Permit holders excepted

If August is defined by dog days, perhaps the middle of July might be known as the beagle puppy days. All promise and energy. Uncaring and unaware that these days will soon be memories. The beaches are calling. Farm fields are lush. We are gathering again. For music. For comedy. For celebration. And in the case of Base 31—curiosity. (See story page 2.)

Something worrying is afoot, however. According to a wide smattering of anecdotal reports, we are seeing fewer visitors so far in 2022. There are busy days for sure—but none of the lines and overcrowding that defined the first summer of the pandemic. One imperfect metric: Sandbanks is showing beach access availability all this week and next. Camping sites are available all week. A truly rare circumstance in July.

We don’t have good data (we never have had good data in the County), so it is difficult to compare visitor patterns and trends. Nevertheless, the County is unquestionably quieter this year than it has been in recent years.

We can only guess as to why this is so. The spring was a tidge cooler—but skies have been mostly blue. A bigger factor may be that folks have more choices this summer. Banished from Europe and other overseas vacations for two years, many have jumped on aircraft—losing luggage along the way—to make good on their vow to visit Paris, Tuscany, or the Cotswolds.

Others suggest we have sufficiently soured visitors on the County and continue to do so, through a combination of negative ‘us and them’ press and punitive fines.

The accounts of residents getting pounded with $400 fines are becoming too many to count. (Visitors tend not to complain to the local paper. Instead it forms part of their lasting impression of Prince Edward County).

One of the more illustrative stories recounted to me recently featured a local resident, farmer and business owner I shall call Ted. He headed to Bakker Road with his dog to walk along the beach. It is something he does often. This time, however, he brought the wrong car. This one didn’t have the permit. He learned of this oversight when he returned to discover a $400 ticket. For bringing the wrong car.

Perhaps, this, as the kids say, is a first-world problem. But the signage is fatally unclear—stating only ‘Permit Holders Excepted.’ What does ‘Permit Holders Excepted’ mean? There is no explanation—merely a reference to a by-law number. What about standing on this spot? Or a bicycle? What exactly are Permit Holders allowed that others are not. The signage has no information for you in that regard. Nor does it point out that if you fall prey to this trap, you will be required to fork over a lot of money.

One might find this sign in a downtown Toronto parking lot, not at the end of a lonely gravel road in Hillier. But even in Toronto, it would also say ‘No Parking’. Clearly. Unambiguously. Not so on Bakker Road.

As the wrong-car offender noted, it almost seems designed to be intentionally opaque and confusing. After all, the County needs revenue from visitors to pay the private security agency it contracts to patrol and enforce the unnecessary and unwarranted parking rules on the roads leading to Hillier’s beaches.

A top-to-bottom review is due. Twenty twenty was an anomaly. Shire Hall must reassess all the punitive and reactionary measures it imposed in the past two years under the mantle of “managing” tourism. It must reconsider the ‘us and them’ policies impetuously cobbled together. That much is abundantly clear by now.

Yes, there are growing pains in the tourism sector. Yes, there are challenges to be sorted. But nothing that requires the heavyhanded response and punishing expense of the rules and enforcement infrastructure that Shire Hall created and imposed.

North Beach Road (County Road 27) endures parking issues on a few summer days. (Issues the Provincial Park could fix if it understood it was in the customer service business). But the other roads in Hillier, that is, Arthur, Bakker or Hyuck’s Point, have had no such issues. There was no rational basis for establishing impenetrably opaque rules and contracting with a private security firm to enforce these rules on these largely deserted ends-of-the- road. Other than to generate revenue from unsuspecting visitors. And the hapless residents who forgot which car had the “I’m-local-therefore-the- rules-don’t-apply-to-me” sticker.

Don’t undo these measures to appease the tourism sector. Nor to stem the negative impression such policies are producing. Don’t do it, either, to eliminate a costly enforcement infrastructure.

Do it because we don’t treat people this way. Do it because we are not that backwater I-95 town extorting fines from visitors passing through. Do it because we don’t need to punish folks merely seeking to share a few hours of the natural beauty we enjoy daily. Do it because we are better than this.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca