Member Report
Rossburn Subdivision Trail Association
RSTA is a 176 km long trail running from Neepawa to Russell but we have been for years now looking at creating several links from our trail portion of The Great Trail to the Riding Mountain National Park . By now we are looking also after the 20.4 km long Elk Link Trail build to connect RSTA via Erickson with the Riding Mountain National Park . In 2019 we achieved our first steps to get our second connection up and running in the Rossburn Municipality working in a close partnership with Waywayseecappo First Nation .
We started early in the year with a trail concept plan developed by Scatliff & Partners , working closely with Alex Man and Samantha Blatz . When both of them came out to the area in May they also brought along Adrian Alphonso and he in return invited his cousin Eric Mentuck , who belongs to Waywayseecappo First Nation . An idea developed to not only bring an additional trail connector to the area but also intertwine the stories of Waywayseecappo First Nation and the Ukrainian / Scottish first settlers with the trail by choosing the route to be as close as possible to a historical travel route ( Birdtail Creek ) and setting up interpretive signs to tell said stories .
By September the concept plan had come to life , a second meeting was held with delegations from Parks Canada , Municipal and First Nation and we are very excited about the vision to even extend beyond our original ideas , once our trail is completed .
At this point we want to thank The Great Trail , the Rossburn Municipality and Community Futures Parkland for their financial support towards our trail concept plan and Alex , Samantha and Adrian for their expertise !
At the end of the year we started applying for grants for the trail building and interpretive signage and again , a big Thank You goes out to The Great Trail for stepping up and confirming support . We hope to still move forward in 2020 even with the uncertainty Covid-19 has brought to all of us , Provincial support will make all the difference but no decision has yet been made .
The Trails MB maintenance grant has played a big role in our efforts to maintain our trail and better it , wherever we can . We installed in 2019 welcome signs to the individual municipalities along the trail ( 9 ), not only to give visitors a sense of where they are but also to allow our maintenance crew ( of one ) to report easier in which municipality issues need to be addressed . A rather ingrown area was cleared with help of TGT spring clean-up grant and we were able in 2019 to exchange all old TCT signage with the new TGT signage along the main trail .
We had 2 Geo-Caches during the hunt organized through TCT and National Geographic in the summer and were amazed to see people from all over coming through .
Our AGM in spring 2019 was very well attended . Our group has now 22 members ( 2 of them being honorary live members ), since Eric joined officially to present Waywayseecappo First Nation .
Annual Report -2019 Year in Review p . 13