Realty Realities

by Nathalie Tinti, Associate 

With spring coming, and now almost going, people are flocking to their cottage full of excitement to clean out the mouse poop and throw their Muskoka chairs on their dock.  It won’t be long before black fly season is over and you can enjoy an ice cold one looking out over your lake.  One problem, your dock isn’t quite as stable as it used to be and you have come to the conclusion that it is finally time to replace it.

Knowing that your neighbour down the way was charged for not applying for his permit last year when he built his dock, you realize that you need a permit to rebuild.  And since you are rebuilding anyway, you might as well make your dock into that gorgeous “U” shape 7,000 feet of dock space that you have always wanted!  Off you go to your local Municipal office, full of energy, drawings in hand and a smile that would make your grumpy aunt Fanny May break into song.  Within minutes of being in the Municipal office, you hear  4 words that you have never heard before that are about to throw you for loop… “Original Shore Road Allowance” or OSRAs as we in the real estate business like to call them.

Along with those 4 words comes an explanation as to what it is and why you don’t own it.  And then usually comes a call to your lawyer, because it simply cannot be true that you do not own to the water’s edge of your very expensive cottage property.  Guess what, unless you or a predecessor owner have purchased it, you do not own to the water’s edge of your waterfront property.

In and around Georgian Bay, Parry Sound and Muskoka, 66 foot (or 1 chain as they like to say in the golden olden days) shore road allowances are the rule rather than the exception.  The reason for these original shore road allowances is not thoroughly documented, however, it appears that the reason for them probably dates back to times of logging operations.  These OSRAs provided the lumberman with the right to trespass on private lands to haul logs.

The good news is, most of the time, these OSRAs can be purchased from the Municipality.  Thanks to snowmobilers and ATV operators finding out about the OSRAs and using them as trails, much to abutting property owners chagrin, pressure from tax payers forced municipalities and the Government to sell these ORSAs to abutting property owners in order to secure their privacy.  The real purpose of the OSRAs has long since passed, and municipalities now have the option of retaining them or selling them. 

The process by which this happens will be the topic of my next blog.