New to rural Kingston

My partner and I purchased our home in South Frontenac in 2019 as a cottage with a five-year-plan to relocate. In May, I found work in Kingston and at the end of August, my partner followed and we can now fully call the Kingston area our home. With work and the move, it's been a busy summer so we haven't been able to explore and enjoy the area as much as we would like, but we're looking forward to settling in and becoming part of the community here.

Our biggest challenge is trying to stay active. Back in the City, we walked everywhere and had a gym 5 minutes away. Here in Kingston, we're lucky that we live near the Cataraqui Trail and have used it regularly to walk our dog and get outside, but getting to the gym is a 40-minute commute each way. At this rate, we're considering setting up a home gym but I wonder why there aren't more health & fitness facilities servicing rural communities. My partner and I would likely visit a gym 3 or 4 times a week if it was a 15-20 minute drive.

Our other biggest challenge has been connectivity. My wife works from home and we were lucky that Starlink became available in our area this year. It's been fast and effective, although costly. There are whispers of Bell Fibe lines coming in, but our area is pretty remote and I'm not holding my breath. More urgently, there is no cellular service in our area. While that makes it challenging to contact friends & family, my biggest concern is safety in the case of emergencies. In the event of a car accident or personal injury, I cannot reliably call for help. This, to me, is an urgent need in our rural communities. We need local government to communicate this urgency to upper levels of government to help fund infrastructure and partner with big telecom to better serve rural Canadians.

Other than those, I sometimes worry about the conservative values of our community. We are very lucky that our immediate community is reasonably progressive. There are a few rainbow flags on our road which helps signal the change we hope to see, but this is still a conservative area and long-term I'd really like to see some effort to educate and expose the community to diverse communities.

And of course, nature conservation and climate change remain important issues facing our community. I know rural Kingston's population is growing and there are efforts to build and expand communities, but we need to make sure the natural environment that makes rural Kingston so beautiful and vibrant remains healthy and a political priority.

Thanks!