Cross-country skiers are fuming that McGill University is cutting them off from their favourite trails in Mont Saint-Hilaire at McGill's Gault Nature Reserve, about 40 kilometres east of Montreal.
The reserve is McGill's third campus, the university says, and it's considered an open-air laboratory by the institution.
For decades, its trails have also been used for hiking in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter.
Last summer, it announced access to its seven kilometres of ski trails would be reduced to four kilometres this winter, and next year, all will be closed to skiers.
Mont Saint-Hilaire resident Marc Chicouane is speaking out against the change. He's been skiing in the area for about 40 years, ever since he was a child.
"The mountain is part of our identity, for people who live in the area," Chicouane said on CBC Montreal's Daybreak.
He said skiers want to see the mountain preserved but thinks cutting off access isn't the way to do it.
"In the winter, it's minimum public attendance," he argued.
Research station
But McGill said that the ski trails have become so popular, skiers are disrupting activities critical to the reserve's purpose as a research and field station.
"The mountain is a victim of its own success," the director of the Gault Reserve, Virginie Millien, said in an email.
About 7 km of trails have been reduced to about 4 km this season. (Submitted Marc Chicouane)
She said the number of visitors to the reserve has increased by an average of six per cent each year for the past 20 years.
"As a result, our primary mission of preservation of the habitat in the reserve is challenged," she said.
Skiers who enjoy the trails have staged protests at the reserve and have launched a petition to demand McGill not close them.
The petition has garnered more than 1,000 signatures, so far.
Too popular
McGill said next year will be the Gault reserve's 60th anniversary, and it wants to use that milestone to return it to a research unit and field station.
Chicouane said that decades ago, when the mountain was first opened to cross-country skiers, the context was different — hardly anyone came.
"The irony is that the decision of allowing skiing on the reserve was not made in the interest of the mission of the reserve in the first place," she said.
She said McGill has received many messages supporting the decision to close the ski trails.
