By Donald Morton | North Frontenac News & Media
At the North Frontenac Council meeting last Thursday, Councillor Mike Hage relayed something a constituent had told him the day before. The man owns a seasonal trailer up here. He lives in the GTA. He drove up. On the way in, he told Hage, he had not seen a single No Alto sign anywhere. Not on Highway 7 past Peterborough. Not along the way. Not once he got here.
His message to Hage: there is more awareness and opposition in the GTA than there is up here.
Council heard it and did not really disagree.
Council is reading the room correctly
North Frontenac is a township of roughly two thousand people spread across a thousand square kilometres of lakes and granite. Civic participation on a regional file in a place this small is genuinely hard. Most people who live here are not in any Alto Facebook group. Most do not follow federal infrastructure files. Most never write to council about anything. That is not unwillingness. It is what civic life looks like in a township this size.
So when council looks for a local groundswell on the ALTO high-speed rail file and sees a thin one, that is what is actually there.
What is also true is that North Frontenac sits inside the corridor whether it wants to or not. The Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority has identified the Highway 506 hydro corridor through North Frontenac as having "least environmental impact" if the route comes through the township. The land in question is in Algonquin land-claim territory, in negotiation since 1991. The lakes are here. The granite is here.
What sits oddly inside this picture is the shape of the consultation. Alto has held twenty-six open-house engagements along the corridor since launching consultation. Not one has been held in Frontenac County. The single Alto presentation in North Frontenac was a November 2025 session, before the formal consultation phase even began. The southern route, where opposition has been loudest, is the route the prime minister, Kingston MP Mark Gerretsen, the Ontario premier, and Kingston city council and its mayor have all publicly defended or campaigned for. The northern route through North Frontenac, the path MVCA identified as having least environmental impact, has no political defender at any level above the township boundary. The township itself has not restated opposition since February.
The opposition has volume, just not here
The organizing of the last six months is real and large. The Eastern Ontario Wardens' Caucus passed a regional opposition resolution in March. Kingston, South Frontenac, and Save South Frontenac issued a joint statement endorsing a 401-alignment route with a Kingston stop. The County of Frontenac passed a standalone opposition resolution in April. Twelve municipalities representing about 215,000 residents signed a joint letter to the Prime Minister at the end of April. Scott Reid's federal e-petition closes this Thursday. As of late last week it had logged more than 17,000 validated signatures, with about 87 per cent of them from Ontario. Around twenty other municipal bodies have passed motions or letters. The Ontario premier publicly favours the 401 alignment. The Liberal-side corridor MP for Kingston has been pushing the southern route since January.
It is a regional movement. It is documented in public record. And by Councillor Hage's read on Thursday, it has not really reached the township the route is being studied for.
There is a void here. Help fill it.
Mayor Lichty asked council the question directly on Thursday: how active do we want to be? He floated buying twenty or thirty No Alto yard signs and getting them out along Highway 506, Highway 519, Buckshot Lake Road, and Arnold Road. He observed that of all the lake associations in North Frontenac, only Kashwakamak Lake Association has been visibly active on the file. He had not heard from the others.
If you are reading this from Ottawa, Peterborough, Kingston, Toronto, or anywhere else along the corridor, the conversation has not reached North Frontenac in the volume it has reached you. Your voice does not have to stop at the township line.
Council meetings here are public and livestreamed. The Township of North Frontenac Facebook page is open for comment on every Alto-related post the township publishes. The township office takes email from anyone, including non-residents, at [email protected]. If you own a cottage or trailer up here, put up a sign on your own property. If you know members of Mazinaw, Buckshot, or any of the other lake associations up here, ask them whether their association is on the file the way Kashwakamak is. If you are tagging councillors elsewhere in the corridor, add North Frontenac.
Council noticed the void on Thursday. They are not wrong about it being there. Help educate our region. The corridor needs every voice it can get, including the ones up here that have not been raised yet.