New focus on encouraging visitors
Jessica Smith
Facing financial hardship, the Friends of Quetico Park has been forced to change its focus and as such will not operate a gift shop at Dawson Trail this season. Instead, the organization is pursuing new avenues – and more Atikokan representation – to fulfill its mandate of park promotion.
Friends publications will be sold at the pavilion by MNR staff, with order forms available for clothing purchases, and perhaps over time, staff will also sell clothing and other store items, said outgoing board chair John Soghigian.
“We decided that maybe it’s best to ask the park to pick up that responsibility,” he said, adding that sales at park entry stations will continue as they have in the past.
This summer marks a drastic change from the highly visible presence the group enjoyed last year with a Main Street office and gift shop during and the park’s centennial. This year, the organization has no staff budget and volunteers are stretched too thin to apply for summer staff funding, he said.
“We reached the point in mid-winter where we needed to appoint a small group of board members, essentially as an executive committee, to deal with the financial pressures that were hard upon us,” said Soghigian, an Ely resident. “They made some decisions and one was to close our operation on Main Street, and that had enormous repercussions for us in terms of what we have as staff; they chose to operate the administrative function on their own.”
The organization has struggled with a lack of office space for the past several years, said Soghigian, and that was the basis for its decision last year to become the first park Friends organization in the province to locate facilities off MNR property.
“The office we occupied [at the pavilion] was closed to us several years ago. That’s one of the things that prompted us to start looking at an office on Main Street. Then, with the centennial, we thought of going beyond an office, and offering a storefront operation.”
When funding for an executive-director position ended last year, the board chose not seek to additional funding to keep that position open, and some members felt it was not feasible to rely on volunteers to run a gift store or oversee and train summer employees if student grants could be secured.
He said the committee has hired a bookkeeper in Thunder Bay, “simply because that’s where most of the board members are located.” The Friends is holding its annual meeting at Dawson Trail September 11, at 4 pm and with four vacancies likely opening up (including Soghigian’s position; he has served two terms – the maximum for a director), the board would welcome more Atikokanites to offer a community perspective and local direction, he said. The board currently has two members from town, Diane Poirier and Lise Sorensen.
“The board would like a greater connection with the community. One of our bylaws is to support the economic development of Atikokan and the area around the park.”
New direction
In light of recent events, “certainly we’re in a rebuilding mode, and as we build, we can re-establish a presence in town,” he said.
That rebuilding includes finding new ways to fulfill the group’s mandate to “promote the park as a wilderness resource for the people of Ontario.” In the past, the Friends raised considerable revenue through the publication of several books about the park’s history, flora and fauna and birds – at a time when no such information was available. Now, with the emergence of several new literary works such as that of park staffer and archeologist Jon Nelson and photojournalists Gary and Joanie McGuffin, the Friends’ role of providing education about Quetico through literature is no longer as necessary, he said. Instead, the organization is looking to attract people to Quetico, and one way is through appealing to devotees of an emerging outdoor recreational trend, kayaking. The organization is hosting a wilderness kayaking symposium at the park next summer, and is expecting in excess of 100 kayakers for the event.
“Nowadays, more people are kayaking than canoeing; canoe retailers are now selling kayaks,” said Soghigian.
The organization is developing a kayaking route brochure because the nature of the sport (the crafts cannot hold a lot of supplies and are more difficult to portage) means routes involving fewer portages are preferable. As part of that, the Friends will work with local businesses to promote their services and is seeking AEDC support for the event.
“We want to do this one thing really well, and this is the type of thing that is getting priority attention from our board in contrast to a failing sales operation.” While merchandise sales in recent years have generated enough funds to pay for wages, “we were really not generating enough income to support park programs. If you’re selling goods and paying employees and that’s all the income you’re generating, it’s not accomplishing that higher purpose.”
The group will likely host symposiums in kayaking and canoeing in alternating years.
Park visitation has declined in recent years, and events like this can serve to enhance visitation because to some degree, if you don’t use it, you just might lose it, said Soghigian. “It comes to the point where it takes the users of the park to support it as it is,” he said, adding that current usage is well below park quotas.
This summer the Friends’ presence will take the form of a display at the pavilion, an upgraded website, and partnership projects to improve campground hiking trail signage and purchase birding equipment for the natural heritage education program.
While Soghigian is unsure that the Friends will ever re-open the pavilion gift shop, he hopes the group’s presence will be seen in new and relevant ways – with the help of those closest to the park.
“We know as a community-based organization, we’ve got to increase the number of people from town on the board and active on our committees.”
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