I just got word from Jeff Jackson in the Ottawa Valley about an excellent legal precedent to trail use. Here’s what Jeff has to say:

The Ont. Court of Appeal just decided a cross country ski case, which has some good language for trail liability and defining the standard of care, and does a clear job of explaining Occupier’s Liability in relation to trails. In essence, the judge stated that going off the trail and getting injured (ala Kolapore) is still under Occ Liab:

the objective of s. 4(4)(f) of the Act is to encourage landowners to allow recreational use of marked trails on their lands by imposing on them a lesser duty of care.  It would make little sense to limit this lesser duty of care to users when they remain on the marked trail, only to impose a greater duty of care when they venture off the trail.  As the occupier has no effective way of policing the use of these trails, this would, in effect, impose a duty on the occupier to make the off-trail portions of his or her property safer than the trail itself.  This would defeat the purpose of the Act.

This is a good clarification, and offers protection to trail managers and land owners. The full text is here.

Did you catch the reference to the former Kolapore case? The last I heard that one had been dismissed or abandoned. So things are looking up on a legal front, in Ontario at least.