Joe Danchuk joined a growing list of mayors both near and far who are championing the Trans Canada Trail (TCT), a recreational path linking the country from coast to coast to coast.
The role is non-monetary, rather it fills a request by TCT President Deborah App for officials to lend their voices in promoting the trail in advance of Canada’s 150th anniversary next year.
During Monday night council, Danchuk agreed to add his name to the list that already includes Mayor Kathy Moore of Rossland and Trail Mayor Mike Martin.
Since the trail was founded in 1992, it has become one of the largest volunteer efforts undertaking in Canada.
Comprised of locally managed segments, the TCT is now 80 per cent connected, 18,000 kilometres long, and runs through or is in close proximity to 1,000 Canadian communities.
The trail begins its Kootenay-Boundary journey to the west of Trail in Christina Lake, follows a rail grade up and over the Paulson Summit to Castlegar, then travels from Castlegar to Trail down the east side of the Columbia River on a section called the Columbia River Trail.
Unfinished sections remain between Trail and the Beaver Valley and out to Salmo, where the trail picks up on an old rail grade up to Nelson along the Great Northern Rail Trail.
The network of walking and biking pathways above Miral Heights and East Trail has seen growing use since it’s inception in 2011 and the addition of a new section above Sunningdale last year expanded the available tracks considerably.
Kootenay Columbia Trail Society, the local organization responsible for the planning, building, and maintenance of the extensive system, has plans to extend the existing section from Miral Heights to eventually join up with the Sunningdale trail.
The combined Miral Heights/Bluff trail currently runs six kilometers across the eastern side of the Columbia River Valley with the expectation that the extension to the Sunningdale trail will eventually total almost nine kilometers.