Rural Frontenac Community Services Turns 50

Jeff Green | Jan 30, 2025

Sharbot Lake is a small hamlet, but it is a service centre for a large rural area north of Verona. There is a thriving Family Health Team in the hamlet, a large Community Living presence, a Child Centre and a Seniors centre, and the Rural Frontenac Community Services adult building that brings in agencies from Kingston, to provide a range of social and mental health services for adults.

None of this happened over night.

In 1971, a 'communications group' started meeting in Sharbot Lake, to talk about the future of the hamlet that had been a railroad hub surrounded by farming communities, in the face of a changing world. The summer cottage traffic was growing, but many communities were losing businesses and becoming mere crossroads. The permanent resident population was dwindling.

But the arrival that year of a young doctor, Peter Bell, who set up a practice in Sharbot Lake, and the enthusiasm of some key people, began to make a difference.

The group thought that the people in Sharbot Lake and the surrounding communities needed to work together to build a shared future, and the first thing they did was start a monthly newsletter.

Through the meetings and the newsletter, the scope of what the group began working on rapidly expanded to looking at health issues, housing, poverty and more. They began to look around for partners and for grants, and found help from the provincial government of the day and St. Lawrence College's outreach arm.

By 1975, four years after starting to meet, North Frontenac Community Services (NFCS) was incorporated.

The organisation, now called Rural Frontenac Community Services (RFCS), has been a force in the local communities ever since, starting up services that have spun off into their own agencies, and providing a hub for outside providers.
As RFCS marks its 50th anniversary this year, it is fitting that the Frontenac News, which is a continuation of that 1971 newsletter that was known called the North Frontenac News, or simply “the North Frontenac”, would participate.

Starting in next week's edition, a series of articles, each covering a decade of NFCS/RFCS history, will run in the News, in the runup to the 50th anniversary celebration this summer.

Next week, the 1970s, the founding and early expansion of NFCS. ■