A rock along Lake Nipissing’s south shore looks like a nice place to enjoy a leisurely sunny day. But for some people in the area, this same rock has sparked a bitter and complex legal battle about public and private land use.
“It’s this beautiful spot,” says local David Cernanec. It has deep, clean water and sandy bottom that draws people in for summertime swimming. “People have been going there forever, even though it wasn’t an official park.” Cernanec says the lakefront area, called the “Rock”—depending on who you ask—had been used by the public for generations, for swimming, fishing, and catching sunsets.
The property owners see it differently.
In 2022, sisters Tracy Duggan and Andrea Dickinson purchased the small piece of waterfront property that is across from a small island that houses their family’s heritage property.
“Our family has been using this access point since 1945, when our grandfather purchased the [island] property,” the sisters said in a statement.
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In 2021, a neighbouring landowner purchased a Shoreline Road Allowance (SRA), the 66-foot strip of land between a cottage and the banks of a body of water that is generally owned by the local municipality (unless it has been purchased by an abutting property owner).
The sisters had previously used this land as a canoe access point. Once the SRA became private property, and in order to ensure future generations would have a reliable place to launch their canoes, Duggan and Dickinson asked a nearby neighbour to sell them a different piece of mainland property. This is the land on which the Rock sits.
The 2022 purchase sparked a bitter dispute and ongoing legal battle about public and private land use. The legal action has been launched by Save the Rock Inc., a group—it includes David Cernanec—dedicated to preserving public access to the area through legal action.
The legal battle concerning who owns the access point to the Rock, near Nipissing’s Birchgrove Drive West and Sunset Cove Road, is currently under way. The defendants include the Township of Nipissing, the land surveyor, and the property owners.
“We did not do anything wrong or nefarious,” the sisters said in a statement. Duggan and Dickinson maintain that since 2020, the mainland lot has been trespassed through in order to reach what they call “Party Rock,” an area they say was virtually unknown to anyone except the previous landowners, though a public beach is situated 340 metres away. The sisters say the Rock has been accessed by locals for swimming, drinking, setting off fireworks, and partying since the 1990s.
Tensions flared further when the sisters installed a small aluminum dock, less than 15 square metres, along the waterfront and installed a trail camera to keep an eye on the dock. The sisters say the land was never a public swim hole, and locals knew that.
Nonetheless, Save the Rock is taking the sisters to court. “We didn’t want to do a lawsuit,” says Cernanec, the current president and chair of the group. “We really just wanted to have access.” Since 2023, Save the Rock has been asking the township that the exact location of the public sections of land be confirmed through a new land survey.
In affidavits to the court, the group claims the public has a right of way over the property leading to the Rock, and says that the new property owners have blocked that public access by installing fencing.
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The group also asserts that the land survey commissioned by the property owners prior to purchase was incorrectly performed to expand the boundaries of the private lot beyond what was previously recognized. The sisters deny these claims, noting that they hired a well-respected local surveyor. Save the Rock hired two surveyors of their own to conduct additional assessments of the land, which they also submitted to the court.
The group has been asking the township to review the survey commissioned by the property owners. In 2023, the group presented their argument in front of council, but Cernanec says the township refused to order a new land survey, saying it would be too expensive.
Currently, there are four motions before the court, and the matter is slated to be heard in January 2026.
Until then, Cernanec says the group will continue to pressure the township to enforce bylaws in the area, and they are also looking to get the provincial government involved in the dispute.
Meanwhile, the sisters say they are the victims of an online misinformation campaign, and the group has infringed on their rights to enjoy their private property, harassed them verbally, and vilified them to the public.
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