Fall is a busy time of year. School has started up again, people are enjoying the warm temperatures to get some additional cottage or camping days in, and farmers are harvesting a wide range of crops, from field tomatoes to soybeans and more.
All of this means that Ontario’s roads are busy, and motorists have to share those roads with slow moving vehicles and farm equipment. This can quickly lead to frustration and impatience – which is often when accidents happen.
Road safety is always important, but even more at this time of year when farmers move between fields, farms and other locations to harvest crops and get them to market, processing or storage.
It’s even more critical in northern Ontario, where there aren’t as many roads as in other parts of the province, giving motorists fewer alternatives, and where the roads we do have can quickly become clogged, even during the tail end of tourism season in the fall.
I farm just outside of Thunder Bay with my wife and our two sons and their spouses, raising beef, chicken and growing crops. I also represent northern Ontario farmers on the board of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. In addition to Thunder Bay, this includes Algoma, Cochrane, Dryden, Kenora, Manitoulin-North Shore, Muskoka, Nipissing, Parry Sound, Rainy River, Sudbury, Temiskaming and Thunder Bay.
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