03/15/2026
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 [email protected]. 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. [email protected]
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
Learn more about the Canadian Trail Summit, a first-of-its-kind national gathering of Canada’s trail sector in Winnipeg, June 16–19, 2026.
