By John Francis
On Thursday June 4, Premier Doug Ford, together with Vic Fedeli, Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, announced that as of 12:01am Friday June 5, “Short term rentals including lodges, cabins, cottages, homes, condominiums and B&Bs will be allowed to resume operations in Ontario”.
This announcement, as near as I can make out, went out only on Facebook and Twitter. So unless you follow #FordNation or the FordNation Facebook page, you wouldn’t have known.
This means that Bylaw Enforcement departments across the province had to pivot from prosecuting STAs for being open, to not caring at all, based on an announcement on a political (as opposed to government) page on Facebook.
You could characterize this as a provincial government being nimble in the face of a rapidly changing situation. Or you could describe it in less flattering terms, perhaps involving something often found off the south end of a northbound chicken.
Ontario was going to open up when new COVID cases came in below 200 per day for awhile. But with the dial seemingly stuck around 400 new cases per day, most of that from the GTA, the people of the GTA are suddenly welcome to go anywhere, to bring COVID to all the smaller communities that have flattened their curves.
On June 3, the Government of Ontario renewed the state of emergency until June 30, which implies a ban on non-essential travel. The next day, that government opened short-term accommodations, which are the personification of non-essential travel.
It did so without warning anybody — Bylaw Enforcement departments, Chambers of Commerce, STA operators.
Neda Sarbakhsh is President of Tobermory Chamber of Commerce. She says the announcement “took us all by surprise”. The Chamber has made no effort to get its information offices in Tobermory and Ferndale running — the offices are in municipal buildings which are still closed to the public and Stage 2 opening was supposed to be based on fewer than 200 new cases per day which is weeks away. Now individual businesses are left twisting in the wind — allowed to be open but with the Declaration of Emergency still in place. “They’re leaving it up to us,” Sarbakhsh continues. “I mean, honestly, what is essential travel to Tobermory? We’re allowed to be open but we’re not? Should we run at half capacity? At full capacity? Everything is contradictory and they’ve left it to us to figure out. We have to do the due diligence, to do it safely.”
She takes a deep breath and distills the situation to five diplomatic words: “We would welcome more guidelines.”
With no boat tours, no Grotto access, the favourite Bruce Trail sections closed and no Tourist Information office open, Tobermory visitors are left with very little to do. So they are improvising. Some improvisations are harmless; some will get downright annoying as visitor numbers increase.
Visitors have built bonfires in at least two locations in Tobermory: Big Tub lighthouse and near the Tugs dive platform. With few municipal garbage containers in place, garbage is being strewn about and also gathered into bags and chucked in the woods.
I can’t speak for what’s happening in other locations, but at the unnamed 600 foot stretch of municipal shoreline between Lee’s Fisheries and the Grandview (suggestions for better name welcome) there have been a lot of picnics, a few people going swimming or diving and a few tailgate parties. I saw perhaps 200 people on the June 6-7 weekend and not a single one was wearing a mask. Very few seemed aware of the concept of physical distancing.
I’ll bet the same things are happening at Stokes Bay, Pike Bay, Miller Lake and other shoreline access locations. I wonder what happened at the National Park shoreline locations.
It would appear that a tourist season is upon us. It’s not what we expected; it’s not what we were promised, but it’s definitely here. We had best be nimble in responding.
We need garbage containers; we need porta-potties; we need tourist information offices; we need explicit signage telling visitors what is and is not permitted. We need Bylaw Enforcement patrols.
