The Heritage Trail is located along the Montreal River in Air Ronge. (Facebook/Boreal Outdoor Recreation Association)

By Derek Cornet

wheelchair accessibility

Preliminary planning begins for Heritage Trail boardwalk addition

Mar 24, 2021 | 12:00 PM

One kilometre of the Heritage Trail in Air Ronge could become wheelchair accessible in the coming years if everything goes according to plan.

The project is being spearheaded by village Coun. Corey Hardcastle, who was told about the idea from a member of the Boreal Outdoor Recreation Association (BORA) about six months ago. He liked what he heard, so Hardcastle began reaching out to organizations in the tri-communities to see if there were funding opportunities to build a wheelchair accessible boardwalk.

“I got a few responses back, so that was encouraging,” he said. “Right now, through the Village of Air Ronge and kind of in collaboration with BORA as well, we’re putting in grant applications to see what kind of funding we can get, what our budget is going to be and what the design would look like. We’re trying to get most of the board walk covered by grant funding.”

Current plans call for the boardwalk to be one foot off the ground and for it to stretch about one-quarter of the way through the trail. It would also include a viewing platform with benches and be built in such a way that the snow can be cleared during the winter.

Hardcastle explained there is no guarantee the project will go ahead as it’s still in the preliminary phase and consultation with nearby residents still needs to be done. He also noted the price of the boardwalk is unknown and it could be quite expensive considering the cost of lumber is at an all-time high.

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“We’d still need to go through the environmental assessment to make sure we’re not doing anything that will affect the environment,” Hardcastle added.

The Heritage Trail, which begins in Heritage Park and stretches four kilometres to Bigstone Lake, is a scenic area popular with migratory birds and wildlife. Hardcastle mentioned not only would a boardwalk open the area up to those in wheelchairs, but also those pushing strollers and the elderly.

The only other location Hardcastle currently believes is accessible to those in a wheelchair is the gravel loop in La Ronge’s Patterson Park.

“To open up that trail to the whole population is something I see would be really beneficial,” he said. “I think if [we] made it wheelchair accessible, we would open up that trail because it’s not accessible right now to probably half of the population.”

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno