Country Communities Are Not All Peaches & Cream (Part One)

Can you imagine wanting so desperately to live your dream by moving out to the country where you can be free of the turmoil of everyday living within urban areas, only to find you have moved to a biased and bigoted community?

Now let me add, your born and raised within the country of Canada, where the perception of the world is “my those Canadians are so polite and pleasant people”.

How about the fact that you have no obvious religious beliefs, no appearance of a certain ethnicity, unless off course a tan counts and someone thinks differently.

The only reason you are different is because you have a passion and belief system that surrounds social nudity and being a nudist. Now I know my European friends out there will say, well no big deal, we have them everywhere over here and it is completely acceptable. We raise our families this way and have been enjoying the sunshine au natural for many years. So what is the issue? What is the problem?

Well it is apparent that within Canada we have come to find out that small rural communities within some parts will go to no lengths to harass and publicly try to humiliate people because of their way of life.

I personally thought the days of lynch mobs were behind us.

I also thought the very meaning of being Canadian was how diverse our cultures and beliefs were. I pride myself on acceptance of a person’s choice and beliefs. Here I thought we lived in a country of live and let live. Apparently not as we are finding out.

You see our dream was to create a sanctuary within the country for our fellow nudist community. Having been a nudist myself for well over 25 years now and also having our beloved resort turn textile through an acquisition approximately 10 years ago and lastly given that we had a passion for our horses that we boarded at the time. It was an obvious next step for us to purchase a hobby farm, well away from any urban center and create a wonderful rustic retreat so to speak, for friends, family and our fellow nudist community.

Well in 2011 our dream started to transpire into a reality. We purchased a 100 acres in Eastern Ontario. For many years now we have invested a large amount of money, time and effort in to our small argi-tourism business with a five-year plan in mind.

Things certainly appeared to be heading in the right direction, we had our clients coming now on a regular basis, We had had visits from local township officials on start-up and there was never an issue except the a very large problem with some local farmers not being able to maintain and have the proper care and control of their livestock.

For the most part we tried very hard to be understanding in the beginnings, but after years of horses, ponies, goats and cows getting loose and damaging our hay fields, getting into our barn and eating feed and tearing up our groomed and maintained lawns and gardens, this became tiresome, annoying and expensive for us to maintain and repair. Unfortunately, no amount of discussion with these farmers seemed to resolve the issue and some eventually became belligerent and ignorant about doing anything about the problem at hand. Ultimately, this problem resulted in Do Not Trespass orders being issued , with subsequent fines due to ignoring the orders and animal at large fines issued by the bylaw authority. All of which was recommended and suggested by our local township office and the Ontario Provincial Police.

And so it begins.

One would have hoped that it was apparent that there was a small group of vindictive people who had emerged at the behest of these irresponsible farmers that took it upon themselves and made it well-known that they were going to get us shut down. Through ignorance, gossip and moral outrage about nudity, the community became more and more aggressive towards us as people. This all happened without anyone ever taking the time to get to know anything about us, who we are, what we are all about , what we ourselves have had to endure from the harassing behaviour of a few undesirables that live locally to our ranch, or what we have done for the community in supporting economic growth and charitable donations and support. In all reality there was a big fat zero when it came to effort by anyone and “oh my we cannot have that” became crystal clear to us.

So this is where we begin this story why Country Communities Are Not All Peaches & Cream.