There is no use beating around the bush.
We here at the Almaguin News are pro tower.
We thought briefly of holding off judgment on the proposed
300-foot tower for the Katrine area, that would overlook Doe Lake and
surrounding communities, until all sides had weighed-in on the debate about
whether the proposed site of the tower was suitable or not.
But the more we thought on the matter, the less we could
find reasons for holding back.
Towers are not exactly new instruments of communication. Almost
immediately after Marconi figured out how to transmit sound over the air,
towers were created to get the signals out and collect them in.
They’ve become essential in modern life, delivering more
than just our evening news broadcasts and jingles. They are now the backbone of
communications throughout the world. Not at all unlike the telephone when it
was introduced so many years ago, wireless communications are considered
essential, not a luxury.
With that in mind, imagine the meeting on Tuesday night was
being held 70 or 80 years ago and the council was not considering a single
structure being erected high on a hill, but telephone poles down the quiet
country roads of Katrine. With today’s perspective we can see the
ridiculousness of the thought that some lakefront property owners would be out
protesting the use of telephone poles because of their unattractiveness on the
landscape and the need to cut down trees to make room for them.
And think of how much more foolish it would be if a council
actually listened to such frivolous concerns and denied residents, seasonal or
permanent, access to the telephone grid.
It’s absolutely preposterous.
This is not to say that all concerns at the meeting were
frivolous. There were adjacent property owners who did not get their questions
answered or concerns addressed at the meeting that unfortunately turned into a
free-for-all too early, as petty complaints about a couple of red lights in the
night sky dominated the discussion.
These property owners had legitimate concerns and it is too
bad that they did not have time or opportunity to properly air them. Instead
the meeting was clogged up with useless points from people worried about the
sight of the tower, rather than the site.
It’s too bad.
Aesthetics are not enough of a reason to hold back not only
the community of Katrine but the surrounding hamlets, villages and scattered
rural properties as well, from Chetwynd to Pickerel Lake, to Three Mile Lake to
Sprucedale.
This is an amazing opportunity for the entire area that the Almaguin
News will endeavour to explore in the
coming weeks as the rollout of the federal, provincial and local partnership
brings our area into the telecom revolution.
Residents of Katrine need the same services as those in
Burk’s Falls, Huntsville, Barrie or Toronto. This tower represents progress and
a couple of lights in the sky that people a half-kilometre or more away might
see at night should not enter the debate.
In our mind the only questions are how can any impact on the
adjacent property owners be mitigated and how soon.