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- Andrew Ryeland Parry
Sound North Star May 14, 2003 Spring
Jam 2003 – Canada’s
Largest ATV Jamboree was a great triumph! What
appeared to be just another ATV rally was actually intended
to be something much more … we’ll let you in on the
secret if you read on.
From
it’s inception in early December 2002, Spring Jam 2003 was
planned and organized to be a huge commercial venture
benefiting the businesses of Parry Sound and District.
If you noticed, there were no Pancake breakfasts of BBQ
suppers. We purposely planned to have all our Jammers
stay in accommodations and eat in restaurants in the region. Here are
the objectives we established just before Christmas:
Here’s
what was achieved:
So … where do we go from here? All
Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) are the fastest growing segment of
the recreational motorized vehicle market, outselling
snowmobiles by a ratio of 4:1. The snowmobile industry
contributes approximately $1 Billion to Ontario’s tourism
coffers annually. Extrapolation suggests that ATVs
have a potential of contributing 4 times that amount.
This figure is conservative, in that it does not factor in
the 12-month usability factor versus the 3-month sport of
snowmobiling. To-date
no community has laid claim to the huge Southern Ontario and
North-eastern US market for recreational ATVing. The
keen community and business interest and financial support
for Spring Jam 2003 is cause for the Parry Sound District to
hereby ‘stake that claim’. The Parry Sound area is
unique in geographical, political and demographic
positioning with respect to the aforementioned marketplace,
given our proximity to the market, our recent transportation
conduit upgrades, the abundance of crown lands and
established trails. This and presence of a vetted tourism
infrastructure hold the promise of a significant share of
the ATV pie for this region. There are
competing interests for trail use and control in Ontario and
the challenge that faces our community is in our ability to
prove sustainable models that balance a variety of needs.
Its time to re-think old stewardship agreements, re-enforce
proven tourism concepts and think out of the box. The
Parry Sound ATV District Club in its planning of Spring Jam
2003 was blessed with community involvement. Over half
of our volunteers were business people who were not club
members. We had a dream team that very quickly learned the
value building business and political relationships.
You see we are a social club not a trail building club. ·
Our strength is our partnerships ·
Our passion is to contribute economically to the community. ·
Our joy is to ride! Over the
next few months the explosive and unorganized growth in
ATVing will appear to be like an uncapped oil well.
Unfortunately there will be instances of abuse and trespass
as the pressure of thousands of ATVers meets the cold hard
fact of thousands of kilometres of closed unshared trails.
Fortunately there are some templates that offer solutions.
One of those is contained in the ‘Best Practices Manual’
that outlines a Tourism Product Model for ATV trail use in
our province. If you are interested it can be
downloaded for free from www.atvontario.com. There
are a lot of forks in the trails ahead but also a lot of
prosperity if we steer the right course. If you are
interested in helping us cap the well and build a productive
pipeline to our community’s benefit check us out www.psatv.ca
or call us at 705 774-9778.
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