A Win-win Solution, or Simply a Bureaucratic Response?
It is already late in the summer, and only now has the administration of the North Hatley finally come up with a solution (to come into effect only in September!) to the problem it, itself, created: the problem of restricted access to the public beach. This is what happens in our Trumpian world of today: create an outlandish crisis, and then propose an extreme solution, which almost seems ‘reasonable’ by comparison, declaring that it solves the crisis (Google ‘Overton window’ for a description of this process).
To return to the basics here: the Town sidelines NHRS, a community of volunteers that has served North Hatley exceedingly well for fifty years, and, in doing so, it limits access to the public beach. And what does it now propose? That anyone who wants to use our public beach obtain, at their own expense (and at ours – we are told this is a solution costing several thousand dollars) a card, confirming their identity and use, and sign a document that, presumably, states they waive holding the municipality liable if some untoward event should occur (drowning, or other!). Clearly the municipality is more interested in public liability than in public safety! This is a purely bureaucratic solution to a selfcreated problem – and only to a part of the problem, since the sidelining of NHRS remains.
We, the inhabitants of North Hatley, know and accept what it means to live on a lake (which is neither an ocean nor a swimming pool), and are conscious of both the pleasures and the dangers involved. This inherent ‘risk’ we accept and it does not need to be managed, or signed away, to protect the municipality or the councillors who, I would like to remind them, have been elected to represent our wishes. Not to ‘propose’ and then ‘impose’, which is the mode this (and the previous) Council has constantly adopted: for the proposed condominium project, for the additions to the new bridge, for the changes in River Park, etc.
The solution to this created crisis is far simpler and far less costly – open up the gates to the beach and let people use it! This solution is confirmed by the Appeals Court of Québec in Joly c. Salaberry-de-valleyfield,
which distinguishes between ‘fault’ on the part of a municipality and the ‘cause’ of a disastrous event, between – in the case of the public beach in North Hatley – leaving the gates open (which two separate legal opinions have said would not be considered a ‘fault’), and the decision by a person to swim (the ‘cause’). See in particular paragraph 40: “[...] if there is fault on the part of the City, because it has neglected to enforce the regulation by which it prohibits swimming and has, moreover, knowingly tolerated the violation of this regulation, without taking the precautions that would have ensured the safety of the persons whom it thus allowed to contravene the by-law, that fault is not the cause of the prejudice suffered by the appellant, whose temerity constitutes a new event which alone is at the origin of all the damage he has suffered.” [My translation and emphasis added.] There is no need for costly and invasive monitoring; there is no need to attempt to manage and control us, as if we were children throwing a tantrum in a toy store! And if there are, indeed, connected to the beach, questions concerning public safety, as there would be for any body of water, what is the actual history of North Hatley and of Lake Massawippi? A total of six drownings in thirty years we have been told by a member of the volunteer fire department, related to car and fishing accidents, and a suicide. Do we need a bureaucratic response to an imagined danger, or do we need realism and an understanding of the real history of North Hatley and of Lake Massawippi? This is, of course, a purely rhetorical question. What we do need is a fruitful and positive discussion between members of Council and the residents of North Hatley – on the fate of access to the beach, and, even more, on the fate of NHRS, an organization for which many of us have the utmost respect, an organization which is close to our hearts.
Paul St-pierre North Hatley