CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Day-Use Beach Fee In Lac-Clairval Debate

On a sweltering Saturday in July, the municipal beach at Lac-Clairval, a Quebec village of about 1,800 in the Eastern Townships, can attract upward of 3,000 visitors. Parked cars line Chemin du Lac for two kilometres, and by mid-afternoon the washrooms have exhausted their paper. Councillors are deliberating a charge of $15 per car for non-residents on weekends and holidays from June to September, with residents exempt through a complimentary windshield sticker. Any charge would be reassessed after one season.

Mayor Sylvie Gagnon, its sponsor, presents the measure as elementary fairness. Residents’ property taxes finance the lifeguards, the cleaning and the parking enforcement, yet most weekend bathers live elsewhere. All proceeds would be reinvested in the beach, she stresses, and visitors remain welcome; they would merely “share the bill.”

Marc-André Lévesque, proprietor of a café and canoe rental on the main street, attributes over half his summer revenue to day visitors. “A family already out fifteen dollars will arrive carrying sandwiches, or else continue to the next lake, where parking is free,” he predicts. He grants that crowds become “a real headache” on the busiest long weekends, but considers a handful of unpleasant Saturdays insufficient justification for a season-long rule. An outskirts parking lot with a shuttle strikes him as the sensible alternative.

Hélène Roy, a biologist in retirement who chairs the shoreline association, takes little interest in who pays and considerable interest in how many arrive. Trampled vegetation alarms her far more than depleted dispensers. “If the objective is protecting the lake, behaviour must change,” she says, and she doubts it will: divided among four occupants, the charge amounts to less than an ice cream apiece. Her preference is a daily ceiling on visitors, administered through free online reservations.

Kwame Asante, who drives from Sherbrooke with his three children most summer weekends, would grumble but comply; his family uses the washrooms and swims under a lifeguard’s eye, and another lake would add forty minutes each way. His sole complaint concerns notice. “Announce it in March,” he pleads, “not on a Friday in July when we’re already in the car.”

My cottage on Lac-Clairval has stood here for twenty years, and the mayor is hardly exaggerating: some July weekends, strangers block my driveway. Nobody disputes the congestion. Still, councillors seem to me to be 6. Choose…tackling the wrong problemasking too muchblind to the crowdsoverspending on lifeguards. Our shops, moreover, would absorb the first blow if day-trippers 7. Choose…stopped using the washrooms during visitsreserved a spot onlinebrought lunch or went elsewhereparked along Chemin du Lac. It would be a pity to harm them for so little.

Meanwhile, a charge of that size 8. Choose…would barely cover the lifeguardswould scarcely deter a familywould punish smaller householdswould restore the shoreline. The shoreline chair’s alternative appeals to me because it would 9. Choose…exempt local residentsmove cars off the roadraise money insteadreduce bather numbers. Her years of watching that shoreline earn my trust.

Whatever emerges, one visitor’s request is surely reasonable: councillors should 10. Choose…announce changes before summerexempt families from Sherbrookereview the scheme after a seasonwaive the charge for children, so that households can plan their summers accordingly.