Nothing better to do?

It appears that Lake Country’s finest have very little to do these days.

Let me provide a little background. I have been in dispute with a current and previous neighbour for years. The previous owner had excavated along the fence line between our properties to a depth of about three feet.  This allowed my fence to fall into the neighbour’s property.  The excavation was done about five or more years ago. 

Since then, I have been trying to get the previous owner and the current owner to building a retaining wall along the excavated area to prevent erosion of the property line and allow me to install a new fence.  All of my efforts to get local bylaw to address the matter went nowhere. They advised it was a civil matter.

I finally gave up and decided to install a new fence with deeper footings without the retaining wall. I thought rather than throw used (clay, non-clumping) kitty litter in the landfill, I would throw it along the fence line to help prevent further erosion of the property line. Since the new fence is alongside the neighbor’s shop and some junk that he has piled against it, and since it would be hidden from any view, I thought it would not be a problem. 

What a mistake I made.

The neighbour called the local constabulary. The RCMP visited my home, tracked down my daughter at her home to get to me at my work. He apparently talked to the neighbour and reviewed pictures of the one dump of kitty litter on top of the snow.

I had a fairly heated conversation with the officer with my saying “I can’t believe this” several times. What a waste of money and effort. Through this, I vowed that I would never dump kitty litter along the fence line again, under threat of criminal charges.

Les Caldwell, Lake Country