Steve Morissette, the NDP MLA for Kootenay-Monashee, raised the Columbia & Western Rail Trail’s cost and toured it with a minister. No fix has been announced, and Warren Mirko, the Conservative candidate, is the only rival we found on the record about it.

The letter is addressed “To Whom it May Concern.” It went out on 27 June 2025 on Ministry of Forests letterhead, and its first sentence tells the reader why it came: “You are receiving this letter because you have been identified as a potential user of the non-status rail grade, formerly part of the Columbia Western Rail Trail.”¹

The potential users are everyone who walks, cycles, rides a horse or an ATV, hunts or drives home along the old Columbia & Western railway between Castlegar and Christina Lake. On 16 July 2020 the Province had promised them that the same 67 kilometres “will remain part of The Great Trail (formerly known as the Trans Canada Trail) and will be available for recreational purposes year-round.”² Five years later the letter told them something else.

“The rail grade is currently being managed to a wilderness status.”

That sentence leads to four questions: what the Province means by it, what it has done to the trail since, what it says may come next, and what the four people asking to be the MLA for Kootenay-Monashee have said about it. About 41 of the section’s 66 kilometres lie in that riding, and every one of them is public land that people use to reach the backcountry.⁴

01 In June 2025 the Province wrote that the old rail grade is “being managed to a wilderness status.” The same letter says there is no money to maintain it.

Two public servants signed the letter: Tracy Ronmark, Director of Authorizations for the Kootenay Boundary Region at the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, and Charlene Strelaeff, District Manager of the Ministry of Forests’ Selkirk Resource District. The copy we read was posted by the Quad Riders ATV Association of British Columbia (ATVBC), one of the groups that received it.^1,5

Province of British Columbia · “Columbia Western Rail Trail – Public Notice”27 June 2025 · page 1 of 2, the letterhead and the paragraph on the present state of the grade

The Province’s own account of the present: no preventive maintenance, “no funding available for maintenance of the rail grade,” and a grade “managed to a wilderness status.” The highlights are ours.¹

“Wilderness status” is the Province’s phrase, not a designation in any law we could find. The legal act came five years earlier. Ministerial Order M322, signed on 6 July 2020 by Matt Austin, an assistant deputy minister, on behalf of Doug Donaldson, then the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, replaced the trail’s map and took the section out of the recreation trail.⁶

In December 2025 Lori Halls, Deputy Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, set out the same position for the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary. In 2020, she wrote, the section “lost all designations” and became “vacant Crown land with a linear structure managed to a “wilderness” status, with no maintenance funding available.” Because it “was never a Forest Service Road,” it is “not eligible for expenditures beyond emergency works.” Hazards will be dealt with, but the work “will not result in repairs to the trail.”⁷

The money problem is older than the letter. In June 2021 the Forest Practices Board, the Province’s independent watchdog, found that Recreation Sites and Trails BC “did not have funding, staff or asset management systems in place to repair it.” The Province has never published what the section cost to look after, so there is no figure for what was cut. Its letters say only that nothing is available.^1,8

02 The Province’s signs say its trestles are for pedestrians and bicycles only, and its tunnel says “Do Not Enter.” No order bans motor vehicles from the grade.

The same letter announced signs for the summer of 2025, at the entrances to the grade and at its trestles, tunnels and rockfall zones, and it gave their wording. Two of them change who can use the grade.¹

Province of British Columbia · public notice, 27 June 2025the wording of the trestle and tunnel signs, from the foot of page 1 and the top of page 2

The trestle sign gives a structural reason: the bridges are too narrow and their guardrails too weak for a vehicle. The tunnel sign closes the Bulldog Tunnel to everyone. The highlights are ours.¹

The trestle signs read “Pedestrian and Bicycle Traffic Only. No Motor Vehicles.” The Province’s reason is engineering, not policy. The bridges were built for trains and later fitted with guardrails for recreation. In the letter’s words: “The bridge is an insufficient width for motor vehicles.” The Bulldog Tunnel sign says “Do Not Enter.” to walkers and cyclists as much as to riders, because “the existing bracing in the tunnel is failing.”¹

No law we could find goes as far as the signs. The Forest Practices Board wrote in 2021: “Motorized use of the CWRT has never been prohibited.” When we checked the Province’s own map layers on 23 October 2026, we found no recreation order under section 58 of the Forest and Range Practices Act and no Wildlife Act motor-vehicle closure on the corridor. We could not establish the legal basis of the trestle signs, or whether one stands at every trestle.^8,9

The people on the grade are on the same side. On 30 June 2025 Grace McGregor, the regional district’s director for Christina Lake, wrote with three Christina Lake groups, the Christina Lake Trail Alliance among them, that the Province’s 2019 assurances on public access “are no longer being upheld.” A week later ATVBC wrote to Ravi Parmar, the Minister of Forests, and Randene Neill, the Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, asking them to avoid “further closures or deactivation of critical access points.” A public petition to restore stewardship of the section had 4,158 signatures on 23 October 2026.^10,11,12

03 The Province named “deactivation of structures or sections of the rail grade” as a next step. Its deputy minister repeated it in December. No inspection results have been published.

Province of British Columbia · public notice, 27 June 2025page 2 of 2, “Next Steps,” and the two officials who signed it

The letter’s last section. The inspections were to inform “future use, remediation measures and/or deactivation.” The highlight is ours.¹

Deactivation is an option the Province named, not a decision it has announced. The letter said: “The Province will be obtaining more detailed information about the structures on the rail trail this year.” In December 2025 Halls repeated that promise in nearly the same words, and wrote: “Currently, there are no plans for additional changes on this non-status rail grade.” We found no published inspection results and no decision on any structure.^1,7

Lori Halls, Deputy Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship · letter to the RDKB, reference 474321 December 2025 · as printed in the RDKB Board agenda of 10 December 2025, pages 52 and 53

The reply to the regional district. It was copied to Steve Morissette, the MLA for Kootenay-Monashee, by name. The highlights are ours.⁷

For the people who live along the grade, deactivation is not a recreation question. Linda Worley, the regional district’s director for Area B, wrote in 2025 that the grade is the only access for “76 residences in the areas of Coykendahl, Brooklyn, Renata, and Shields.” In August 2026 she said: “If that road is deactivated, they’re going to have no way out.”^13,14

The Province disagrees on the law. Halls wrote that the grade “has never provided legal access to these private properties,” and that there are exit routes on the Bulldog and Shields forest service roads. For everyone else, her answer is one line: the corridor “remains open to the public at the users’ own risk.” Anyone who wants to look after it may apply for a tenure through FrontCounter BC and meet the insurance requirements that come with it.⁷

04 The Province promised year-round recreation in 2020 and wrote “wilderness status” in 2025. This is the record in between.

1. August 2019Trans Canada Trail objects to taking the trail designation off the section: removal “should not be considered a viable option.”¹⁵
2. 6 July 2020Order M322 is signed by Assistant Deputy Minister Matt Austin for Doug Donaldson, the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. The section leaves the recreation trail.⁶
3. 16 July 2020The Province promises the 67 kilometres will be “available for recreational purposes year-round.”²
4. 20 May 2021The Province’s recreation register records the 65.9-kilometre section, CHR-CAS 2, as retired.¹⁶
5. June 2021The Forest Practices Board finds the trail agency had no funding, staff or asset systems to repair the grade, and that motorized use “has never been prohibited.”⁸
6. 27 June 2025The public notice: no funding, “managed to a wilderness status,” trestle and tunnel signs, and deactivation named as an option.¹
7. July 2025Christina Lake groups and ATVBC write to the Province, and a public petition opens.¹¹
8. 1 December 2025Deputy Minister Lori Halls writes that the Province is “unable to fund or manage” the corridor, and copies Steve Morissette.⁷
9. August 2026Minister Randene Neill tours the grade with local officials. Morissette says the aim is to “explore solutions.”¹⁷
10. 24 October 2026Final Voting Day is scheduled in Kootenay-Monashee and across B.C.¹⁸

Every entry is the Province’s own record or a public filing about it. Nothing on the list is a law that closes the grade to anyone, and nothing on it is a plan to repair it.

05 Warren Mirko has written about the trail twice, and Steve Morissette raised its cost and toured it. We found no public statement from the Green or OneBC candidates.

Four people are on the ballot in Kootenay-Monashee. Here is what each has said about the Columbia & Western in public, as far as we could find.¹⁹

• 

  Warren MirkoConservative · executive director, Public Land Use Society

  Two op-eds on the trail, in September and November 2025. Did not name it in his 22 October answer to the Trail Times.^19,20,21

• 

  Steve MorissetteBC NDP · MLA for Kootenay-Monashee since 2024

  Raised its tunnels and trestles at a finance committee hearing in June 2025 and toured it with the minister in August 2026. Not named in his 72 turns in the House.^17,22,23

• 

  Connie LarochelleBC Green · retired provincial senior research advisor, Trail

  We found no public statement from her on the trail.²⁴

• 

  Stephen HillOneBC · Castlegar business owner, federal candidate in 2011

  We found no public statement from him on the trail.²⁵

Portraits: Steve Morissette, Legislative Assembly of British Columbia; Warren Mirko and Connie Larochelle, their parties’ candidate pages; Stephen Hill, My Kootenay Now.

Warren Mirko, the Conservative candidate, is the executive director of the Public Land Use Society, an access group. In September 2025 he picked up the Province’s own phrase: “Abandonment is redefined as ‘wilderness status’.” In November he wrote that “motorized use is restricted” and that “Local MLAs cannot pretend this is someone else’s issue.” That op-ed said Morissette had “remained silent through this process.” Mirko’s answer to the Trail Times on 22 October did not name the trail.^19,20,21

Steve Morissette, the BC NDP MLA since 2024, had raised the trail five months before that op-ed. At the Legislature’s finance committee in Penticton on 9 June 2025 he said: “I’m hearing lots of rumbling of there being safety issues with tunnels, with trestles, etc., which are going to cost a fortune to maintain safely.” He was copied by name on the Deputy Minister’s letter. In August 2026 he toured the grade with Minister Neill and said the aim was to “explore solutions to maintaining the much loved trail.” We found no solution announced since, and none of his 72 speaking turns in the House names the trail. His answer to the Trail Times on 22 October did not mention it.^{7,17,19,22,23}

Connie Larochelle, the BC Green candidate, is a retired provincial senior research advisor who lives in Trail. We found no public statement from her on the trail. We read her party’s candidate page, her local profiles and her 22 October answer. Her party’s platform page returned “page not found,” and her campaign’s Facebook page would not load without signing in.²⁴

Stephen Hill, the OneBC candidate, runs a business in Castlegar and was a federal candidate in 2011. We found no public statement from him on the trail. We read his party’s candidate list, his local profile and his 22 October answer. OneBC’s policies page returned “page not found,” and his campaign’s Facebook page would not load without signing in.²⁵

The four met at a candidates’ forum in Winlaw on 16 October. We found no account of what was said there about the trail.²⁶

06 Whoever wins Kootenay-Monashee will speak for the users of a trail the Province says it cannot fund or manage. Ask them whether it stays open.

The Province’s letter went to “a potential user of the non-status rail grade.” That is a hiker on the Trans Canada Trail, a family on bikes out of Castlegar, a rider on an ATV, a hunter, and a resident above Lower Arrow Lake on the way home. They want the same thing: a grade that stays open, with trestles and tunnels that someone is responsible for.¹

In the Province’s own words the trail is open at the users’ own risk, it has no maintenance money, its trestles are signed against motor vehicles, its main tunnel is posted “Do Not Enter,” and deactivation is on the list. An MLA cannot sign the order that decides it. An MLA can carry the question to the ministers who can, and say in public what the answer should be.^1,7

The Province calls it “wilderness status.” For the people who use the Columbia & Western, it is public access that no one in government has agreed to keep open.

Before you vote, ask each candidate one question: will you ask the Province to keep the Columbia & Western open to everyone, and who will pay for its trestles and tunnels? Final Voting Day is scheduled for Saturday, 24 October.¹⁸