LETTER: WHY IS GRAVENHURST BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY PREMIER AND OPP? AND WHY AREN’T COUNCIL AND CANDIDATES PROTESTING VACANT FIRE COLLEGE, MUSKOKA CENTRE LANDS?

Letter to the editor:

I have been waiting for a town candidate to come forth with a plan to bombard the provincial government in Toronto, at Queen’s Park, with protests, sit-ins and other pressures to incite them to act on the two huge government properties sitting vacant in Gravenhurst: the former Ontario Hospital property and the former Ontario Fire College property.

I know the government is probably being pressured to keep them for the use of the OPP for training their officers.

But after all the OPP have acres and acres of property and buildings in Orillia that were supposed to be used for that purpose.

Meanwhile, Gravenhurst continues to watch these massive properties sitting in limbo.

The Ontario Fire College property with buildings that were so recently in fully updated condition.

Why is Gravenhurst being held hostage by the premier and the OPP?

We need a concerted effort by council and province to invite realistic and labour-intensive uses for these properties.

Not pie-in-the-sky development with hotels and restaurants etc.

That will never fly.

Judy Humphries, Gravenhurst

Judy Humphries is a former OFC archivist and as the town’s chief archivist has written extensively about it and contributed to several local books on the former Muskoka Centre property and its extensive century-old history as a TB hospital. She is also the 2026 Senior Citizen of the Year.