| Aug 20, 2014


Last week, Central Frontenac Council decided to stay an order to remove two miniature horses from a property on Clarke Rd. Margaret Mallory and Brian Skillen have been keeping the horses on their one-acre property and petitioned the township to allow them to keep them. Council asked township staff to report back on whether this constitutes an “agricultural use”, which would require a minimum lot size of four hectares (9.9 acres).

Council is considering changing the bylaw or fine tuning the definition of agricultural use to exclude animals that are being kept as pets, as the horses are.

Two people read the account of this debate with interest, for different reasons.

One of those people is Peter Lister, who was one of the very few in the audience at the meeting who was not there to support Mallory and Skillen. In fact it was Peter Lister who made the complaint that activated the bylaw officer to order the miniature horses removed in the first place.

“I have nothing against the horses,” he said later when interviewed at his home, which is next to the home of Mallory and Skillen, “nor do I have anything against the people living there. My problem is with the potential effect of those horses on my water and on the water in Big Clear Lake.”

As was reported last week, the Ministry of the Environment will be investigating the matter, not because of the bylaw but because the wellhead on the property in question is located in the same converted garage where the miniature horses, Teddy and Tommy, are stabled.

Lister's concern is based on the fact that his own well is the same depth as the well on the neighbouring property and he is concerned it might be the same vein that feeds both wells, making his well subject to potential contamination.

“I am trying to sell my house and if anything happens to the water that would be the end of my sale,” he said, “and I would be left with contaminated drinking water.”

Lister said that he has been testing his well water every week since the spring, when he became concerned, and thus far the tests have come back clean.

“The garage also backs onto a flood plain that drains directly into Big Clear Lake,” Lister said, pointing to the back of the properties, “and the animal waste can feed into the lake.”

We attempted to contact Mr. Skillen to comment on the concerns raised by Peter Lister, but were unsuccessful thus far.

If two horses are ok, what about six goats?

Shawn Blackburn also read the article last week, and called us to talk about his brush with the bylaw officer. Blackburn lives with his wife Julie and daughter Christina on Brock Road close to Mountain Grove. Last month he was served with an order from the Central Frontenac bylaw officer to remove the pet goats that he has had on his three-acre property for the past 18 months.

“I have permission from my neighbour to use 10 acres of his property, which backs onto mine, in order to get the township off my back,” he said, taking a break from doing some excavator work in preparation for putting up a fence around his neighbour's field. The order from the township requires that the animals are removed by August 23, and Blackburn does not know what will happen then. He has been working on a combine in Saskatchewan and will be flying back there to work until the season ends in mid-November. He is hoping the township will give him enough time to find a way to comply with the bylaw.

Blackburn does not know who complained about the goats, which he keeps in a penned-in yard next to his house. The six goats started off as two goats, Billy and Daisy, who were purchased as pets for Christina, but now there are six, two of which, twins Bob and Burt, are set to be given away.

“We're going to fix the males so we'll have four left,” said Blackburn, adding that the animals are kept entirely as pets, not for milk or meat or any other agricultural use.

“I'll do what I have to to keep them; my daughter is very attached to them. She pampers them; she feeds them by hand. We all do.”

Support local
independant journalism by becoming a patron of the Frontenac News.