Our Trails, Our Stories

Fran Cutler’s family has an attachment to the Wakefield area that goes back almost one hundred years. Like many of us, Fran considers Wakefield one of her “favourite villages in the whole world!”. 

For the 30 years she worked at the CBC, the Gatineau Hills always provided a respite from the demands of work. Now retired, Fran enjoys the area in a very different way, specifically as she navigates thru an increasingly more challenging vision impairment. As her sight deteriorates, it’s the bird songs that that keep calling her out to the trails. 

“There’s the wonderful Canada bird – the white throated sparrow with a note that sounds like ‘…in Canada…’.”

In Canada indeed.

Kerry is one of those people who has beautifully fabricated a life for herself in which work and play seem to co-exist in perfect balance. 

Her home, also her main place of work, is nestled between the Gatineau River and the surrounding hills creating the ideal gateway to many water and land trails, something Kerry completely embraces. She’s often out on those trails, and as she explains, whether its spending time with grand kids or surprise run ins with bears, its always an amazing adventure.

Not that we’re giving his age away, but Nick remembers the days of his youth when there were no computers, and kids like him mostly spent all of their time outdoors. He still makes a point of getting out into the forest – both on and off the trails. Which might be the reason why he joined the SWT team a few years back. Those beautiful bridges along the pathways? Those were built by him. Nick is an incredible example of the worth volunteers bring to community organizations. It clearly takes a village to take care of a village. And he's coming to you here in french to expand on those thoughts. 

«Nos sentiers, nos histoires» vous est présenté par Sentiers Wakefield Trails, 

un organisme bénévole à but non lucratif situé à Wakefield, Québec. 

Nous sommes consacré à la construction et au maintien de sentiers sécuritaires et accessibles. 

Pour plus d'informations ou pour faire un don, 

visitez notre site Web: 

sentierswakefieldtrails.ca. 

Liz Robertson, also known in the Wakefield area as Pip, spends plenty of time on the trails. Originally from New Zealand, she now calls Wakefield home. As a fitness instructor, she often uses the trails for boot camps and even incorporates trail work into the workouts!

Perhaps Pip’s biggest observation while out on the trails with her dog is the parallels that can be drawn between our personal growth and evolution and that of the forest’s around us.

In this podcast we get a sense of Pip’s love of nature and her reasons for always returning to the trails (despite the threat of bears!).

Colin Bunge has been seeking adventures for quite some time. And he turned that passion into a career – teaching outdoor ed and running outdoor adventure programs for youth in the Western Quebec area. 

His goal? To instill that passion in others, specifically the young people he teaches and in his two teenage children. His success can be measured by the fact that both of them want to follow in his footsteps. 

In this episode, Colin shares his thoughts on the many values gained when we go wandering down a trail.

Bodi Delgrosse would choose a forest over a desk any day so it was a definite yes when his college classmate, Adrian Vaillancourt, asked him, in the spring of 2018, if he wanted a summer job working on the Wakefield trails. During those months, the two of them took on many projects while forging a friendship rooted in a shared love of nature. This summer, Bodi’s back at it, but without Adrian, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in the fall of 2018. In this episode, Bodi reflects on the work he and Adrian did together and what it takes to keep a trail maintained yet still in sync with its natural setting.  

It was his mother who introduced Ken to trails and the call of the wild. He was only 5 years old but that experience shaped the rest of his life. Now into his seventies, Ken looks back at his personal connection to trails and trail building and reflects on the biggest takeaway: a sense of community, camaraderie and friendships. 

At 88, Joan has a lot of amazing memories of the place she has called home for more than 50 years. During that time, she has witnessed the evolution of a community that co-exists with nature. And she completely understands the importance of the preservation of that incredibly valuable asset. 

Is there anything better than sharing in the enthusiasm of a child as they discover the world around them? 6 year-old Julien Loiselle takes us on a Wakefield trail tour and talks about the importance of getting out into nature and the thrill of spotting ground hogs. Or maybe it was an otter? Or a muskrat? Does it matter?

On the verge of turning forty, Phoebe took up her son's challenge to run in a local race. She did the 5K. And she just kept running. Now logging 80K in a weekend, its obvious trail running has become Phoebe's passion - a way to deal with personal milestones and turning points. With the soft earth beneath her feet, she continues on that trail. In this podcast, we find out what keeps her running those miles.