Kawartha Lakes launches civic addressing initiative with Farm 911: The Emily Project

Farm 911: The Emily Project began as a result of a tragic farm accident that took the life of Emily Trudeau in Northumberland County in 2014. Unfortunately, first responders attending the call were delayed in reaching the scene due to difficulties identifying where the incident occurred on the farm’s property.

As a result, The Emily Project took root and blossomed into a province-wide campaign led by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and several local county federations in East-Central Ontario.

The mission of Farm 911: The Emily Project is to improve emergency service response times in rural communities by ensuring landowners can request a civic address from their municipality for entrances to their vacant farm fields.

Farm landowners that purchase a sign or signs for their field entrances that are not nearby their main farm property, or are on vacant and non-building lots will have a civic address that they can refer to when calling first responders.

“While farmers in Kawartha Lakes have had the ability to order secondary field entrance signs in the past, joining the Farm 911 Project will shed more light on the need to sign the entrances to fields which are away from the main farm driveway. Trying to direct first responders to. ‘the gate just beyond the big cluster of trees after you cross the old culvert west of the Smith farm’, is a thing of the past,” said Kelly Maloney, Economic Development Officer Agriculture, Kawartha Lakes. “With today’s technologies, for a small fee, farmers can ensure they can be accurately and easily found on whatever farm or field they are working.”

For more information on Farm 911 in Kawartha Lakes, visit our Farm 911 webpage.

How to get additional civic addresses

It’s easy! All farmers have to do to get a sign or signs is print, fill out and submit a Municipal Farm 911 Field Entrance Sign application.

All applications must include a site sketch clearly showing the location of the field entrance and the nearest cross roads along with existing neighbouring numbers.

Once you’ve completed and signed your application, send it with the required site sketch to our Building and Septic Division via email to Building and Septic Division or drop it off at any of our Municipal Service Centres. Completed applications and sketches can also be mailed to:

Development Services Building and Septic Division
180 Kent Street West
Lindsay ON, K9V 2Y6

For more information on filing applications or making payments please visit our My Property page.