Peggy Revell
With 2010 having arrived, the “Heart of the Continent Partnership” has its sights set on building co-operation and dialogue along the Ontario/Minnesota border, including establishing region-wide community-based training on balancing nature, commerce, and cross-border opportunities.
“This is really about bringing people together for the common good,” said Doug Franchot, chair of the steering committee for the HOCP, which has seen more than 25 organizations join since first forming in 2007.
For the upcoming year, the Canadian-U.S. coalition is hoping to build upon the success seen this past summer with the “Canoe the Heart of the Continent—Centennial Canoe Voyage” held in celebration of Quetico Provincial Park and Superior National Forest’s 100th anniversary.
In January, the HOCP will be sending a team of four-eight people to participate in a training course called “Balancing Nature and Commerce in Communities that Neighbor Public Lands” in West Virginia, Franchot noted.
This training, run by The Conservation Fund (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the U.S. National Park Service), provides trainings to help gateway communities to “understand the opportunities that these public lands provide them,” he said.
Teams do “a sort of case study” at the training, Franchot explained, and work on a plan to bring back to their own community.
“It’s an opportunity to bring folks together, and have a series of learnings and lectures and work sessions about how gateway communities can maximize the opportunities that are presented by a
nearby public land,” he remarked.
“So our concept is: that’s great for individual communities—let’s see if we can provide that training and experience for all of the gateway communities in the ‘Heart of the Continent’ area and figure out how we can combine individual programs for each city, each gateway area, with some regional-wide thinking that will maximize the impact.”
As part of their “case study,” the team began planning how to implement the training process and bring it to communities across the region, Franchot noted.
After returning, the team will be expanded to roughly 15 people, representing a broader cross-section.
“That group is going to spend 2010 planning the training and the events, and reaching out and making sure that we’ve got support from the communities, and that the communities are assembling their teams to participate,” Franchot said.
“And, of course, raising some money so we can fund it, with the objective that the actual training will take place in January or early February of 2011.”
While the training program has been mostly from the U.S. side, Franchot stressed it will be a great opportunity for communities north of the border.
“One of the things that I think is exciting and I think innovative, and
one of the things that the group that’s putting this training on is very excited about, is the prospect of a cross-border effort coming,” he enthused, explaining that he sees more commonalities than differences when it comes to our two countries.
Both sides of the border are facing similar issues, he noted, such
as changing economies as well as forest products and extractive industries under stress or vanishing.
“The opportunities to build a recreational tourism leg to the economic
stool or table, they’re both very much there and they’re going to be more and more important to the communities,” Franchot reasoned.
“So we see this very much as cross-border, and that being one of the innovations that we’re bringing to the conversation.”
In fact, Quetico Park superintendent Robin Reilly is one of the most enthusiastic about the project, Franchot said.
“Historically, border communities have either worked in isolation from each other or in competition with one another,” Reilly said about the training.
“By bringing them all to a joint gateway community training, they could develop their own local strategies but, at the same time, discover new opportunities for working together to discover combined strategies to build the region.”
“Fort Frances itself is a gateway to Canada,” Franchot noted. “It is certainly the gateway to the conservation reserve islands of Rainy Lake and for some people the gateway to Quetico.
“So we hope this effort to strengthen gateway communities strikes a chord in Fort Frances, and we hope to have strong participation in this effort from leaders in the area,” he added.
Local leaders are needed to join the design team, Franchot said. And once the community-based training gets underway, participants
also will be needed in the Fort Frances and International Falls area.
People always are welcome to attend the HOCP general meetings, which are held throughout the region, with the next one slated in Thunder Bay on Feb. 4 and 5.
Those interested are encouraged to contact Franchot at doug@franchotassociates.com or by calling 1-612-801-6888, or HOCP coordinator Bret Hesla at HOCP@heartofthecontinent.org or 1-612-333-1858.
More information about the meetings, and the mailing list, also are available at the organization’s website: www.heartofthecontinent.org
“The first thing that I think that’s going to come from it is a new level
of co-ordination and consistency among the various gateway communities about how we promote this area,” said Franchot, referring to the results the HOCP hopes to see with this training project.
This ties in with the HOCP’s goal to help develop a common identity
and promote the area as a whole, he noted.
“We’ve got this five million acres of really special land that’s been protected, and traditionally it’s sort of promoted and talked about from the perspective of individual almost access points,” Franchot explained.
“But in point of fact, it’s really of a whole.”
Secondly, the project will help create connections between people in the region, he added.
“They’re going to start talking to each other and they’re going to
start understanding each other better, and we’re going to get people
pulling together more than perhaps they have in the past,” Franchot argued, pointing to one of the other goals of the HOCP, which is to
serve as a politically-neutral forum for organizations to have dialogue
and work on projects together—even if they may not always agree
on other issues.
“If we’re going to enable vibrant communities to flourish alongside healthy public lands, we need dialogue between communities and
public lands that they border on,” he reasoned.
“The key representatives need to be talking, finding common ground, finding win-win solutions.
“The idea of a public forum, of seeking shared, cross-border projects
to the benefit of all, is an entirely new model of going forward,” Franchot said.
“We think it has huge potential,” he added. “Already at our meetings, land managers, community leaders, [and] conservation orgs are connecting with each other for the first time, planning, sharing ideas, etc.”
