this economy?

Ontario Trails Council leads the way in Ontario and Nationally in making communities work though trails. We’ve led the way in communities learning and understanding the benefit of building complete trail systems.

In Ontario there are roughly 108 projects each year, worth $21M of capital investment, improvement and trail revitalization. What amount of this economy happens in Hastings?
Is Hastings, and the places in it –  a destination, an experience or a flow through point for traffic that starts and ends elsewhere? Are we developing links? Do dollars stay here, or do they pass us by? How do we get the trail dollar to support our county?


How do we develop links, such as through Tyendinaga to Deseronto, dynamic trail centres in Wollaston, Coe Hill, Gilmour,, through Apsley to points west, or Bancroft to Denbigh, or from Whitney to Lake St. Peter.

Join us as the Ontario Trails Council brings knowledge experts from across Ontario and Canada – developers of word class trails systems – as they lend our communities their knowledge so Hastings can have an improved, maximized, robust, sustainable trails economy, one that achieves better health, better mental health, savings on health care, more active kids and a better environment – through existing and future greenways and trails.

If you are a trail user, club supporter, volunteer, county staff in health, economic development, tourism, or a land manager of parks, county forest, conservation area or federal lands – you will want to join us in order to be part of our discussion on Hastings Centric development plans, supportive policies, leading maintenance techniques, as well as  opportunities for new services, supported business, revitalized communities.

Since 2005 the Ontario Trails Council has worked to secure $125 million in Ministry of Tourism Culture and Sport funding, the Ontario Trails Strategy, the Ontario Trails Act, supported over $4 million in grants from Great Lakes Guardian, FedNor, Ontario Heritage, Ministry of Transportation and Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry Investments, developed trails through INAC Funds with first Nations,  gained supportive grants for our partners from CDFC, and Ontario Trillium Foundation, all the while putting over 800 Ontarians to work through federal economic stimulus funds of $4 million dollars, matched by $4 million in local supports.


If you want more opportunity for Hastings county, and make a difference with Ontario Trails support, join us in Bancroft, March 1st at Trailhead Hastings.
You’ll be glad you did!

Add/Edit Trails

An important part of the Refreshed OTC Web site will be a dynamic page dedicated to each trail. It is important that you give us as much information as possible - this will be the only source for creating your dedicated page on the OTC Website. If we don't get the information from you, it won't make it onto the site. If you have any questions about the form, please contact Patrick at 613-484-1140. Thank you for taking the time to add or edit your trail on the Ontario Trails Council Web site.


 

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Be a Friend of Trails

We invite all trail users to support the work of the Ontario Trails Council. As a registered charity we do our community work based on the support of member organizations, individuals and some government grants. We do the work, in the end for the individual families and folks that use the trails every day. Please consider supporting us as your thanks for your trails. Thank you.