A significant portion of the damage seen on Algonquin's campsites came from firewood scavenging, without axe or saw, for deadwood on the ground or low hanging limbs. In the early 1970s this was turning campgrounds into deserts. It is the complete opposite of Temagami, where the axe and saw have always been king among the skill-intensive youth camps. Freed from scavenging small wood, they take down standing deadwood along their route and bring it to campsites.

The rule has become further dated as many canoeists are travelling with gas stoves.

In 1975, the nine-person limit was included in the park plan. In the late 1980s, a bureaucrat in Toronto, knowing little about the rest of the province and seeing a quick-and-dirty solution for growing campsite use seen in some parks, arranged for the nine-person rule to be extended across all Ontario parks. Until now, Temagami's parks were non-operating, so no rule was enforced.

In Temagami, where logging roads are popping up all over and illegal access follows, chainsaw-wielding day users are common. As Bruce Ingersoll of Keewaydin points out, they are the major enemy of campsites. They will cut anything within feet of a fireplace, living or dead, but the nine-person rule does not apply to them as they do not stay overnight. Slapping the camps misses the problem. 

Personalized law

MNR staff told the youth camps in a meeting this summer that there won't be an exception for them because the rule is law. In fact, rather than being embedded in legislation, the rule is a regulation set by Cabinet. A glance at park regulations is enlightening. There are oodles of regulations with all kinds of special exemptions, exceptions and modifications. So many that exception is the norm.

One regulation actually changes the nine-person rule for Frontenac Provincial Park, setting it at five, except for campers that are a family. Motorboats are banned by regulation from Algonquin Park, but youth camps get a whole section exempting them. One solitary operator, Bartlett Lodge, gets its own modification. The park regulations go on and on with all variation of sizes and colours. There are so many that they make uniqueness into fairness.

Over the last century, as the Temagami First Nation abandoned life on the land, and the fire rangers abandoned Temagami, the camps remained the surviving force keeping the portages open and the campsites clean (though until the last few decades there was little outside traffic trashing the sites). Now Temagami is a canoeing Mecca in no small measure from the century-long effort put in by the camps. No good deed goes unpunished.

LIST: Lake Temagami camps

MAP:  Youth camps then and now

DECEMBER 7, 2006