Living Here can be Dangerous to One's Health

We live in the most idyllic place.  Seven years ago, almost to the day, we decided to move away from an ultra-cool urban loft in the ultra-trendy West Village area of Ottawa.  Crammed between the gentrification going on in Hintonburg and Westboro, it’s in my opinion the best neighbourhood in the city.

We also had a lake property that we developed through the early years of our relationship.  It was a beautiful, totally secluded lot just inside the Laurentians area outside of Lac des Plages, Quebec.  It was on a tiny pristine lake, no motorboats allowed.  We put a trailer on the property and developed a great little infrastructure around it and for ten years, running off of propane and a solar paneled 12-volt battery, carved out a cool little summer cottage existence.

Every Sunday afternoon at about 1:30 though, the realization hit that it was time to pack up and get ready to go home.  This was always difficult.  There we were in the prime time of our summer weekend and we had to leave paradise and head back to the city and reality.  We often spent our Saturday nights around the campfire discussing what we could ultimately do about the situation.

It came to us after a while that maybe we should explore living at the cottage.  If we could find the right piece of property within a reasonable commuting distance to the city then maybe it was viable. And so we did.

We eventually bought a spectacular place.  Twenty-five foot ceilings, floor to ceiling stone fireplace, wood floors and ceiling, with a curved staircase up to a mezzanine office area and two bedrooms.  The design is a perfect mix between modern and rustic and we fell in love as soon as we walked in.  There’s a finished basement that walks out onto a deck that leads to a series of stairs down to a beautiful lake.  Your money can go a long way when you move to the country in Quebec, especially back then.

All of this is on Lac Rheume in Val des Monts, Quebec and the most incredible thing about it is that once we drive out of our lane-way, we’re in downtown Ottawa in forty minutes.  Think of that.  I can’t think of another major city where this is possible.  For two urbanites, we’ve grown to love this lifestyle.

We were fully aware at the time of purchase that the road our property sat on was privately owned.  The municipality had no commitments to maintaining it as the developer has never brought it up to the appropriate spec and this left him responsible for the maintenance.  Nowhere is this listed on our deed but for twenty years, since the properties here were developed, this has been the case.

By no stretch of the imagination has the road, at any point in the past seven years, been well maintained.  We are deep in the Gatineau Hills.  The road winds up and down curvy hills and in the summer time it is always a massive battle to get the developer to provide a maintenance grading.  In fact, not once in the summer of 2013 did he arrange for this to be done.

But it’s not the summer that is the real issue of course.  Potholes and washboard can be navigated in the summertime but the winter is a different story.  Living out here is not for the faint of heart in the wintertime.  Surprisingly though, we have grown to love the winters almost as much as the summers.  Juxtaposed against the social summer scene, the winters are laid back and quiet.  We’re active all year round and there is no end of snowshoeing, Nordic walking or cross-country skiing opportunities here.

Here’s the issue.  We pay over $7,000.00 a year in property and school taxes to the Municipality of Val des Monts, Quebec.  For this we receive in return garbage and recycling pick-up.  Garbage is collected every week from June to September and recycling every second week.  From October to May it alternates, garbage one week and recycling the next.  This is the sum total of what we receive in return for our annual tax investment. 

Our water comes from a well and our sewage drains to our septic system.  Hydro Quebec brings and maintains the electrical power to our door.  This along with the wood I cut, block and split heats the house.  Bell Canada does the same for our landline.  Being so rural there is no high-speed Internet in the area so we have satellite.  So our complete infrastructure, other than garbage pick-up is handled completely outside of the Municipality.  Did I mention that we pay over $7,000 a year in property and school tax?

The winter maintenance of our road has been terrible the last few years.  I suppose that the developer has over the years started to wonder about his responsibility for the maintenance of the road.  We’ve discovered in conversation with the contractor who ploughs the road that his financial commitment has dwindled and become more complicated these last few years.  Securing a solid contract with him has always proven difficult and securing payment is apparently a constant struggle.  So much so that last winter, the road clearing became far less regular and the sanding of the roads, a real necessity especially after freezing rain, was non-existent.

Here's the point though, and I promise there is actually a point.  Say someone dies out here because we are not being provided the basic necessities of life.  This may sound a little dramatic but I’m pretty sure that here in the first world, safe access to emergency vehicles is considered a necessity of life.

 

I’m writing this in late November 2013.  We received 25 cm of snow over the last two days and our road has not been ploughed yet.  If I were to have a heart attack while writing this, there is no doubt that I would die.  It is impossible for an ambulance to get to me.  We are not outside of the 50 km emergency helicopter fly radius from the hospital in Gatineau, so they will not send a helicopter to save me – no exceptions.

We have two efficient wood burning devices in our home and while both pieces of equipment are well maintained and we are extremely careful, accidents happen.  If our house were to catch on fire right now, it would burn to the ground.  It is impossible for a fire truck to navigate our road in its present condition.

You may think I’m exaggerating the situation but I’m not.  We have experience.  Three years ago this month, after the first major snowstorm of the year, a neighbour of ours decided to go for a snowmobile ride around the area.

 

One of his front skis hit a rut (created I might add by the lack of pre-snow grading) and his machine went off of the road.  Unfortunately he was at a point where the road is built up fifteen feet above the natural grade.  When the machine hit the ground from this height, he was obviously thrown from it and impacted a tree.  This man has an incredible will to live.  It was later determined that when he hit the tree he had fractured his skull, sustained a cracked vertebrae in his neck, broken numerous ribs and had numerous contusions.  He was not far from his empty cottage but in an incredible feat of survival thought better of an attempt to get there.  Instead he made the decision to struggle up the hill to our place, knowing that we’re almost always home on the weekends.

We were celebrating Suzanne’s birthday with a weekend in the city and were not home.  A friend of ours was though.  Thankfully she was staying at our place to look after the dog.  Suzanne always cracks that Harley the dog saved Stuart’s life.

Can you imagine the panic this twenty-one year old went through when she answered that knock at the door in the middle of the day in the middle of nowhere?  She reacted in textbook fashion and immediately went into emergency mode.  She contacted 911, sat Stuart in a chair and started to tend to his wounds while they waited…and waited.

Eventually the paramedics did showed up.  To do so though, they had to contact a member of the local volunteer fire department to drive his four-wheel drive truck to the scene.  The ambulance was unable to even get up the first small hill on our road.

This next part is something out of a movie but I assure you it’s true.  They laid Stuart onto a backboard and secured him to it and then loaded him into the back of the half-ton truck and drove him to the main road and the waiting ambulance.  This is not exactly the ideal mode of transportation for someone who has just suffered an obvious neck injury but I commend their quick thinking regardless.

Stuart was wheeled into the emergency department of the Gatineau Hospital three hours after the accident happened.  He should not have survived but thankfully due to the quick thinking of a few people and an incredible will to live, he did.

My daughter Amelia mentioned something to me last night, just before I left to go and pick-up Suzanne, who I had arranged to meet at the start of our road.  She wanted to leave her car there to ensure she could get to work the next day.  She has a number of important meetings that can’t be missed and as the road has not been ploughed more than twenty-four hours after the last flake of snow hit the ground, this seemed the most logical solution.  She said, “Dad, this is Canada.  I might understand this if we were living in the third world, but this is Canada!”

So riddle me this.  If there had been another outcome to our friend’s accident or if I did have a heart attack, slipped on the ice, had a chain-saw accident, or if a spark crackled from the open door of the wood-stove and ignited onto a carpet somewhere, or a wire burst into flames behind the drywall somewhere - who do you think should be liable when the drag my lifeless carcass away or the last burning embers lay smouldering?

I certainly hold some culpability.  I’m the one who moved out here and the one who enjoys a couple of weekend cigars.  But heaven help any local, provincial or federal politician in this region who, whether directly or indirectly, allowed a developer to throw down a death-trap tractor path strictly for the vested interests of making money and increasing tax base without a modicum of regulatory due-diligence, planning or assumption of responsibility - because by the time my widow’s lawyers get finished with them they won’t know if they’ve been punched or bored.