Dog park, or anti-dog park?
Ferris Provincial Park's new fenced in dog area is closed for most of the year
A quick update to the story about continuing backlogs in the emergency department at Campbellford Memorial Hospital. This CBC story discusses similar problems at hospitals across the province and the recommendations for improvements are the same — more long-term care and rehabilitation beds to open up spaces for inpatients and get people out of ERs.
If you take an open space where dogs (and people) can run and play and put a $50,000 fence around it, then lock it shut for seven months, have you created a dog park, or an anti-dog park?
The question came to mind a few weeks back when I took my new puppy Alfie for a walk into Ferris Provincial Park and hoped to let him run free inside the fenced area that was created last June near the parking lot close to Ranney Falls.
But I found the fence had two gates that were both padlocked. Also locked was a nearby garbage can that was surrounded by old Tims’ cups and used dog poop bags, suggesting that I wasn’t the only dog owner who was checking the place out.
If you are a dog owner you may recall that the off-leash fenced-in area was announced with great fanfare last June 30 by MPP David Piccini, who at that time was also Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks, so was in charge of Ontario Parks, and Trent Hills Councillor Daniel Giddings. Both brought their dogs for the news conference and photo op, which was covered by TV and print outlets from Peterborough to Belleville.
The effort to establish a dog park started in 2020 when Giddings moved to the area and discovered there was no official off-leash area for dogs and their owners. There has long been unofficial use of the Campbellford Fairgrounds for this purpose, but he wanted something sanctioned.
In an interview, Giddings says he approached the Campbellford-Seymour Agricultural Society, which has owned the fairgrounds since 1895, but it had no interest in hosting an official off-leash park.
So he scouted out potential areas, including one on Ferris Park land at the corner of Burnbrae Rd. and Centre St. and made his pro-dog effort part of his campaign for council in 2022. The Burnbrae location was rejected when it became apparent that environmental and other studies would raise the cost to $250,000 or more for that site.
Along the way he discussed the need with Piccini, another dog lover. The two young, ambitious politicians and dog owners joined forces to bring it to life and eventually a fenced in off-leash area in another part of Ferris Park was born. The original park plan was much smaller, but Giddings says Piccini insisted it needed to be bigger so dogs could have more space to run.
Better than before
“The park is flawed, very flawed,” Giddings is quick to admit. “But it’s better than what we had before, which was nothing.”
Ever the optimist, Giddings would like to see another off-leash park in the municipality, preferably in Hastings or Warkworth.
Anyone who now visits the Ferris location, which is open to pedestrians and their leashed dogs, will find the gates locked. He says insurance regulations force the closure during the off-season.
During the off-season “there is limited-to-no staff present, no maintenance performed and park facilities are closed, including the fenced in pet exercise area,” said Haley Gourley, Assistant Park Superintendent, at Presqu’ile Park which handles management of Ferris as well. “We ask visitors to be respectful and courteous of others and kindly ask that visitors pack out what they bring in with them, including garbage.”
As mentioned, that last part is not going so well.
Having an off-leash area inside the provincial park was never going to be convenient for local residents, since we’d need to pay the $12.25 daily entrance fee to drive to the closest parking lot in the park.
The only free options are to walk in from Saskatoon Ave., about 500 metres, or park at the Ranney Gorge bridge and walk in. But I’ve never seen any dog willing to walk across the sharp, open-bottomed bridge. I have carried a smaller dog across and once watched a strong young guy carry a full-grown German shepherd over.
Giddings is keen to point out that complaints on social media about taxpayers’ money being spent on the part-time, off-leash park are misleading. “The $50,000 cost was paid out of park fees, not by taxpayers,” he says.