Accessing Nature and Opportunity

As access to life’s basics slowly improves for the disability community, our horizons expand. Improved conditions create a demand for greater opportunity, and, as multiple sclerosis reduces my capabilities, I’ve learned to seek ways to add value within my life.

Helping to create the Brooklin Lions Wilderness Trail offered me increased community involvement and, as the photos show, opened up a world of seasonally changing natural delights.

Abandoned farmland along the creek running through our south-central Ontario village gave me an opportunity. Several years ago, I was in a neighbourhood park and watched as a local woman, accompanied by her dog, walked into the valley. They bypassed a locked gate by clambering over a trampled section of fence and, as they hiked down an old road and rounded a bend, they flushed two ducks from a hidden pond.

A lifelong naturalist, I found my curiosity aroused. Discussion with the local parks board about unlocking the gate to allow me to scooter into the area revealed a host of reasons why this couldn’t happen. Never mind that the parks department had chained a garbage container next to the informal "entrance." Here was an obvious double standard that meant I was being denied an opportunity because of apparent disability.

Our village is growing rapidly, and healthy off-road exercise areas are needed... for EVERYONE! Discussions with our parks department and several government programs aimed at celebrating the millennium, together with backing from the local Lions Club and over 30 other local groups, helped bring everything together.

Part of the valley was town land, and part was unused provincial land adjacent to a planned new highway, which the parks department was able to lease. We obtained grants from the Canadian Millennium Partnership Program and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources. Our town’s parks department worked us into its budget, local businesses and services clubs donated money and equipment, and sponsors for items like benches, trash containers and native trees were arranged.

Thanks to a lot of volunteer effort over a two-year period, we created a wheelchair-accessible trail through 16 hectares of valley lands. This is a new park area with a difference, as it is a natural area shared with local plants and wildlife. It’s a place we can all experience and enjoy at whatever level we’re comfortable with. Roller blades, wheelchairs, walkers with shoes and walkers with wheels. Deer mice and white-tailed deer, song sparrows and pileated woodpeckers, red-bellied snakes and garter snakes, green frogs and American toads, butterflies and dragonflies, and windsong in tall trees. Young, old and everyone between. We now all have an opportunity to enjoy natural moments in a healthy environment.

This trail project includes a large educational component aimed at the kids in our local schools -- and the kids on our local council -- and a long-term program geared toward restoring the valley’s ecological health. Environmental programs have included building a hibernaculum (underground housing for overwintering snakes), an amphibian breeding pond, hawk perches, and a butterfly meadow. We’ve also started on the long-term process of replacing invasive introduced plants with native species. An annual Frogwatch group has started, and the area has become part of our local Field Naturalist Club’s annual butterfly census. This project promotes a better future for everyone through a lot of shared effort.

For a larger look at the trail, the self-guided tour, trail educational materials, ecological studies of the site, and regular "happening" updates, visit www.lionstrail.org and www.ddsb.durham.edu.on.ca. Frogwatch information is available at www.cciw.ca/frogwatching.

Although this project was developed to expand everyone’s natural horizons, there has been an interesting spin-off. Neighbours, local media, our municipal council and parks department, and the experts hired to create our trail have all learned something about why accessibility is needed, and how to provide it -- and that those of us with apparent disabilities CAN contribute to society, and want to. Many have seen beyond their initial impressions of disability. Along the way, they’ve become a lot more understanding of and comfortable with the disability community.

(John Hulley is a freelance writer and naturalist living in Brooklin, Ontario.)