Miraculous Bruce Trail an inspiration
Accessible green spaces are difficult to create, but were a huge asset during pandemic
There are places where the Bruce Trail reaches a rocky lookout and suddenly the view is open to the horizon. In locations like Mount Nemo on the edge of Burlington, or even at Mono Cliffs north of Orangeville, the Toronto skyline can be seen on clear days.
That’s always a pleasant sight in a deep rural or wilderness environment: suddenly there’s a reminder of the city and the seven million or so people nearby. A very “town and country” experience.
Most people only hike short sections of the trail at a time, but each year there are some who do the 900 kilometres of it at once, from Queenston to Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, following the Niagara Escarpment. There are an additional 450 kilometres of side trails looping out from the main trail, too.
It’s extensive, and getting even better.
The Bruce Trail Conservancy (BTC), the charitable land trust overseeing the trail, has announced two important things recently, as reported by The Trillium. One is that “thru hiking” will be possible by 2030. This means people will be able to camp along the way in designated areas, something quite limited currently.
The other good thing is the BTC is continuing to purchase land for their “conservation corridor.” Bruce hikers know that the trail passes through hundreds of private parcels of land where the owner gives permission to pass, but there are also stretches where travel is on roads as there’s no ownership or permission at all.
As the pandemic demonstrated acutely, Ontario is a vast place but, relative to the increased population, there’s little public open space. Despite the network of provincial and national parks, as well as conservation areas, private countryside and shorelines rule the landscape, and there are no “right to roam” provisions here that allow people in places like the U.K. to walk more of the countryside.
Most new publicly accessible space in Ontario requires lots of effort and money to create. The very existence of the Bruce Trail, only created in earnest in the 1960s, is a miracle, one that snakes its way through all that private property almost stealthily.
I hiked parts of the Bruce Trail occasionally for years, but during the pandemic it became a critical escape when there was little else to do. Often provincial and other parks had filled up for the day, and non-residents were even shamefully banned in some places, leaving anybody without countryside property of their own out of luck. We definitely were not “all in this together,” but the Bruce was a salvation.
Usually meeting friends at a busy trailhead parking lot, we’d often have a moment of apprehension as it seemed really crowded, but once on the trail everyone spread out over the kilometres and there was space for everyone and more. The farther we walked, the more we had it to ourselves.
I hope to complete it all one day, but over many years rather than in one go. The camping option will make longer hikes possible for many, but for those of us who think the idea of lying in a tent on the ground is like volunteering to suffer, I’d love to see more services evolve along the way, like pubs, inns, bed and breakfasts and other places to stay while on multi-day hikes. Something like what exists along the Camino de Santiago in Spain and other European countries, where the famous pilgrimage sees many thousands of people spending weeks walking it each season.
While the town and country proximity of the Bruce can be seen from those lookouts, open countryside can be hard to get to without a car, so many townies miss out until we figure out better infrastructure, like the limited “park buses” that exist now. It wasn’t always like this: a century ago people could take the train into the heart of Algonquin Park.
This is why the creation of “urban national parks” like the Rouge on the east side of the GTA are so important. Created and greatly expanded over the past decade, parts of Rouge Park are accessible by public transit. Similarly, Canada’s second urban national park, anchored by the Ojibway Prairie Complex, is being created in Windsor.
These are big deals, but we shouldn’t overlook the potential of linear parks, already something of a trend. In Toronto alone there’s the Meadoway created under the Gatineau hydro corridor in Scarborough, “Relic Linear Park” just west of University Avenue with architectural building fragments displayed along the way, the Bentway under the Gardiner and the potential of the Green Line along the Dupont rail corridor. University Park could turn more than half of that oversized avenue into green space, if realized.
This week, Toronto city council will begin discussing if the mothballed Scarborough Rapid Transit route, including the elevated section, could be turned into a linear park like the High Line in Manhattan.
Despite the success of the Bruce, Canada is “starved” for long distance trails, as one hiking enthusiast friend says.
Along with the absence of the right to roam, Canada doesn’t have the equivalent of the National Scenic Trails Act in the U.S., signed by then-president Richard Nixon in 1968. The Bruce expansion should be inspiration for Canada’s trail renaissance.