CALEB NICKERSON
CAMPBELL’S BAY
June 20, 2018
At the monthly council of mayors meeting, several visitors were present.
After a presentation from the son of former warden Elsie Gibbons, the public question period featured several visitors with high-priority concerns, from garbage to flooding.
Robin Judd and Jessica Forgues of the Pontiac Tourism Association (PTA) presented a proposal that the organization partner with the MRC and create a joint advisory committee to oversee all tourism operations in the region. Forgues said that this would be a way to avoid duplicating efforts and accomplish more together. The mayors agreed to the proposal and Warden Jane Toller, who is the former president of the PTA herself, called the move a positive one.
Tiziana Fortin-Rompelberg of the Amies du Cycloparc PPJ gave a presentation on the group’s proposed activities for the summer.
MRC Tourism officer Jérémi Vaillancourt gave a rundown of all the work he has been doing to promote the region over the past few months, from attending tourism and bicycle shows in Gatineau, to inviting journalists from major travel publications to the region.

Later in the meeting it was announced that the MRC had hired a local engineer to more expediently deal with municipal issues.
“A decision was made around budget time that it would be a good idea because currently municipalities are paying a lot to individually contract out their own engineers,” she said after the meeting. “The reason we decided to make this more urgent, ie now, is that we have various issues that need to be addressed … She’ll be here working at the MRC, but the mayors will all have access to her services. We’re going to have to work out some type of schedule, some municipalities have a greater need than others. ”
Toller said the new hire has 12 years of experience and would be able to help with a wide variety of tasks. She pointed to things like drainage issues on farm land as well as the recent washout that has closed part of the PPJ trail in Litchfield.
She said that the MRC is still investigating who is at fault for the washout, which occurred in the spring after crews replaced a large culvert in November.
“At this point, … we’re trying to still resolve things between the contractor and the engineer,” she said. “It’s moving very slowly. We’re hoping that this can be resolved and repaired at no additional cost to the MRC because the MRC has already paid quite enough.”
In addition, at the meeting it was announced that the MRC would be seeking to recover money loaned to local mill Jovalco.
“They had borrowed some large sums of money and they’ve done a good job of getting it paid back but they’ve fallen into difficulties this year with so much of their equipment not working and they’re really not able to bring in much revenue,” Toller explained. “We’ve written a letter to them and given them 15 days so the next step is to get a [lawyer] involved.”
Toller estimated that the total amount owning was around $30,000.
“They were paying it back at a very good rate, I was hoping that they could continue, but it’s very difficult when you have equipment not working,” she said.