A cross-country skier enjoys a trail in Gatineau Park in this 2005 picture.JONATHAN HAYWARD
Frances Woolley is a professor of economics at Carleton University
For generations, Canada's parks and forests have belonged to cross-country skiers in winter. Not any longer. The snowshoers have arrived.
Snowshoes have always looked like tennis racquets strapped to one's feet. Now the ultra-light alloys and plastics that have transformed tennis racquets are revolutionizing snowshoes, creating sleek, lightweight ones that weigh no more than a winter boot.
The new technology has arrived at precisely the right demographic moment. As one gets older, what was once exciting becomes terrifying, and the quiet pace of snowshoeing begins to appeal. Also, cross-country skiing is relatively hard to learn as an adult, but if you can walk, you can snowshoe. That makes snowshoeing appealing to new Canadians.
For evidence, type "snowshoeing" and "cross-country skiing" into google trends. Prior to 2006, searches for snowshoeing did not even register. Now there are almost as many searches for snowshoeing as there are for cross-country skiing.
The demographic changes that Canada is experiencing are so vast that they are almost incomprehensible. But snowshoeing versus cross-country skiing is such a small-scale issue that one can begin to understand it.
The first lesson from this new cold war is that the private sector has responded quickly. Outdoor equipment stores are full of snowshoes. The private sector gets clear market signals - snowshoes sell - and acts quickly so that it can maximize profits (or whatever it is that Mountain Equipment Co-op maximizes).
The public sector has responded much more slowly. In the Gatineau Park, run by the National Capital Commission, the parking lots for snowshoeing trails are overflowing, while those for challenging back-country ski trails are empty. Yet the division of trails between snowshoeing and cross-country skiing has remained unchanged.
Here the conflict gets nasty: when the supply of prime trails is more or less fixed, and snowshoers and cross-country skiers cannot use the same trails, more trails for the snowshoers mean fewer trails for the skiers.
A private operation would quickly adjust the trail allocation if it made more money by doing so - witness the snowboard parks in downhill operations.
But the behavior of governments is harder to predict. Will the trails go to whoever is most likely to vote? Whoever lobbies hardest?
Or will government agencies continue do what they think is in the public interest, unaware of the cold war raging in the back woods?
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