Ken Bouchard celebrates 65 years of trail building!

This is a personal account from Ken of how he got involved in trail building.

When I first moved here, I used to go walking with Tom Ryan, who started the Wakefield Walkers. But when I go in the woods, I like the peace and quiet. The talking drove me crazy! I always like to stay at the end where it was quiet. I’m always the sweep!

I’d been involved with trail building since a very early age, since grade 10, and I enjoyed it. I got exercise. Working on the trails, clearing blown down trees and building bridges was a lot of fun. I’d been introduced to hiking at 10 years old when I went to camp in Maine near the Appalachian Trail. In Canada at that time, camp was mainly for canoe tripping.

I was fascinated with hiking. The Appalachian Trail would hire students. I was fascinated with the work they did. I got a book from the Club - How to Build Trails. Then I took a week-long course on how to build trails in my 30s. 

Appalachian Mountain Club goes from Georgia to Northern Maine - the whole Eastern seaboard. They have a monthly magazine with courses for different types of work. I’d just bought a house on Wakefield Heights Road with a challenging cliff going down to the river. Previous owners used old railway ties to put a staircase down to the river. Last thing I wanted with grandchildren was a creosote staircase. I’d seen stone and rock steps in White Mountains. They had a stone stair building course for 3 days in New Hampshire, so I took it. 

First project was at our house, and the following Spring, at Fairbairn. I felt I knew how to do it, so I showed others how to do it. We were about six people - all people who had hiked together in White Mountains who lived between Ottawa and Wakefield. That was the start of getting to know how to build a proper trail.

TCT must have sensed we were very enthusiastic. They offered us 2 contractors who had trained other trail builders for the International Mountain Bike Association. TCT put a call out to clubs in Eastern Canada, if you wanted to have people for 3 days, we’ll make them available, you have to put them up and feed them. The couple stayed with Heather and I; they later ended up getting married.
​We had started building the trail from the Community Centre to Mill Road. We learned a lot from them. If you’re on earth or stone, it has to be under 12 degrees slope. Now there are switchbacks, where we had gone straight through. They taught us about erosion - the degree slope is part of that. More than 12 degrees, you have to put in steps. And on that trail you do see steps. In 8 hours they had drastically changed the trail.

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Canada is such a wonderful wilderness country. It permits me to get out, enjoy it, keep healthy and physically fit. All while being with friends.”
-Ken Bouchard

The other thing I’ve been involved in was the Canadian Ski Marathon. Centennial year program - ‘67 - to ski from Montreal to Ottawa. Couple hundred people in the first year - 1967. A friend was involved in it, same guy who was involved in building the stone stairs in Wakefield, John Rainer, a retired public servant.

We needed to make it easier to get to and from.  Decided to shorten it from 3 days to 2 and adjust it to start in Laurentians, Val-Morin, to Lachute (where Highway 50 now runs). Had to build 30 miles of trail in 18 months. This was all volunteers. Winter trails don’t have to be perfect. Just need to be able to get through the snow for 100 miles.

Have you heard of “Jackrabbit” Johannsen? Johannsen was the father of cross country skiing in Canada. I met him through the Canadian Ski Marathon. He was a Norwegian who came to Canada selling steam engines.

He died at 111. He was still skiing at 100. 
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​When he was about 102, he still drank beer and chopped wood. The key sponsor of the ski marathon was Molson. Every fall they’d hold a press conference to announce the upcoming event for February. Johanson got quite talkative after a beer or two.

“I used to ski 100 miles and sleep on a snowbank. Young people today are softies.” he announced.
“What do you think we should do?” the organizers asked him.
“People should camp out overnight and continue the next 50 miles the following day.” was Johanson’s suggestion. “I would call the event the coureur de bois.”
So we did! We turned the race into Bronze, Silver and Gold events. Bronze was when a skier just skied the 100KM, Silver was skiing with a pack, and for Gold, they had to sleep out overnight halfway down the trail! That became very popular. When I got involved there were about 500 people, 3 years later, 2500! It was a great organization, all volunteers.​

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With trails, you’re constantly learning.”
-Ken Bouchard

We found out that the huts were open in the winter in the White Mountains. We foolishly decided to go, on skis, not snowshoes! Within half an hour, one of the people in our group had broken a leg. It was quite an experience getting them out and to a hospital. 

As an unofficial leader, I wasn’t very well trained. So I took a 10-day course on being a trail leader with the Appalachian Trail. Three days of First Aid, followed by seven days of practical on-trail experience. That served me well when my wife and I began taking groups of retired folks to hike overseas after I retired.

Richard Senecal was one of the first permanent employees for Trans Canada Trail in Quebec, along with Mathieu Roy. He wanted to put the Trans Canada Trail on the East side of the Gatineau River from Low to Wakefield. That’s when he reached out to me, because he heard I’d been involved with building winter trails for the Canadian Ski Marathon. 

Michael Cooper and I went a couple times a week hiking that summer, then snowshoeing in the winter to check it out. There was a large ridge close to the river, beautiful for hiking. We encountered a couple of landowners who had purchased a large swath of land and built a private fishing club. They didn’t want anyone using the land and they certainly didn’t want a trail!

So, now the trail goes along the road there. That’s a project that we still have on the books - to make the trail from Low to Wakefield more interesting for hikers. 

My wife says I like building trails more than I like walking on them. She might be right.