'Embarassing and frustrating,' but having the 'Worst Road in Ontario' can help northern towns land funding

Ontario drivers are once again voting on which roads are the worst in the province. 

CAA has run the campaign for over 20 years and several roads in the north have "won" in the past, but it's been a while, with southern streets dominating the top 10 in the last few years.

Teresa Di Felice, assistant vice-president of government and community relations for CAA, says drivers in some parts of the province are more used to rough roads than others. 

"I think sometimes there is a difference between municipalities and what people accept as the norm, versus what they want to have attention paid to," she said. 

Nominations are open until April 18 and after the contenders— which these days are also nominated because of poor conditions on sidewalks and bike lanes— are analyzed by experts, the 2025 list should be out in June. 

Di Felice says CAA is proud of how the Worst Roads campaign has drawn attention to the issue of crumbling infrastructure and keeps track of which roads end up being repaired after being listed.

"The challenge that municipalities have is there is a backlog of road repairs and it can be difficult for municipalities to schedule major repairs on the property tax base. Which is why we also advocate with senior levels of government," she said, adding that the Ontario government recently announced plans to create a "pothole fund" to help small municipalities with repairs.

Brenda Reid, the mayor of the Township of Assiginack on Manitoulin Island, is skeptical, however.

"It's really, really hard to get help for roads. It's just something that the provincial government has decided that municipalities have to take care of their own roads," she said.

"So, hopefully we'll never be on that list again."

Back in 2006, Cardwell Street, a short rural road in Assiginack running between the village of Manitowaning and the Indigenous community of Wikwemikong was voted worst in Ontario.

In an interview with CBC radio at the time, riding along the bumpy washboard road, then Mayor Leslie Fields described the potholes on Cardwell as "fairly deep and fairly large...You could burry a raccoon in it and not see'em."

"It's embarrassing at the same time it's very frustrating that we couldn't get the provincial government to listen to us," said Reid, who sat on town council back in 2006.

"To keep that thing in pavement it was very difficult at the time."

But she said they did use the worst road title to land provincial funding to fix up Cardwell and now more than a decade later, says it is still a relatively smooth ride.

In 2015, Timmins Mayor Steve Black encouraged citizens to vote for Algonquin Boulevard, which ended up winning the title and in the years to come, has gone through a multi-million-dollar facelift, largely fuelled by provincial funding.