Local woman takes responsibility for patch of road

Wearing an orange reflective vest and work gloves, and wielding a tool for picking up garbage, Debbie Redekop regularly tidies the ditches and easements around her home near the corner of York Road and Concession 2.

Unofficial caretakers of this stretch of the road, Redekop and her husband, Walt, who keeps the side of the road trim with his mower, have lived nearby for almost 40 years, and they are baffled by how much garbage this area accumulates.

Once, she said, “I found a big dead animal in a bag. Someone hid it behind the tree. I told the Humane Society.”

“During the pandemic,” she added, “someone was drinking a certain kind of wine. Every week they would throw empty wine bottles here.”

A beer can and vodka bottle, as well as numerous take-out containers, were on the side of the road waiting to be deposited into Redekop’s bright orange garbage bag.

In the past few years she and Walt have noticed that poison ivy was choking the trees near the small parking lot at the top of Concession 2. “If you drove by here a few years ago, this was totally all weeds,” she said, referring to both sides of the road.

“During the pandemic, my husband and I decided to clear this whole section so people can park and it’s not totally overgrown.”

The parking lot is often used by people hiking a Bruce Trail side trail that climbs the Niagara Escarpment.

On the day The Local spoke to Redekop, she had found a wallet with a driver’s licence, health card, credit cards and photos, wet, but still intact. She said she often finds ID and credit cards and tries her best to turn them in to someone who will track down the owners.

The Local reunited the wallet and its contents to its rightful owner by conducting a quick Facebook search. He said the wallet had been stolen out of his vehicle while he was working on York Road two weeks ago. Nearly $500 in cash was missing from the wallet, as well as a gold ring he kept to remember his deceased uncle.

Redekop grew up in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and her husband is “a Virgil boy,” she said, “so we figured we must just try to do our bit. If everyone would just clean up along the side of the roads by their house, what a difference it would make in this area.”