Visitor centre traffic lower than expected
Two mallards that nearly died along with a dozen others in the city’s north-end Sunday are recovering well at a nearby wildlife centre.
The duo have “perked up” and are looking much “brighter” since they were dropped off at Shades of Hopes Wildlife Rescue in Pefferlaw on Sunday.
Gail Lenters is the owner of Shades of Hope.
“They are in our indoor pond and are recovering nicely,” Lenters wrote in an email to About 14 ducks wandered from a pond off of Evans Drive to the neighbouring area of Tobin Court Sunday morning. They were grazing on the grass when a dozen of them dropped dead.
Judy Raymond, an area resident, rushed the two surviving ducks to Shades of Hope. The ducks looked healthy, she said, and were walking normally before they died.
Ducks often frequent the neighbourhood in mobs, Raymond said, and can be seen as pests.
Lenters suspects toxic poisoning of some sort, but doesn’t know what specifically caused the deaths. She hopes the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry will help identify the source and cause.
A conservation officer from MNRF visited the north-end neighbourhood on Tuesday to start an investigation.
The bodies of the dead ducks were collected by Public Works on Sunday. Raymond was told they’d be handing them over to MNRF for examination.
Any information collected will be passed on to the Environment Canada Wildlife Division, which will lead the investigation, a spokesperson for the MNRF stated in an email.
In the meantime, the two mallards at the wildlife centre continue their recovery.
“The two birds in care are eating well and we just want to make sure they are also flying well and will then release,” Lenters stated.
The volume of traffic at the new downtown tourism visitor centre isn’t as high as high as officials would like, Peterborough and the Kawarthas Economic Development (PKED) president and CEO Rhonda Keenan told Peterborough County councillors Wednesday.
She cited several factors as to why, including that the move just happened about four months ago and that the VentureNorth building at George and King streets remains under construction and as a result, a large, visible sign has yet to be erected.
Staff have done well with using sandwich boards to help direct foot traffic into the visitors centre, which also gets many digital visitors, Keenan pointed out as part of her presentation on the organization’s second quarter activities.
The visitor centre, which was located on Crawford Drive until its April 28 closure, joined the organization that runs it – which itself moved from Wolfe St. – to take over the first floor of the former Promenade Building in early May.
The former visitor centre is being torn down to make way for Shorelines Casino Peterborough at Crawford Drive and The Parkway.
Keenan’s report included several statistics, including that organization staff have, prior to June 30, met with some 72 companies as part of business retention efforts – 80 per cent of them in the city and 20 per cent of them in the county.
Staff determined that 35 of those businessescouldbenefitfromPKED services and that 16 have already made successful project announcements, including a Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre client that hired its first employee with the organization’s help, she said.
PKED has also supported 32 new business startups (68 per cent of them in the city, 32 per cent of them in the county) and hosted 25 workshops aiming to build entrepreneurial skills attended by 368 participants in the first half of 2017.
On the tourism side, Keenan noted that Peterborough and the Kawarthas was recently ranked number four on 10 best cottage country regions in Canada, thanks in part to hosting the Travel Media Association of Canada conference in June 2015.
“We’re still seeing some of the benefits of that conference,” she said.
The area was also highlighted as part of a recent special feature on Canadian innovation, which focused on research being conducted at Trent University, as well as in several cycling publications.
Keenan also addressed the recent announcement that General Electric will cease manufacturing, pointing out that PKED is working collaboratively with local partners and agencies to support workers during the coming transition.
More than 350 workers are expected to lose their jobs by the fall of 2018.
PKED is communicating directly with GE’s human resources team to support the retaining effort and is working with the Kawartha Manufacturers Association to connect skilled workers with local opportunities, Keenan told county councillors.
“There are a lot of groups coming together to have conversations,” she said.