Ben was trying to purchase a particular 600-acre piece of property locally on Stoney Lake but unfortunately it sold. Out of frustration, he contacted a friend of his at the Nature Conservancy of Canada to see if there was any possibility of additional 600-acre areas of green space entering the market. Humorously, they noted that there was one... but it was 60,000 acres! So Ben took a leap.

Traversing: Having hiked your trails at Viamede, nature seems to be an important aspect of your business. What drew you to something like this? A project that is orders in magnitude larger!

Ben Samann: Opportunity. The possibility of owning a piece of property this large never even crossed my mind.

Traversing: I understand that you embraced the outdoors when growing up in Kingston, and it must have left an impact on you. What does the outdoors mean to you?

Ben Samann: Its a mix of a lot of things. I think nature is really cool. I came across a pond with close to 100 frogs. It was insanely cool, and I just spent 20 minutes just standing there staring at this pool of frogs. I really do like genuine peace and quiet. I enjoy going to Algonquin Park as well as smaller areas around here like Eels Creek but even there you can see the human incursion. The opportunity came up for us to build a park that a large number of us want to see. It is an old logging property, but we are cleaning it up and restoring it to become this park that we all wish we could have. No ATVs, no speakers, no loud noises and it’s not overcrowded. That to me is the ultimate dream. It’s for people who truly want to get back to nature.

Traversing: Paint me a picture of the topography of the park

Ben Samann: This property is a third of the size of Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park, so we’re talking “provincial park scale” property. I haven’t even explored all of the property yet. Egan Creek flows through it with granite ridges on either side. Little lakes, massive areas of wetlands, we haven’t finished scouting all of it, but we should be able to put some fantastic hiking trails through the park with wetlands on either side.

Traversing: Where can people camp?

Ben Samann: We’re in the process of building 100 campsites. Each campsite will have a pre-hung bear-hang, a fire ring and a thunderbox. We are aware of some species at risk within the park, and that will in turn dictate where we will and won’t create sites.

Traversing: Will there be tent pads?

Ben Samann: We’re developing different ideas. There will be a lot of discussion with members. If people want tent pads, then we’re open to building them.

Traversing: I’m impressed, that since opening you have already mapped and marked 150km of trails

Ben Samann: It helps that last year we had five rangers on the ground and a huge number of them are existing ATV trails. The plan is that over time to move them. I have in my mind an idea for a trail along Egan Creek. We can work relatively efficiently as this year we have a great team of eight rangers, a conservation biologist, and a head of recreation.

Traversing: Tell me more about your team.

Ben Samann: We have two senior rangers who have effectively already been here all winter and summer. This summer we have Junior Rangers who have the unique job of coming in every Monday, grabbing their gear and heading out to do trail maintenance. When they get to the end of their day, they set up camp where they are and continue the next day. They have their assigned tasks but essentially they are always working in the field. This also means that if a member runs into a problem, there probably is a ranger within a couple of kilometres that can assist. Maybe they come across a member just setting up camp for the night, well they can offer a S’mores kit.

Traversing: So when a member pulls up, will there be one main access gate?

Ben Samann: There will be one main access point, and we are in the process of installing an electric gate so that you punch in your access code when you arrive. We have a gatehouse where you can borrow the basic supplies if necessary. We’re probably going to install a freezer with complimentary ice cream because I gotta say… there is nothing better than ice cream at the end of a hike. We’re going to see what demand is, but I assume we will install a little building with a couple of showers and bathrooms. We’re still in the process of deciding what we want to build. New members can book a mini-session with us for everything from ‘how to paddle a canoe’, to ‘lighting a fire’. Our gear library is there in case someone forgot their tent, or if someone wants to try out a different style of tent.

Traversing: This is a fascinating approach to what we are familiar with when thinking of a ‘park’. There are a lot of fun ideas that you can throw around and build upon.

Ben Samann: It’s one of those things when the moment you say “We have the opportunity to build a private park”, the question becomes “who is our demographic?”. Which is an excellent question that I don’t have an answer to yet. So then the question becomes… “Is this for someone from Toronto who is not comfortable to go to crown land and try this themselves?”… who may also not have all the gear, and all the skills…. And you can’t go to parks right now because you can’t even get a site. There’s a sweet spot in there for people who are frustrated by the ‘park’ experience that we can give a new experience to.

My favourite idea so far is our ‘portageless portage’. This year we have 100 canoes from Nova Craft. The idea is that you can paddle across a lake in this route, pull your canoe up on shore, ‘abandon it’, hike to the next lake, and grab the next canoe waiting for you. It’s things like that, that come out of these weird brainstorming sessions and become possible.

Traversing: How do you frame up the price that you charge? Wouldn’t a lower access rate in turn allow more people to enjoy the experience?

Ben Samann: The one thing that you can level against our organization is that it is somewhat elitist. Six to ten thousand dollars for someone to have a membership here is a hefty chunk of change. There are three things I can say…

$6,000 is roughly the price of a trailer park site for a year. For me, my gym membership costs me $1,000 a year, so $6,000 for an experience this incredible, isn’t that far out.
We’re giving 20,000 acres to the Nature Conservancy of Canada which in aggregate, is larger than Frontenac Provincial Park which will most likely become public access.
If we have two to three hundred members on this property, that’s where we can promise that you will have a very secluded campsite and you can have access whenever you want. The more we lower membership fees, the higher the risk of crowded campsites, or the possibility that you can’t always come when you want.

We did the math. If we had $1,000 membership fees, we would have to drastically increase the number of campsites or lower the experience that you would have. We are looking for members who are conservation minded. We can’t have members continually cutting down pine boughs to sleep on every night. Say a camper started cutting down a bunch of live trees to try out their new axe. By knowing our members, it becomes easier to enforce the rules. It doesn’t take long for campsites to look like ‘park’ campsites with all the vegetation stripped and that is a shame to see.

At the end of the day, I had the opportunity to purchase this old forestry land, it needs love, it needs many things, and every thing we do on the property is moving towards restoration and conservation. If that means we don’t have hundreds and hundreds of members and I don’t become a trillionare off this… so be it. It’s more important to me that the land is protected.

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