By John Francis
At MNBP’s (Municipality of Northern Bruce Peninsula) May 12 Meeting, Council will (presumably) agree to implement a CAO Report which calls for the old St Edmunds Township Office/Tobermory Daycare building to be torn down. But the Staff Report doesn’t stop there. It goes on to recommend: “That funding be included within the 2026 budget deliberations for a gravel parking lot, washroom facilities, and shuttle service located at 3 Centennial Drive, and; That, staff begin monitoring parking revenue performance post-2026 to build reserves for a permanent facility at 3 Centennial Drive…”
This sounds almost trivial but it isn’t. If the Centennial Drive property is developed thoughtfully, it has the potential to be transformative — to make tourism work much better in Tobermory.
As things currently stand, cars dominate Tobermory’s downtown. A large parking lot occupies the best real estate in the village and as one longtime businessman is fond of pointing out, “Those parked cars do not appreciate the view”. Between that parking lot and the village’s commercial hub, there is a road with constant traffic. Most of that traffic is just looking for a place to park but by 9:30 am most days, all the parking spaces are full so everybody just drives slowly around the block then goes to look for parking somewhere else.
My favourite image of Tobermory’s parking problem happened a few years ago, back when you could still park on the south side of the inner harbour. There were about seven spaces there, with a single lane between the parked cars and the harbour wall for access. The only way to find out whether there was an empty space (other than, heaven forbid, walking…) was to drive up that narrow lane, then, when you found there were no spaces, make a five point turn and exit the way you came in. It took five minutes or so to complete the maneuvre.
This sounds stupid, but we’re just getting started. If a second car entered the narrow lane while the first car was there, it would have to back out of the way for the first car to leave, before making its own pointless trip to the end of the lane.
Often, cars would line up to make this pointless check. They would wait patiently while the car ahead of them made the trip to the end of the lane and back, before getting a chance to make that trip themselves. Sometimes there would be so many cars lined up to make the pointless trip that they would block access to the boat launch and the larger part of the parking lot.
On one particularly memorable occasion, the line backed up so far that it blocked traffic on Bay Street, completely paralyzing the entire downtown, with traffic moving one car-length forward every five minutes. All to make a pointless trip up a dead-end lane with no parking spaces available. You could euphemize this situation as “not ideal”. My preferred description is less diplomatic.
To their credit, the municipality closed that parking area a few years ago and put in picnic tables, washrooms and a Chamber of Commerce Information kiosque.
That eliminated utter stupidity from the equation, but the situation is still pointless and frustrating. I don’t know for sure what percentage of the traffic in downtown Tobermory is making the pointless trip around the block in a failed search for parking, but on busy days I’ll bet it’s at least 75%.
The Centennial Drive property could completely eliminate this problem. Put in a large parking lot, a Welcome Centre that offers washrooms, tourism counsellors and free wi-fi. Then offer a shuttle bus to take people downtown and the traffic problem simply disappears.
Without all that vehicle traffic, downtown Tobermory will be a much more pleasant place to spend an afternoon. If reducing traffic also takes the pressure off downtown parking, so much the better — it would be lovely to turn at least one row of parking spaces into grass and trees and benches.
But there’s another potentially transformative item in the works — the Minch Anchor Deck. The brainchild of Kent Wilkens, the deck will be a viewing platform along the low cliff on the south side of Little Tub Harbour, surrounding the spot where the anchor from the shipwreck Charles P Minch has been displayed since the 1960s. The proposal has received the enthusiastic support of the business community and the chamber of commerce. They point out that this would be the perfect way to spend tourism-based revenue from paid parking fees or the Municipal Accommodation Tax.
Council and staff visited the Minch Anchor site on the April 25 Road Tour. A Facilities Manager Report is expected shortly.
These two changes would go a long way towards making Tobermory feel like a destination rather than a deer-in-the-headlights village trying to accommodate way too many cars.
Stay tuned.
