Otter Lake

New Otter Lake assembly to encourage community cooperation

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

K.C. Jordan, LJI Journalist

Thomas Villeneuve was burnt out.

The 27-year-old Aylmer native had just graduated from McGill’s math and physics program, but didn’t feel so much of an ounce of satisfaction at the accomplishment.

“They did not make that program so that people could function as real humans,” he said, adding that in addition to being stressed he didn’t feel like he had community support around him.

After graduating in 2022, Villeneuve spent some time with his grandmother, who lives in Shawville but travels to her hometown of Otter Lake to play cards once a week.

“The drives gave me a lot of time to talk with her about how she had grown up,” he said. “She knew so many people and everyone she talked about said [ . . . ] if she ever needed help there’s always someone there to step up.”

Villeneuve said he had never had that kind of community around him, and was intrigued by the idea. After talking with his family, who also craved community, they decided to start the process of moving to their old family homestead in Otter Lake.

The family, which consists of Thomas’ father Gilles, his mother Anne and his brother Zac, recently began building a house on the property, and is travelling back and forth from their house in Aylmer.

In preparation for the move, Villeneuve spent hundreds of hours with his nose buried in books about local politics, resource management and models of governance.

His reading has led him to an idea for a new community group, an Otter Lake community assembly, that will begin meeting in April.

Villeneuve said the assembly will be open to any resident of Otter Lake, and will be a place where they can discuss issues going on in the community.

He said he has seen some heated council meetings, particularly during council’s decision to implement clear garbage bags, and thinks the assembly can help give people a space to air their frustrations before bringing them to the council.

“I don’t like all the animosity that I see whenever I go there. I want to make a way that we can talk together without getting into arguments,” he said.

“I think what people wanted was a town hall on the composting project, and that didn’t happen. If you would have let them make that decision together, it would sit better with everyone. It feels good to be included in the decision-making.”

Villeneuve said the assembly is a way to make residents feel like their concerns are being heard in real life, not just online in the Facebook comment section.

“It’s reciprocity. You should be talking to a real person, you need that human connection otherwise you don’t feel like you are implicating yourself in the decisions,” he said, adding that rather than voting he wants to use a process called consensus, which is slightly different.

“It’s not one side versus the other, it’s not majority rules. It’s everyone discusses things and the decisions we make in the end have to be at least okay with everyone.”

Mayor supportive of initiative

Villeneuve said while he believes in the municipal council and council members’ desire to do right by the community, they are also limited in how many residents they can talk to. He hopes that the assembly will allow the community to present council with well-researched ideas that represent the opinions and desires of the community at large.

“If we take [an idea] to council, you won’t have people showing up saying, ‘When did this start? Why should I do that? Why can’t I use these bags?’,” he said. “I find that you take all that heated debate right out of it before you meet with council because this consensus group has made a decision they think is right.”

Otter Lake mayor Jennifer Quaile said she is generally supportive of the idea and looks forward to collaborating with the assembly and even joining in a few meetings.

“Theoretically I think it’s a positive thing to do, to have community groups get together and brainstorm about ideas, about what they’d like to see done, and then bring the ideas forward to council if we in any way can help make things happen,” she said, adding that she likes the idea because it helps council hear from more people.

“Members of civil society have a right to participate in decision-making, to influence the decision-makers, such as ourselves at the table of councillors. So, it’s really beneficial to us as their representatives to hear from them and what they would like to see.”

Quaile added that she is looking forward to hopefully having a more productive dialogue between residents and elected officials.

“We can discuss in a safe public space [ . . . ] so that people can understand each other, and I think that will contribute to a much more positive atmosphere. I think we’re living in a particular time period where there is a lack of trust of elected officials, and I think the more open we can be and more inclusive of the people we represent, the more positive it will be.”

Villeneuve said the family has been using community assembly-style meetings to make group decisions, and that they sat down as a group to establish a core set of participation guidelines that all members can agree to.

He hopes to do the same with the Otter Lake group.

“I made a joke out of it, and said there’s 10 commandments. The first time we sat together, I asked them, what are some groups you’ve been in before, and what worked well? We brainstormed some ideas, and at the end we brought them together to make this list of 10 things we think are necessary so we can work together.”

Aside from the decision-making, Villeneuve and family want to encourage the community to be more self-sustainable, and wish to put in a community garden and tool shed.

“You see it in Toronto, you see it in Kingston, the food banks have just gone out of food in no time at all,” said Gilles. “Is it going to come to a point like that in our small community? It would be nice to have that mindset that people know how to plant gardens, know how to can food, know how to process the food, and we have a lot of people with that kind of knowledge in town.”

For the family, there’s a lot of work to be done before the community assembly first meets, and Thomas is trying to spread the word about his new initiative. In the meantime, though, he’s still driving his grandmother to cards in Otter Lake every week, learning everything he can about how the community used to be.

The Otter Lake community assembly will meet Apr. 5 at the Raymond Johnston Community Centre in Otter Lake, and will feature a free potluck. For more information, contact Thomas Villeneuve by email at info@olcac.ca.

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Quaile acclaimed as Otter Lake mayor

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Jennifer Quaile was acclaimed to the position of mayor of Otter Lake last month after nobody else entered their name in the race for the municipality’s top seat.

The news came late in the afternoon of Dec. 20, the last day of the candidate nomination period.

“I’m thrilled. I think that it’s a real privilege to have the opportunity to be a mayor of Otter Lake,” Quaile said.

“I really care a lot about Otter Lake, having been born and raised here. I know I’ve been away a long time but I care about the village and I care about the community, so it really does mean a lot to me.”

Quaile was elected councillor of the municipality in 2021, and appointed pro-mayor in June 2022.

Last fall she assumed mayoral duties when Terry Lafleur resigned from the position to take a job as assistant director general for MRC Pontiac.

To learn more about Quaile’s ambitions as mayor, see THE EQUITY’s interview with her on page five, the final piece in our Who’s Running this Town? series of conversations with mayors across the Pontiac.

Quaile acclaimed as Otter Lake mayor Read More »

Otter Lake’s milfoil problem is bigger than Farm Lake

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A biologist brought in by the Municipality of Otter Lake to assess the presence of Eurasian watermilfoil found the invasive aquatic plant in three of the six lakes surveyed this August.

The report produced by biologist Annie Parent, received by the municipality at the end of September, found that Clark Lake, Leslie Lake and Hughes Lake seem to be free of contamination, although the biologist states that this does not mean it isn’t growing there.

Parent did however find several places where milfoil was growing in McCuaig Lake, Little Hughes Lake, and Otter Lake. Its presence in these three lakes is in addition to Farm Lake and Little Cayamant Lake, where the invasive species was first discovered in 2023.

The rapid growth of milfoil on Farm Lake led the municipality to close the lake’s boat launch this summer, leaving it open for cottagers to get on and off the lake on weekends, and put buoys on the lake to mark the contaminated areas.

The freshwater plant, nicknamed the zombie plant because of how difficult it is to kill, is of concern to the municipality because it outcompetes native lake species, reducing biodiversity and leading to poor water quality.

It grows to the surface of the water during the spring and summer, and dies out in the winter, at which point its decomposition consumes oxygen in the water, a process which can be harmful to aquatic life.

“It would be so thick that it would make swimming completely difficult, like a mat,” said Jennifer Quaile, pro-mayor of Otter Lake, describing the damage the plant could cause.

Also, boating becomes a problem because it’s a fragile kind of plant and it will wrap around your propeller to the point where you’ll get stuck.”

Also this August, the municipality had a whole team of biologists conduct a more extensive mapping effort on Farm Lake and Little Cayamant Lake. The results of that work are expected in early November, according to Quaile, and will indicate not only where each growth is, but how much of it there is in each location.

This information will be used to determine which strategy the municipality should employ to get rid of the milfoil. The options, according to Quaile, are placing a tarp over the affected areas of the lake, or having divers remove the milfoil plants at their base.

“If you’ve got a patch of growth and there’s 80 per cent milfoil, they’re going to suggest we use the tarp, if it’s a large area with that much milfoil. And that will kill off the natural plant as well, but it’s worth it,” Quaile said. “Pulling it out by hand is recommended in smaller areas.”

Maps included in Parent’s report mark the locations on each lake where the milfoil was found, but the report states there may be more, as the survey done did not investigate every corner of each lake.
Quaile said she was surprised the plant hasn’t reached all lakes yet.

“And the biologist was surprised too because the conditions are quite favourable. Leslie lake is a shallow lake and the plant grows quite well when the sunlight can get to it. And again with Hughes, because there’s a creek that runs out of Farm into Hughes,” Qualie said. “So I think there’s a lot of factors that even the scientists aren’t sure of yet.”

While the mitigation work being done on Farm Lake is ahead of the other four lakes where the milfoil has been found to date, Quaile said council will work with a committee that includes representatives from each lake’s association to determine how best to proceed.

“Once we have our strategies figured out with the committee’s recommendations to council, we’ll go and get public feedback.”

Otter Lake’s milfoil problem is bigger than Farm Lake Read More »

Invasive plant species found in two local lakes

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Community briefed on presence of Eurasian milfoil in Farm Lake and Petit Lac Cayamant

Charles Dickson, LJI Reporter

Sixty-five people attended a public forum in Otter Lake on Saturday morning to hear from the municipal council about Eurasian water milfoil, an invasive plant species that has been found in Farm Lake and Petit Lac Cayamant.
The meeting, held at the RA Centre, was opened by Otter Lake mayor Terry Lafleur who then turned it over for presentations by councillors Jennifer Quaile and Robin Zacharias.
As described in the presentations, milfoil is a perennial plant that grows profusely in summer and dies in the fall, using up oxygen as it decomposes, choking the lake and killing native plant species and fish.
Councillor Quaile described how anything that disturbs the plants such as boats, waves and people raking them can easily cause fragments to break off and move to another location where the leaves become roots that latch onto the bottom of the lake and produce new plants.
Dense mats of the plant can make swimming unpleasant and can wrap around propellors and paddles making boating difficult, if not impossible.
Economic consequences include reductions in waterfront property values, lost tourism causing local businesses to suffer, and high costs of controlling the problem which can lead to higher taxes.
Councillor Zacharias outlined a range of strategies to eradicate milfoil including laying large burlap tarps on top of the plants to suffocate them, hiring divers to pull the plants out by the root, and using a Health Canada-approved herbicide to kill the invasive species.
Methods of preventing the spread of the plant within a lake include marking milfoil patches with buoys to help boaters avoid driving through them, as well as limiting boat traffic around launch areas where the problem is at its worst, especially in July and August when the plant has grown up to the surface of the water.

“The most common way it propagates, it gets chopped up in a prop, and then it just goes and floats through until it clings somewhere and starts growing again,” Mayor Lafleur told THE EQUITY.
“We really want to try to get a handle on it, especially at the boat launch because, if you’re just docking your boat and you’re going in and you’re taking off, well you’re chopping up a whole bunch of it.”
Boat washing is a key means of preventing the spread of milfoil from one lake to another. Otter Lake set up a boat washing program in 2020.
Public education, citizens reporting sightings of milfoil patches, and shoreline management to keep nutrients that promote the plant’s growth from flowing from the land into the water all feature in the municipality’s proposed plans.
Late last year, after finding Petit Lac Cayamant and Farm Lake listed on a Ministry of Environment website as possibly containing Eurasian water milfoil, the municipality hired a biologist to inspect the lakes who confirmed the presence of the invasive species.
One of the municipality’s next steps will be to inspect six more lakes in the area: Clarke, Leslie, Otter, Hughes, Little Hughes and McCuaig.
“Doing nothing is not an option. We’ve got to do something,” Councillor Zacharias said. “The question is what do we do?”
In the lively question and answer period that followed the presentation, members of the audience brought forward many ideas that promise to help answer Councillor Zacharias’ excellent questions. Originating in Europe and Asia, Eurasian Water Milfoil was carried to North Americas in the ballast of large ships.

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