ELY – If the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is a pretty sacred place, the Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, just a short canoe paddle from Ely, could be considered the “Holy of Holies” of the wilderness.

Trevor Gibb, who has has been the park’s superintendent for the past 18 months, visited the Tuesday Group in Ely this week and provided an update on what is going on just across the border. Gibb has been involved in the Canadian parks system for the past 15 years, holds degrees in geography and education, and has been heavily involved during his short tenure in developing and reviewing the park’s management plan.

Right out of the gate, Gibb was asked his opinion on the election in Canada this week that resulted in a decisive victory by the Liberal Party, ending a decade of power by the Conservative Party.

“As a government employee, I’m supposed to be apolitical, but I’m very happy that we were able to get rid of Mr. (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper,” he said. “We’re on the right track now.”

He said he was pleased to see that so many of the 50 or so people who attended the lunch program at the Grand Ely Lodge indicated they were frequent users and visitors to Quetico. “I would argue that Ely isn’t just the American gateway to Quetico, it is primary gateway to all of Quetico,” he said.

Visitation to the park is primarily American and the busiest entry station is by far the Portage Prairie Ranger Station just northeast of Ely, according to Gibb.

This year, visitation spiked in Quetico, and Gibb attributes some of that to the favorable weather, along with a favorable currency exchange rate. “It’s the warmest fall on record in the Thunder Bay area,” said. “We’ve had people paddling into Quetico even last weekend and we are still seeing people at our entry points, which is amazing and completely out of the ordinary.”

He admitted that Quetico’s visitation has been on a steady decline over the past 20 years. “We don’t want the park to be overrun with paddlers, that’s not what we’re about. Yet we need a certain level of visitation to sustain ourselves,” he said.

He noted that visitation rates are measured by the number of people and the number of nights they camp in the park. “If I was to go camping by myself for two nights, that would be two camper nights,” he said. “If I went with a friend, for two nights, that would count as four camper nights.”

He said that comparative statistic model makes the numbers look somewhat inflated. At they end of July, Quetico had 47,572 camper nights, not people, he noted.

“At the end of July, we were up about 19 percent over last year,” Gibb said. “As of Sept. 30, when most of the visiting is over, we ended up about 13 percent from 2014.”

Quetico remains the busiest park in northwest Ontario, thanks to people coming from the Prairie Portage and the Ely area, he said.

Gibb was prepared to be peppered with questions concerning the environment, and specifically the potential for sulfide mining of precious metals and the protection of the watershed which heads north from the BWCAW.

“I had a feeling I would get that one,” he said. “We have a mandate to protect the ecological integrity of Quetico, including the lands and the waters in the park, and, in general, if there is any threat to the quality of the environment within the park, then we have to be concerned. It is in our legislation.”

User fees for Quetico are substantially higher in cost when compared to entry permit fees in the BWCAW. “As a whole, for all Ontario parks, up to 85 percent of their budget comes from user fees,” he said.

“The reason we have higher prices than the Boundary Waters area is that our fees feed directly back into the park system, not just for operations but also for our protection mandate,” he said. There are about 100 parks in operation in the Ontario province with campgrounds and other facilities. “We have an additional 200-plus areas that are protected that we need to manage, but they don’t generate revenue,” said. “We have a big system to support and the fees go a long way toward that.”

Just like in the BWCAW, there are a multitude of emergency and medical rescues in Quetico. “In the last two seasons that I’ve been around, we have had multiple rescues and serious, even critical rescues,” Gibb said. Primarily, the Ontario Provincial Police respond to calls for help, but often times they require assistance from the park’s rangers because of the special nature of the landscape. Our wardens know the lakes and quite often we can get a plane and our staff there quicker to help people.”

The numerous radio towers dotting the landscape of Quetico Provincial Park are a very important aspect to providing an adequate and necessary communication network, he said.

Gibb said the off-season use of the park, especially for winter camping, is becoming more popular and they continue to encourage more winter activities.

To enter the park, even in the off-season, visitors are required to go through a dedicated ranger station for a self-issue permit. How about having a station closer to Ely? An informal straw poll indicated most of the audience favored such a convenience.

“It is often times really out of the way to visit a ranger station, deposit the self-serve envelope, and start your trip from there,” he said. The visitor regulation program is operated year-round. “We want to channel people down these natural travel corridors whenever they are in the park,” he said. “That being said, we make exceptions for safety issues.”

Gibb declined to make promises, but revealed that the park system is exploring online permitting for sometime in the future. “Even under a system like that, we would still have the designated entry points.”