EDITORIAL: An open letter to North Frontenac
By Donald Morton | North Frontenac News Media – NFNM | November 21, 2025
If you are in your 20s, 30s, or early 40s and you live in North Frontenac, this is aimed straight at you. You don’t need to feel “ready.” Nobody does. You don’t have to be popular or polished, and you don’t need years of committee experience. What you do need is a real stake in this place and the willingness to show up, read the material, and vote with the long-term health of the township in mind. Ask yourself a few blunt questions: do you want your kids or grandkids to be able to live here, do you want real work here beyond seasonal hours and weekend tourism, and do you want housing rules and land decisions that fit the people who actually live in North Frontenac year-round? If the answer to any of that is yes, you are exactly the kind of person who should be thinking about running for council next year.
Council will never solve everything in your life, but it shapes more of your future than most people realize. If people like you stay on the sidelines, decisions about your roads, taxes, lakes, and housing will fall to whoever happens to be willing and available. Next year is municipal election year. The names that go on those ballots will decide who carries this township into the next twenty years. The real question is whether anyone from your generation will be at that table when it happens.
North Frontenac is an older township. You can see it in every room where decisions get made: council meetings, legion events, lake association AGMs, volunteer boards, Hall suppers. A lot of our permanent population has already done their decades of hard work and they are tired. They have earned their slower pace. But the by-laws and planning choices they put in place today will land fully on the people who are in their working years right now. Younger residents are already here, running chainsaws, driving plow trucks, working long shifts, raising kids, caring for parents, keeping small businesses alive, and trying to carve a stable life out of rock, forest, and lakeshore. Many of you keep your head down and assume “they” will handle things, that “they” are older, more qualified, more connected.
The truth in a township this size is much simpler. “They” is just a handful of ordinary residents who were willing to put their names on a ballot. In some past races, people slid into office without a contest because nobody else filed. If we walk into 2026 with just enough candidates to fill the chairs, we will not be choosing a council in any meaningful way. We will be accepting whatever set of names shows up. That is how real self-governance starts to hollow out.
We’re in a rare moment where both generations are still in the room at the same time. We have older residents with deep experience, long memories, and hard-earned caution. We also have younger residents trying to build lives and businesses here, looking for housing, looking for ways to stay instead of leaving. If we don’t get younger people onto council while the older generation is still here to argue with them, steady them, and mentor them, we will lose that balance.
When a seat goes uncontested, there is no public test. No real comparison of ideas, no need to explain a vision. The candidate enters by acclamation. On paper, that is allowed. In practice, it signals a community that is drifting. Repeat that pattern for a few elections and you build a council that no longer looks like the township. The table tilts toward people who are retired, well-connected, or simply comfortable being there, while younger working-age residents, renters, tradespeople, young families, and newer permanent residents fade out of the picture. Decisions about the next twenty years end up in the hands of the past.
Running for office is about giving your neighbours a real choice. When more than one person steps up in each ward, voters can say, “This is the direction I want,” instead of shrugging and accepting the only name in front of them. Contested races create better debates, sharper ideas, and more careful decisions. Thin races create habits, not vision.
Over the next year, the township will roll out the usual election information: when nominations open, how to file, what the rules are, how voting will work. NFNM will break that down in plain language when the time comes. This piece comes first on purpose. It is your early notice. You have time right now to decide if you are willing to step forward. If you are under 45 and you live here, permanently or seasonally, you are not too young and you are not “just” anything. The people who sit at that table today are residents who signed a form and accepted the responsibility. You can do the same.
So talk about it. Talk to your partner, your kids, your parents, your friends. Pay attention over the next few council meetings. Watch who speaks up and how votes land. Picture yourself in those chairs with the same reports in front of you and your own questions ready. You do not have to agree with me on how every issue should go. You might disagree with me on most things. That is fine. What matters is whether you care enough about housing, work, roads, taxes, lakes, and the kind of township we leave behind to take a turn at the wheel.
Here is the bottom line. If we want a serious council in 2026, we need more candidates than seats and real races in every ward. We need people who are willing to put their names on the ballot even if they might lose, because a true choice is the foundation of local democracy. I will not be asking you to do something I am unwilling to do myself. I have already made my own decision about next year, and my name will not be staying off that list. The rest is up to you. When nominations open, do not wait for “someone else” to do the brave thing. If you want a say in what North Frontenac looks like in twenty years, run next year.
