If he was a boxer, Jacques Légaré would be known as a guy who can take a punch. As the owner/operator of a snowmobile rental business in the Quebec City region for the past 15 years, he has withstood a barrage of natural and man-made challenges that have knocked out many of his competitors.
“I’ve seen it all, from winters with little snow to the global recession, which killed tourism here,” Légaré said.
“But I’m still standing.”
Even he’s afraid, however, of the latest menace to his livelihood – not to mention the health of a billion-dollar Quebec industry.
This month, the province’s main farmers’ organization – the Union des producteurs agricole, or UPA – called on its 65,000 members to block access immediately to off-road vehicle trails that cross their properties.
The move would effectively paralyze the province’s 33,000-kilometre-long network of snowmobile trails this winter, because most rely heavily on free passage through fields and forests that are owned by 30,000 Quebec farmers.
That could prove fatal to many of the hundreds of businesses like Légaré’s, which provide an estimated
$750 million in gas, food, lodgings, sales, rentals and other services to roughly 130,000
licensed snowmobile operators and thousands of tourists across the province every winter.
