BUILDING THE TRAIL FOR THE FUTURE

A side profile of a woman in a russet-colored turtleneck and white bag. She looks up with her eyes closed.

“It feels good knowing we are helping to preserve this ribbon of wilderness, forever. There is nothing else like the Bruce Trail in Ontario, and very few trails like it in Canada. If we don’t take steps now to secure these precious places, we won’t have them in future.”

— Paul & Pat Beneteau, Bruce Trail Conservancy Donors

My adventures with the Bruce Trail date back to the early 1970s, shortly after my wife, Pat, and I moved to Burlington as newlyweds.

In my effort to get to know people, I joined a local photography club. A group of us were on a photo excursion taking pictures of steam trains running through the Dundas Station. The Trail ran past the station, and the white blazes caught my eye. I had discovered the Bruce Trail.

Trail Blazes

After that, I spent a lot of time exploring the Trail with my camera, and soon joined the Bruce Trail Association (as the Bruce Trail Conservancy was then called) as one of the early members in 1973. Fellow member and volunteer Ian Reid, a respected trail builder, inspired me to get more involved in Trail maintenance initiatives. In those early days, there was no money. We were building bridges, boardwalks and steps with found materials and we were hand painting signs. Over the next 34 years, I was involved with the maintenance and development of the trail in Iroquoia as a Trail Captain, a Zone Coordinator, the Trail Director and as Project Coordinator, as well as the BTC Sign Coordinator working with all nine clubs.

Photography

As Project Coordinator, I had the pleasure of recruiting and working with many dozens of dedicated volunteers on the hundreds of work parties and projects we organized. Three of the most important were, the half-kilometre gravel causeway between Crawford Lake and Rattlesnake Point, the new trail and dual-span bridge to Tiffany Falls and my earliest project, the galvanized steel bridge over Bronte Creek near Cedar Springs.

In 1999, seven of us got together and hiked the end-to-end into the year 2000. We weren’t really hikers. We were trail builders. The experience was amazing, and what stood out was how different the scenery was across the nine sections. There was always something new to discover, whether it was the wildlife, the plant life, the scenery from the top of Escarpment cliffs, or the serenity of walking along a beach.

Barrow Bay Cliffs
Cotswold Way
Valley East
Maplecross Ridge
Cape chin Woods
Balsam Wetlands

The Trail is unique and definitely something that I feel needs to be preserved for the future. We only have to look and see what has happened to our green spaces in the last 10 years to understand the need. There is more pressure than ever before to develop green spaces. The Bruce Trail is critically important to give people, especially those in big cities, a taste of what it’s like to be out in nature.

In 2009, a health scare prompted me to start thinking about what I wanted my legacy to be. Until then, my support of the Trail was largely as a volunteer. Because I was unable to do the physical work anymore, I started thinking about other ways to support the Bruce Trail Conservancy. Pat and I sat down together to discuss which charities were important to us. We both knew we wanted to help the BTC in the future, and decided to include a gift in our wills.  

It feels good knowing we are helping to preserve this ribbon of wilderness, forever. There is nothing else like the Bruce Trail in Ontario, and very few trails like it in Canada. If we don’t take steps now to secure these precious places, we won’t have them in future.

I encourage people to review their situation early and explore what is possible within their own plans. If you want to invest in something that will last forever, the work of the Bruce Trail Conservancy is an ideal choice. A secure trail connecting people to a permanently protected Niagara Escarpment will continue to benefit many people for many years to come.

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