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Thhirsty for water
?One of the advantages Port Perry has always had over Uxbridge is its waterfront. Even if our brook is some day opened up through downtown, it’s not the same as having your very own lake at one end of your main street.
Elgin Pond, of course, used to be a miniature lake within an easy walk of downtown. It even had a beach, and a dock. People used to take swimming lessons there. Why it’s not that way any more is a subject for a different editorial, and a retrospective article which we’ll be bringing you in a few weeks’ time.
But if you look at aerial photos of the Township of Uxbridge, you will notice that we actually do have quite a few bodies of water that are significantly bigger than Elgin Pond. There’s one northeast of Zephyr called Joseph’s Lake, and another giant one in an old gravel quarry near Goodwood.
The vast majority of these, however, are on private land, owned by farmers or extraction companies. Public access would probably never happen.
But the biggest of all is a public body of water. It’s just a little southeast of Leaskdale, and depending which map you look at, it’s called either Wagner or Wagner’s Lake (the locals call it Wagner’s, so we will too). You drive into it by way of Foster Drive to the west (off Hwy. 1) or by a few different roads to the east (off Lakeridge Road).
We were reminded of the lake’s public status on Monday when Public Works chief Ben Kester brought a request to Council to support a new public dock on the east side of the lake, one built by locals (without the requisite permit, omigosh) because of the steadily deteriorating condition of the old one. The old one presented a safety hazard for swimmers and boaters, so the residents, probably rightly supposing that the construction of a new one was not a high priority for the Township, just went ahead and dealt with the situation themselves.
There was no opposition to that approach from Council, and there likely won’t be from the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority either. As long as the new dock is sound, go ahead folks, feel free to build a public dock with your money.
The reason it makes sense is that, for all practical purposes, Wagner’s is a private lake, used almost exclusively by the families who surround its shores.
But should it be?
We realize this editorial will not be popular with the folk at Wagner’s, and we welcome their response, but it seems curious to us that the Township has not at some point looked into the feasibility of the use of the municipality’s largest body of water for recreational use by the greater public.
Since Elgin Pond has essentially been ruined for most forms of water-based recreation, could Wagner’s Lake not be used as an escape on hot days for those of us who don’t have a cottage? It’s not a large lake, to be sure, positively picayune by Scugog standards, but surely there is some recreational potential in the place.
In the recent Recreation Master Plan, we recall no mention of Wagner’s Lake whatsoever. Why?
Perhaps it would simply be too expensive to develop the lake for any significant amount of public access. Or even impossible, considering its size.
Maybe. But we think, for an Uxbridge public thirsty for water, it’s at least worth investigating.
