Business View Civil & Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 11

65 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11 TOWNSHI P OF SOUTH FRONTENAC , ONTAR IO the wonderful rural lifestyle with a sense of community, a lot of the rural outdoor amenities, and all the essential services you need, but you’re ideally located next to a small urban centre and right in that triangle of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and even the U.S. border. From a business or commuting attractiveness standpoint, a lot of places will say they are ideally located, but I think South Frontenac truly is.” The Township sits in Frontenac County in eastern Ontario and was amalgamated in 1998 from the former townships of Bedford, Loughborough, Portland, and Storrington. It is made up of approximately 13 unique hamlets including the larger villages of Sunbury, Sydenham, Verona, Harrowsmith, Battersea , and Inverary. The current population is 19,000 with an additional 10,000 seasonal residents during the summer months. That population has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020 because people had the freedom to leave city and office life behind for a more enjoyable outdoor lifestyle. The Mayor of South Frontenac, Ron Vandewal, believes that is helping the villages grow, but knows many of the current residents enjoy living there for its commutability. He notes, “We are a very easy commute to a larger city. We’re rural and that’s what people like about it. We’re still, I would say, very community-oriented, we have a lot of things going on in our community on weekends and yet 60 to 70 percent of our population don’t work here, they work in the City of Kingston.” The Township is expecting a 25 percent increase in the population in the next 25 years. “So if we are roughly 20,000 now,” says Vandewal, “in the next 25 years we’ll see a lot of that growth in and around those hamlets that we mentioned – especially places like Sunbury and Inverary.” Although it’s a rural community, South Frontenac