Maintenance
The Federation of Ontario Naturalists surveyed the route in the early 1960s, and the responsibility for maintaining the trail was assumed by the nascent Bruce Trail Association (as of 2007, it is called the Bruce Trail Conservancy).
Currently headquartered at Rasberry House in Hamilton, the BTC marks and maintains the main trail as well as many side trails. Trail maintenance includes building bridges over streams and gullys, building stairs and switchbacks to climb slopes, building stiles over fences, and rerouting portions of the trail that have become worn through overuse.
The trail is subdivided into nine sections, each with a subsidiary club:
| Club Name | Start | End | Website | Other Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niagara | Queenston | Grimsby | ||
| Iroquoia | Grimsby | Kelso | Blog Twitter | |
| Toronto | Kelso | Cheltenham | ||
| Caledon | Cheltenham | Mono Centre | ||
| Dufferin Hi-Land | Mono Centre | Lavender | ||
| Blue Mountains | Lavender | Craigleith | ||
| Beaver Valley | Craigleith | Blantyre | ||
| Sydenham | Blantyre | Wiarton | ||
| Peninsula | Wiarton | Tobermory |
Volunteers inspect, repair and build footbridges, retaining walls, stiles and handholds along their section of the route. The BTC and subsidiary clubs offer badges for those hikers who complete the whole trail or any of its sections under prescribed conditions.
The main trail is marked with the BTC logo, a white lozenge with black text and drawings for the Bruce Trail and an upward pointing arrow which does not in fact offer directional assistance. The actual blazes are white markings, approximately 3 cm (1 in) wide by 8 cm (3 in) high, with turns indicated by stacking two blazes off centre to indicate the direction to take. The blazes for the 300 km (190 mi) of associated side trails are similar, except they are blue.
Read more about this topic: Bruce Trail
Famous quotes containing the word maintenance:
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)