May 30, 2001
LAND O'LAKES NewsWeb
HomeFine for Camping on Crotch Lake Thrown out by Judge
by David BrisonWayne Harris and the Township of Central Frontenac had already been to court on three charges related to camping on Crotch Lake last summer (reported in the January 24, 2001 issue of The Frontenac News). The fines for those three charges totalled $1000. The judge in those proceedings dismissed two of the charges and fined Harris $100 on the third charge.
Harris, represented by paralegal Bob Pollard of Sharbot Lake, appealed the charge for which they received the $100 fine, and on April 26, Judge P.H. Megginson heard the appeal and ruled in favour of Harris.
Harris and his family camped on Big Island in Crotch on the long August weekend last summer. He did not have a campsite permit. The Township of North Frontenac had designated the whole of Long Island as a campground, under an agreement with the Province. The island is on Crown land. Harris camped on the island, but not on campsites which the Township had set up there.
The charge for which Harris originally received a fine was for using a campsite without a valid permit. Judge Megginson said in the appeal that all of the evidence in the original trial showed that Harris was not on a campsite. He then threw out the charge.
Megginson said that Harris could have been convicted for violation of Section 5 of the same by- law, namely for camping within a municipal campgrounds but not on a campsite.
The Township of North Frontenac has been through exhaustive and costly court proceedings and has come up with their hands empty. They first had to hire a solicitor, Tom Rivoire of the private bar in Kingston, to prosecute the charges, and then had to pay him to represent them at the appeal. In the final analysis, the courts decided that the Township's by-laws were fine, but that they erred in enforcing them.
