Norfolk County

SWIFT declared the Norfolk buildout complete in August 2024 — 3,947 homes and businesses, $12.1 million of upgrades, with Rogers building 71 kilometres of fibre to more than 2,100 homes around Waterford, Wilsonville, Boston, Bealton, Dundurn, Townsend Centre, Villa Nova and Bloomsburg, and Execulink delivering over 900 homes in the Long Point area.

What makes Norfolk different from its neighbour is what is on the land. This was the Ontario tobacco belt — ninety per cent of Canada's tobacco, more than two thousand farms at the peak — and the kilns and curing barns are still standing, mostly repurposed as storage and workshops. They sit in rows well away from the house, built with no thought to running data to them.

The county is now Canada's largest producer of asparagus, tart cherries, ginseng, peppers and pumpkins. Ginseng in particular changes the security conversation: high value per acre, grown under shade cloth in fields away from the road, and in the ground for years before harvest.

Then there is the shore. Sixty-plus campgrounds and RV parks, two provincial parks at Turkey Point and Long Point, the marinas at Port Dover and Port Rowan, and a seasonal population that multiplies in July. Guest WiFi and unattended monitoring on seasonal property are their own discipline, and the work happens between February and April rather than during the season.