A 26-year-old Peterborough woman is facing a charge of first degree murder after a 60-year-old Lakefield man died on Friday afternoon (November 10).
At around 1:30 p.m. on Friday, officers were called to a home in the Queen Street and Burnham Street in Lakefield where they found a 60-year-old Lakefield man with serious injuries.
The man was transported to Peterborough Regional Health Centre where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
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Police arrested a 26-year-old Peterborough woman at the scene, who has since been charged with first degree murder.
The accused woman is being held in custody for a court appearance on Saturday.
There will continue to be a police presence in the Queen Street and Burnham Street area as the investigation continues.
Meg Nimigon is a Peterborough-based team synergy coach who helps teams and team leaders build synergy and create a workplace that endorses productivity through team culture. Largely focused on remote teams, Nimigon builds their work culture by getting to the root of the problem with one-on-one coaching with team leaders and through a Team Synergy Program which uses insight from individual interviews with team members to create a journey to building trust through facilitated workshops. (Photo: Jennifer Moher)
As the landscape of the workplace continues to evolve post-pandemic (if we can even call it that), so too does the debate around remote work.
But, according to Peterborough-based team synergy coach Meg Nimigon, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer for what works best for each team and workplace. What’s most important, she explains, is that leaders recognize the change and are willing to adapt.
“We need to look at being open to different ways of working in the future,” Nimigon says. “Leaders today need to be forward thinking and have skillsets in adaptability, imagination, creativity, confidence and trust — all of these skills that we’ve always known to have been important but have almost gone to the backburner.”
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Using education in applied theatre (which uses theatre-based exercises to build connections) and having spent years working online long before it was mainstream, Nimigon has built a toolkit for helping remote teams and their leaders build what she calls a “dream culture,” with a large focus on teams who work remotely.
She nurtures these connections for teams through either one-on-one coaching with leaders, a team synergy program where she takes teams on a “journey” with intentional facilitated workshops based on individual team member interviews, or some combination of both.
“It’s very interesting to see the multiple perspectives on a team,” Nimigon says. “Leaders have one perspective of the team culture based on their own viewpoint, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the tip, there are people at all levels who know different information and have different perspectives.”
For team synergy coach Meg Nimigon, the longstanding debate around remote work in a post-pandemic workplace does not have a one-size-fits-all solution, but depends on the core values of the organization and how they work together and build work culture. (Photo: Jennifer Moher)
But, Nimigon explains, it’s essential for the goals of the business, organization, or team to use these varying perspectives to create cohesiveness and culture.
“Most of the reasons that you’re not hitting your sales targets, or whatever it may be, is because the team isn’t working effectively together where people’s minds are being managed,” she says. “There’s a big tie to revenue, retention, (and) productivity because when people aren’t feeling connected with one another, what happens is they don’t reach out for help if they need it. Instead, they spin at their desks, they make assumptions, their confidence goes down, they don’t go above and beyond, and they just feel invisible.”
Nimigon states that in the ever-present debate around workplaces staying remote versus returning to the office, one of the central arguments against remote work is largely the result of a misguided belief.
“A lot of people have the mindset that you can’t build team culture remotely and if we want to connect or we want to have team culture, it needs to be in person,” she notes. “But team culture is not about your location, it’s not about whether you’re hybrid or remote or in person — that is neutral. It’s the story that you bring to it that’s going to define how successful you are with your team culture.”
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So how do leaders create a successful team culture? According to Nimigon, the first step is to be intentional in creating it.
“A lot of people have a mindset that it will be really hard, and it will take a lot of work and it’s going to be really uncomfortable,” she says. “But it’s actually really hard, takes a lot of work and really uncomfortable when you don’t do it. Eventually you have to just decide to be intentional about building it — it’s not going to build itself.”
Opposing what people might often think of team culture, she explains it doesn’t come from one afternoon of team-building exercises and it’s never a finished product, but rather something that must be attended to.
As work culture is constantly changing, one of the main arguments against remote work is a belief team culture cannot be built online. A longtime fan of remote work, team synergy coach Meg Nimigon says this is a myth. While remote work might not be right for every team, it should be an intentional decision based on the team style and preferences. (Photo: Jennifer Moher)
For Nimigon, team culture requires two things: a clear “scaffolding” of what is expected and what is not (outlining team values, business purposes, decision-making processes, and jobs), and understanding the human behaviours and what people need to feel valued and trusted.
“When we see bad team culture or when we see team culture that’s struggling, it’s usually a lack of trust because you’ve got the playbook but you don’t have people behaving in the way the playbook is. You’re not following your values and you’re not living them out, so people don’t trust you.”
She says doing a deep dive to understand the human needs of the team is what ultimately helps them adapt their culture, making it transferable from the office workplace to the remote workplace.
“It’s about finding out what’s really going on below the surface, and what people need in order to thrive,” she says. “Then it’s building that into the culture so that no matter what changes in the future in terms of the playbook, you have the relationships and the trust to navigate moving forward because things are changing constantly.”
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Nimigon uses this idea to refute an argument against remote work that leaders ultimately lack “control” over teams due to the flexible schedules and the combination of home and work life. She says a team that has already built up that trust and support won’t have those concerns.
“I always try to remind people that you can still create whatever culture you want — you just have to be clear about it,” she says, suggesting that leaders can certainly require teams to be online for meetings during certain times of the day, but the key is to lay out these rules to the team.
“Building that clarity might feel too controlling, but it’s actually giving people more freedom when they know what they can and cannot do and they don’t have to question themselves,” she explains. “It all comes down to having clear expectations and having common ground where everyone understands.”
In a constantly changing post-pandemic world, team synergy coach Meg Nimigon expresses the desire to see a work culture that is results driven as opposed to time-based driven, wherein team members feel trusted and supported in their work and understand the boundaries and guidelines that are set in place. (Photo: Jennifer Moher)
Nimigon adds that another way to manage this flexibility is to move towards a work culture that is more “results driven” as opposed to “time-based driven.”
“It’s another mindset shift, from needing to sit at desk for eight hours per day and taking your half-hour lunch,” she says. “We’re seeing that type of work style is actually not that valuable and (results in) a lot of wasted time and energy and that can burn us out.”
Through Nimigon’s coaching, one of her main goals is to have leaders questioning everything to make sure there is intention, purpose, and reasoning behind every decision.
“It’s important to understand the reason behind the rule and not just making rules for the sake of it,” she points out. “Some people will make a rule from the place of not trusting, which isn’t helpful because it just sends the message to the team that they’re not trusted. But when you’re creating a rule for flexibility, empowerment, and autonomy, and then you communicate that to the team, then there’s understanding that it’s there to help us thrive.”
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Though she’s in favour of remote work that is results driven, Nimigon recognizes it won’t work for every team. She encourages leaders to think about why they prefer hybrid or in person workplaces, and whether that’s related to a misconception about the difficulty of building work culture online.
“I definitely don’t think there’s one way to do it,” she notes. “You want to think very strategically about the value you want to provide to the world and what the best way is to do that with your specific team — and not worrying about what other teams are doing. Engage your own team in that conversation.”
Meg Nimigon combines her background as a personal coach with an education in applied theatre and years of experience working online to help leaders and teams build their “dream culture” in remote workplaces. (Photo: Jennifer Moher)
Creating that conversation, trust, and clarity, she explains, will go a long way to get to that human-centred future of work she’s hoping for.
“The thing I love about my work is that I help leaders become better leaders, and I help teams become better teams — but that really just helps people be more themselves and bring out their own gifts to the world which then effects a beautiful team culture,” she says. “Then outside of that, they become better human beings who aren’t stressed and feel the confidence that they need to show up and be their best selves.”
In 2020, the Ontario Provincial Police released a sketch of how Francis Harris might have looked like in 1992 at the age of 65 if she was still alive. Her husband Stan, who passed away in 2021, always maintained she had abandoned the family and he was not involved in her disappearance. (OPP-supplied image)
A police search earlier this week of a property in the Apsley area has found no evidence in connection to the cold case of Francis Harris, a 45-year-old mother of three who disappeared without a trace 51 years ago from her home on Highway 28 just south of Apsley.
On Tuesday (November 7), members of the Peterborough County Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Crime Unit, UCRT (Urban Search and Rescue Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) Response Team, and Canine Unit conducted a search inside and around a barn on a property originally owned by the family.
Police conducted the search based on information received from the public. On Friday (November 10), the OPP reported no evidence was found during that search that would assist in moving the investigation forward.
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The same property had already been searched in 2012, after police received a tip that prompted them to spend three days examining the vacant land that was once the site of the family home (it had burned down in 1990 and is now where the Apsley Veterinary Services is located). Ground-penetrating radar and heavy machinery found nothing.
Francis Harris was last seen on Friday, April 21, 1972. That morning, she had travelled with her 42-year-old husband Stan for one of his regular physiotherapy appointments at 9:30 a.m. in Peterborough. After leaving the appointment, the couple stopped in Lakefield on the way back to Apsley, where Stan went to the bank and Francis went to the post office.
A witness reported seeing the couple together in the family car on Highway 28 later that morning. Stan said the couple ate lunch together before he left for his job at the Department of Highways (now the Ministry of Transportation) by 1 p.m., although witnesses claimed seeing his car (along with another car) at the family’s home during that afternoon — a report Stan denied.
VIDEO: The Mystery of Francis Harris – Missing Since 1972 (1977 “Code 10-78” episode)
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Francis was never seen again. Stan — who reported her missing three days later — claimed she had abandoned the family, although many of her possessions (including her purse) remained in the family home. Subsequently, there were many rumours about the couple, including infidelity in the marriage. Stan, who had always maintained he was not involved in her disappearance, passed away in June 2021 at the age of 92.
On April 21, 2020, the OPP issued a media release stating they were continuing their investigation into Francis’s disappearance and included a forensic artist sketch of what she may have looked like in 1992 at the age of 65 if she were still alive. Today, she would be 95 years old if she were still alive.
The disappearance of Francis Harris continues to be an open investigation under the direction of the OPP Criminal Investigation Branch.
Anyone with information about this case can contact the Peterborough County OPP at 705-742-0401 or 1-888-310-1122 (case #20090023). Anonymous tips can be made to Peterborough Northumberland Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or online at stopcrimehere.ca.
Anne Shirley Theatre Company's production of "Alice" by British playwright Laura Wade runs for six performances from November 17 to 26 at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space at Trent University. (Graphic: Anne Shirley Theatre Company)
Anne Shirley Theatre Company is presenting an updated version of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale with a production of Alice by British playwright Laura Wade for six performances from November 17 to 26 at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space.
First premiering at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in 2010, Wade’s modernized take is a mash-up of parts of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from 1865 as well as its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass, while borrowing elements from The Wizard of Oz.
The dreamy Alice of the original story is recast as a modern-day teenager who, dealing with grief after a family tragedy involving her beloved brother, finds herself leaving her Sheffield home to enter a topsy-turvy world filled with surreal but familiar characters including the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter and the Hare, the Queen of Hearts, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, and more.
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Anne Shirley Theatre Company is a student-run, not-for-profit theatre organization at Trent University aiming to provide opportunities for students to experience all aspects of theatre, both on and off the stage. Established in 2003, the theatre company’s name comes from the title character of its inaugural production Anne of Green Gables.
The company’s production of Alice, directed by Paige Nelson and Liam Hammond, features a diverse cast and crew including Ava Becker, Harper Caldwell, Tristan Cruise, Samantha Daly, Oskar Ferguson-Glaspell, Lela Fox-Doran, Tia James, Ashton Kelly, Anand Kumar, Chancellor McGuigan, Everett McIntyre, and Callum Sywyk.
“We believe there is a lack of inclusivity within the theatre industry that causes new and experienced artists alike to stop performing and lose the joy that being a part of a production brings, which is why we are excited to continue our work to make theatre accessible to all with our upcoming production of Alice,” reads a media release.
For its production of “Alice” running from November 17 to 26 at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space, Anne Shirley Theatre Company is offering pay-what-you-can days (minimum $5, cash only) on November 10 and 15 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. outside the Wenjack Theatre. (Photo: Anne Shirley Theatre Company)
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Alice runs from November 17 to 26 at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space at Gzowski College at Trent University (1600 West Bank Drive), with evening performances at 7 p.m. on November 17 and 18 and November 24 to 26 and a 2 p.m. matinee performance on November 19.
Tickets can be purchased online at anneshirleytheatrecompany.com for $15 plus a fee and on the Trent University campus for $15 cash only on selected dates until November 23.
Pay-what-you-can days (minimum $5, cash only) take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, November 10th and Wednesday, November 15th outside the Wenjack Theatre.
Sam and Ryan Weber of The Weber Brothers and Fiddling Jay Edmunds are reuniting as The Lazy Devils to perform their unique brand of western swing and gypsy jazz at the Black Horse Pub in downtown Peterborough on Friday night. (Photo: The Lazy Devils)
Every Thursday, we publish live music events at pubs and restaurants in Peterborough and the greater Kawarthas region based on information that venues provide to us directly or post on their website or social media channels. Here are the listings for the week of Thursday, November 9 to Wednesday, November 15.
If you’re a pub or restaurant owner and want to be included in our weekly listings, please email our nightlifeNOW editor at nightlife@kawarthanow.com. For concerts and live music events at other venues, check out our Concerts & Live Music page.
With the exception of karaoke, we only list events with performing musicians. Venues may also host other events during the week (e.g., dancing, DJs, comedy shows).
Honorary Lieutenant Colonel Lee-Anne Quinn, president of the Frank Poley (Peterborough) chapter of the Canadian Association of Veterans in United Nations Peacekeeping, speaks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the UN Peacekeepers Monument in Peterborough's new urban park on July 1, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Sean Bruce)
Canadian Forces veteran Lee-Anne Quinn is one of six people named as a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Club of Peterborough, who will be celebrating the recipients with a dinner and ceremony next week.
Named for Rotary International founder Paul Percy Harris, Rotary’s highest recognition is given to both Rotarians and non-Rotarians who exemplify Rotary’s motto of “Service above Self” in the categories of community, international, vocational, youth, and environment. Each recipient receives a Paul Harris Fellow certificate and a Paul Harris pin.
The other five people named as Paul Harris Fellows by Peterborough Rotary are Myke Healy and Darlene Callan (youth), Dorothy Taylor (environment), Kathi Curtin Williams (community), and Kateryna Sysoieva (international).
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Quinn was named as a Paul Harris Fellow in the category of vocational service, which focuses on adherence to and promotion of the highest ethical standards in all occupations, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the contribution of vocational talents to solving the problems of society and meeting the needs of the community.
For 22 years in the Canadian Forces, Quinn worked as an air medical evacuation nurse and U.N. peacekeeper, deployed in Somalia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan as well as isolated First Nations and Inuit communities in northern Ontario and Yukon.
After retiring from the military in 2008 with the rank of major, she moved to her hometown of Peterborough where she continued to worked as a nurse practitioner in primary health care. She received the Governor General’s Award of Military Merit in 2006 and the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 2012.
18-year-old Syrian refugee Rashid Sheikh Hassan, who recently came to Canada with the support of a sponsor group including Honorary Lieutenant Colonel Lee-Anne Quinn, holds her hand during the ribbon-cutting ceremony of The UN Peacekeepers Monument in Peterborough’s new urban park on July 1, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Dave McNab)
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Now serving as the first-ever female honorary lieutenant colonel in the Hastings and Prince Edward County Regiment, Quinn is also part of a group of Peterborough-area residents who have sponsored Syrian refugees to come to Canada.
Quinn was the guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Peterborough’s meeting on Monday (November 6), where the key message of her talk was “every human on the face of this Earth deserves to be treated humanely.”
Members of the public are invited to help Rotary celebrate Quinn and the other five Paul Harris Fellows on Monday, November 13th at the Peterborough Golf and Country Club, beginning with a social gathering at 5:30 p.m. followed by dinner at 6 p.m. Tickets are $75 per person and can be purchased by contacting Rotarian Bill Crins at bcrins@cogeco.ca and sending an etransfer to treasurerpeterboroughrotary@gmail.com.
Reggie Maranda of Mcthirsty's Pint (left) and Garrett Bulmer of Bobcaygeon Brewing Company (right), pictured with Mauricio Interiano and Paris Nguyen of the New Canadians Centre, raise a pint of West Coast Pale Ale, the third beer in the 'Community Brew' series, with a portion of sales to be donated to New Canadians Centre. (Photo: Luke Best / Bobcaygeon Brewing Company)
Bobcaygeon Brewing Company has released the third beer in its “Community Brew” collaboration series in partnership with McThirsty’s Pint in downtown Peterborough, where a portion of sales supports a local charitable organization.
The craft brewery launched the new brew on Wednesday (November 8) at its taproom at 649 The Parkway in Peterborough.
Bobcaygeon Brewing Company describes its West Coast Pale Ale, with 5.5% alcohol by volume, as having a “bold hop aroma and flavour, characterized by a clear, amber-gold colour and a balanced malt profile” and showcasing “citrus and pine notes from the hops.”
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With each beer in the Community Brew series, $1 from every pint sold and 50 cents from every can sold is donated to a local charitable organization. Proceeds from the West Coast Pale Ale will be donated to the New Canadians Centre in Peterborough, a non-profit organization that helps newcomers settle and integrate into the community.
The West Coast Pale Ale is available now in cans at Bobcaygeon Brewing Company and online at bobcaygeonbrewing.ca, and will also soon be on tap at the brewery’s taproom and at McThirsty’s Pint at 166 Charlotte Street in downtown Peterborough.
The first two beers in the Community Brew series were Blackberry Raspberry Goose in support of One City Peterborough and Kolsch in support of the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority.
Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) is located at 1 Hospital Drive in Peterborough. (Photo: PRHC)
A 16-year-old girl from London, Ontario has been arrested in connection with a bomb threat against Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) last week.
At around 11:15 a.m. last Tuesday (October 31), Peterborough police were informed by PRHC that the hospital had received several threatening phone calls, including one about a bomb threat.
As part of the PRHC’s emergency procedure, the hospital immediately declared a “code black” — an emergency code in response to a bomb threat — and initiated a perimeter lockdown.
Through an investigation, police determined the threat was not credible and was being made by a person in another community. However, in accordance with PRHC’s policy, Peterborough police and hospital security conducted a safety search of the building, and it was cleared several hours later.
On Friday (November 3), police officers in London executed a warrant on behalf of Peterborough police and arrested a 16-year-old girl, who has been charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm.
The accused teenager was released on an undertaking and is scheduled to appear in court on November 27.
After Susan and Jim Blakelock moved to their bungalow in the south east of Peterborough in 2020, their registered energy advisor daughter Clara completed a home energy assessment and found many areas for improvement. Two years later, after completing a list of upgrades, the couple has reduced their EnerGuide rating from 135 to 60 gigajoules and their annual greenhouse gas emissions from 5.5 to 1.2 tonnes annually. (Photo: Clara Blakelock / GreenUP)
I became a registered energy advisor with GreenUP nearly two years ago because I wanted to work directly on eliminating the use of fossil fuels in our community.
Each week, GreenUP provides a story related to the environment. This week’s column is by Clara Blakelock, Home Energy Program Manager, GreenUP.
Since becoming an energy advisor, I have performed energy assessments on over 215 homes in our area. The retrofits completed by my clients are saving over 1,600 gigajoules of energy annually, which is the equivalent of 90 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Together that is enough energy to power about 12 homes.
Home energy retrofits have varying degrees of impact and in order to meet our communities 2030 emissions reductions targets Peterborough will need to see many “deep retrofits” where energy use is reduced by 50 per cent or more.
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I’m proud to share one example of a deep retrofit that is very close to me — the retrofit my parents did on their home in the south east of Peterborough.
My parents, Jim and Susan Blakelock, moved to Peterborough in November 2020. They moved here to be closer to their three grandchildren — my kids. They bought a bungalow built in the 1980s that needed a few updates.
They were excited to support me in my new career by having me do my first home energy assessment on their home. When I did the assessment, I found many areas for improvement.
As one of several upgrades to their Peterborough home over the past two years, Susan and Jim Blakelock replaced their air conditioner with a cold climate air source heat pump. (Photo: Clara Blakelock / GreenUP)
Their unfinished basement was only insulated to R8 halfway down the walls — today’s building code requires R22 for basement insulation. The attic had about six inches of blown-in insulation, a value of R20 which is much less than the R50 required by today’s building code.
My parents had already replaced the furnace immediately upon moving in, but the air conditioner was older. The hot water tank was gas and an older less-efficient model with a pilot light.
All in all, their EnerGuide rating was 135 gigajoules. This value is almost twice the energy that a house built to today’s building code would use. The house emitted an estimated 5.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually.
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After receiving my report, my parents steadily proceeded to work away through the list of upgrades I provided them.
They added blanket insulation to the walls in the basement, bringing all the foundation walls up to at least R20. They had additional insulation blown into the attic to bring it up to today’s code of R50.
Since the furnace was new, they opted to keep the furnace as a backup source of heat and replace their air conditioner with a cold climate air source heat pump. Finally, they replaced the gas hot water tank with an electric heat pump hot water tank. The house was already fairly airtight, and most windows had already been replaced, but they also improved the airtightness by fixing some caulking around the basement windows.
The list of upgrades Jim and Susan Blakelock completed to their Peterborough bungalow included adding blanket insulation to the basement walls and additional insulation in the attic, replacing their air conditioner with a cold climate air source heat pump, and replacing their gas hot water tank with an electric heat pump hot water tank. (Photo: Clara Blakelock / GreenUP)
When I came back in May of 2023 to do a post-retrofit assessment, the results were very encouraging. Their new EnerGuide rating was just 60 gigajoules. This was less than half of what it had been previously. They spent about $18,500 on these upgrades, and received $8,500 back in rebates.
After retrofits, my parents’ greenhouse gas emissions went down to 1.2 tonnes annually. This was an outstanding reduction of 78 per cent.
Since then, they have also recently replaced their car with an electric car, and are planning to install solar panels on their roof later this year to offset their remaining energy use.
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Working as an energy advisor, it has been very rewarding getting to support my clients, including my parents, in reducing their energy bills and their greenhouse gas emissions. This story is one that I hope is echoed in many homes this year and in the years to come.
Demand for home energy assessments is on the rise, as homeowners begin to look into accessing grants and rebates from the federal government. Interested homeowners can learn more at greenup.on.ca/home-energy and book a pre-retrofit home energy assessment with our team of registered energy advisors.
GreenUP is also currently looking to recruit someone to complete the training to become a registered energy advisor, which is how I got started. If you are knowledgeable and willing to learn about construction and building science, and passionate about decarbonization, please submit an application at greenup.on.ca/download/job-posting-energy-advisor-in-training/.
A delegation of 10 members from the environmental group For Our Grandchildren visited Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith's constituency office on November 6, 2023 to deliver 100 postcards urging the Ford government to protect old-growth trees in the Catchacoma Forest from logging and to preserve the Greenbelt. (Photo courtesy of For Our Grandchildren)
A delegation of 10 members from the environmental group For Our Grandchildren visited Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith’s constituency office on Monday (November 6) to deliver 100 postcards urging the Ford government to protect old-growth trees in the Catchacoma Forest from logging and to preserve the Greenbelt.
The group had organized a write-in campaign in May as part of Artsweek Peterborough, where 100 residents decorated and signed the postcards.
The Catchacoma Forest is a 662-hectare stand of mature eastern hemlock north of Catchacoma Lake in Peterborough County, beside Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park. In 2019, Dr. Peter Quinby, chief scientist of the Peterborough-based non-profit Ancient Forest Exploration & Research (AFER), identified the forest as the largest-known stand of old-growth eastern hemlock in Canada after AFER found many trees over 120 years old — with the oldest tree, a 350-year-old eastern hemlock, marked for logging.
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The documentary film Conserving Catchacoma, which premiered at the 2022 ReFrame Film Festival, follows the efforts of the Conserving Catchacoma group to protect the old-growth hemlock in the forest, which is also home to at least 10 documented species at risk.
The Bancroft Minden Forest Company holds the license to manage the Crown land within the area, which includes logging, and the postcards appealed to the provincial government to withdraw the license and to make the forest part of Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park.
The other message on the postcards concerned development on Greenbelt lands.
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“Although since May the government has reversed its course on allowing development in the Greenbelt, it is still planning incursions in these lands, pushing expanded municipal boundaries and projects such as Highway 413,” reads a media release from For Our Grandchildren.
The group adds that sensible development would stop urban sprawl and recognize the significant habitat and important agricultural land contained in the Greenbelt.
“The delegation encouraged MPP Smith to speak out for us all and put action on the climate crisis on the agenda of the Ford government,” reads the media release.
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