ONTARIO TRAILS COUNCIL NEWSLETTER - March 9, 2026
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• Winter Activity on Ontario Trails • Trail Projects • Updates • Member Services •
 Ontario Trails Council is a charity, led by a volunteer board of directors, that promotes the use, management, development, and preservation of trails and trail-based activities in Ontario.
Please consider supporting us through a donation or a membership. Thanks.
OTC President’s Corner
March 2026
As many of us now say, “It’s been a minute” since we last connected and so it has. As a
Canadian it would be strange of me not to inject something about the weather – so
however you experienced winter in Ontario this season, I’m hoping you found a way to
enjoy it outdoors on a trail! Spring is near and we all can feel the sun’s warmth again. It
is beginning to feel like a new day in more ways than a seasonal change. I’ll give you a
simple example.
Since the summer of 2000, the Ontario Trails Council (OTC) and the
Trans Canada Trail (TCT) decided it was in their best interest to each take a different
“fork in the trail”. The trail each agency followed diverged but were never out of sight
and often not out of step with each other’s forward direction. Time passed, trail leaders
moved on, history faded and those two forks in the trail, found their way back to a
single, more established pathway.
If you heard it from someone else, this should help make it clear: the Ontario Trails
Council is once again working with the Trans Canada Trail on trail related challenges to
find solutions and improve trail operations and the user experience here in Ontario. We
need each other – we always have. Starting this week, the OTC is engaging with local
trail champions in Durham Region, near Uxbridge – Trails Capital of Canada to knit
together a solution that will stabilize the management of the Beaver River Wetland Trail
– a 22km TCT section, in collaboration and with the support of the Trans Canada Trail.
As an OTC member, trail manager and/or trail enthusiast you may have questions about
what changed? What took you so long? How do we tap into this kind of OTC/TCT
assistance? What I can tell you here is that this renewed arrangement was long in the
making, fostered by many over many years and I’d be happy to share more about how it
came to be in several ways. First, I’d like to thank Patrick Connor (OTC Executive
Director) and Kim Goodman (OTC Board Member) for their resilience, openness and
aim to support this renewed relationship with the Trans Canada Trail team.
Now as for the options to connect and learn more see below:
Option 1: reach out and email me president@ontariotrails.ca. If my inbox is
overwhelmed by your questions, that’ll be a happy problem because we’ll get to meet
each other.
Option 2: reach out to Patrick Connor (Executive Director) and ask about membership
renewal, assistance and support – he’d love to get in touch. execdir@ontariotrails.ca
Option 3: Consider attending the Canadian Trail Summit in Winnipeg June 16-19
https://canadiantrailsummit.ca/ being hosted by Trans Canada Trail. This is a great
chance to catch up, connect, talk trail challenges and solutions. Also, The Forks in
Winnipeg is an iconic destination in Canada, especially in June – not to be missed.
Can’t make the Summit but would still like to support it? We have an OTC GoFundMe
account set up below, the aim is to use the funds raised to offset the costs of 10 Ontario
attendees to the conference. We’d love the support, but even better is to have 10 reps
from Ontario attend and bring back the learning here.
Safe, accessible and enjoyable trails to all of you,
Dan
ONTARIO TRAIL NEWS Go Fund Us
You can Help send 10 Ontario Trails Leaders to the National Trail Summit
Ontario Trails Council is revitalizing our partnership with the Trans Canada Trail. Recent talks have gone exceedingly well between the OTC Board and leadership of the TCT. We thank the TCT for the opportunity to support our presence at the national event.
Unfortunately due to a lack of resources we missed the World Trail Conference 2 years ago. We wish to have a presence in Winnipeg in support of those OTC members that Support the Trans Canada Trail in their communities.
With your help we can help shape a better future for trails in Canada. Please donate to get us there. Thank you.
TOP TRAIL NEWS
Province Expanding Charleston Lake Provincial Park - Ontario Newsroom
Ontario Newsroom - ontario.ca
... hiking trails and excellent educational programming. It received 143,879 visits in 2025. In fall 2025, Ontario became the first in Canada to ...
If you would like to view the PPCRA regulation proposal and/or submit a comment, please visit the Environmental Registry of Ontario at ero.ontario.ca and search for number 025-0031. Comments received by the deadline will be considered in preparing the decision of whether to expand Charleston Lake Provincial Park. |
Is your trail impacted by the potential Alto High Speed rail project?
The friends of the Cataraqui Trail write to OTC:
We have become aware of the possible use of the Cataraqui Trail as part of the future Alto Train route. You can see where the proposed southern Alto train route traverses the trail via Alto’s interactive map: https://en.consultation.altotrain.ca/shaping-the-canada-of-tomorrow-with-high-speed-rail/places/interact-map
The Friends are of course concerned and passed the motion below. Motion: That the Friends of the Cataraqui Trail express opposition to the location of the ALTO High Speed Rail system along any section of the Cataraqui Trail and encourage members of the Friends of the Trail to express their own opinions to ALTO. Alto is encouraging feedback via a brief. If your organizations are interested. Here is the link to submit a brief: https://en.consultation.altotrain.ca/shaping-the-canada-of-tomorrow-with-high-speed-rail/surveys/upload-briefThe OTC will be sending in its own brief, we encourage OTC members impacted by the railway to also write their own brief.  |
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