PEC Chamber of Commerce, you better watch out. PEC Parents, PECWine, PECish, consider yourselves duly warned. And you too, StayPEC, PEC Jazz Fest, PEC Studio Tour, PEC Chamber Music Festival, and PEC Fresh Good Food Market. 

You are all infringing.

The County has filed both a Statement of Defence and Counter Claim in Ontario Superior Court in response to CJ and Megan Thompson’s charge that it interfered with the running of their marina business, PEC Harbour & Marina, last summer.

In  a set of  October filings, the Thompsons alleged that County staff tampered with the Google landing page for their company, causing it to redirect to the Picton Marina. “This resulted in all traffic seeking out PEC Harbour & Marina to be directed to inquire with the Municipality about its marina.” They also said the County changed their Google page’s listed address, phone number, and hours of business to those of the Picton Marina.

In response, however, the County complains the Thompsons’ company, PEC Harbour & Marina, “infringes on its rights because of the use of ‘PEC’,” which is “the County’s official mark.”

“Mr. Thompson infringed upon the County’s official mark and goodwill associated thereto.” 

I am not sure what an “official mark” is, but I gather it’s not quite a trademark. In this case, PEC stands for Prince Edward County. Even if it is the government, I am not sure the County can claim exclusive jurisdiction over a place name. 

In any event, maybe somebody should tell the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) that their acronym is already taken. 

Last July, the County initiated legal proceedings against CJ Thompson and Tenacity Marina. In response, the Thompsons launched a Counter Claim that documented what appeared to them to be inexplicable, and incredible, treatment from a landlord who had gotten four years of free service at the Marina for the thankless task of managing a fuel pump and 14 underserviced boat slips.

The Picton Marina doesn’t even offer a washroom to its guests. Never mind light or power. Under the Thompsons’ care, it had gone from losing tens of thousands a year to about $5000. 

Meanwhile, the Thompsons invested over $1.5 million remediating the formerly industrial harbour and installing the infrastructure for a gleaming new marina alongside the County’s tiny offering, with a public boardwalk and 70 boat slips.

They were trying to get the financing together to install electric power and finally offer a full-service marina in the long-neglected harbour. The initiative was important, the reason the Thompsons were awarded the contract in the first place. The County wanted the revitalized harbour they were offering. It approved and permitted the development every step of the way and contributed financially to the creation of the boardwalk.

Almost as soon as the slips were built, however, the Thompsons were fired. They were evicted in March of last year and told to remove all “chattels” from the leased premises — including the new slips.

Staff were taped gleefully discussing the day the Thompsons would be gone
and they could seize the docks.
They envisioned turning the harbour into “a real moneymaker,”
and installing, at the County’s expense,
the electric power the Thompsons couldn’t yet afford.

If they didn’t remove all the infrastructure, they were told, it would be forfeit, becoming County property.  At the same time, security cameras at the Picton Marina recorded a group of County staff, led by Director of Operations Troy Gilmour, on a March 20 site visit. The date is important. It was after the Thompsons had been evicted, but before they were due to have left. 

Staff were taped gleefully discussing the day the Thompsons would be gone and they could seize the docks. They envisioned turning the harbour into “a real moneymaker,” and installing, at the County’s expense the electric power the Thompsons couldn’t yet afford.

In their Counter Claim, the Thompsons detailed how the same County staff then spent the summer of 2025 trying to edge them out of the harbour. 

In its response, however, the County says it was the Thompsons’ fault that its staff were caught on camera. It claims the Thompsons laid a trap, and deliberately failed to remove the Marina’s security cameras — installed years prior, at the County’s request, and clearly marked — after they were evicted, even though at the time the staff visit was recorded, they had ten more days to vacate the premises. 

The County’s case against the Thompsons turns around one key claim: that after they had been evicted as managers of the Picton Marina, they had no right to continue to operate their new boat slips, whatever they were called.

“Post-termination of the Sub-Lease, the Plaintiff had no legal or other colour of right to continue to occupy any of the Crown water lots, with the Tenacity Docks or otherwise, whether anchored to the lakebed, or not.”

The County’s court filings suggest that the Thompsons somehow built the boat slips illegally, and complain repeatedly about “Tenacity’s failure to remove its docks” after it was evicted. 

They also complain, inexplicably, that the evicted and fired Thompsons “abandoned” the marina, “forcing the County to use its own employees to staff the fueling and…docking slips.” 

But these documents are full of nonsensical and circular arguments.

The County’s oft-stated rationale for the eviction of the Thompsons, for example, turns around their failure to remit 10 percent of their revenues as managers of the Picton Marina, and, eventually, of the new boat slips. 

At the same time, it also suggests the Thompsons did such a shoddy job that there were no revenues to remit. “The County pleads that Tenacity did not, and never did, satisfactorily operate the Marina upon the Premises.” 

The County’s lawyer, Templeman’s Jennifer Ng, also tries to establish that complaints around the operations of both marinas in Picton harbour this past summer — the clear consequence of the County’s eviction of the Thompsons and insistence their 70 boat slips were forfeit chattels — were not only the entire fault of the Thompsons, but the reason they were evicted in the first place.

For their part, the Thompsons say the County never asked for any rent or even any accounts until 2024, when, they allege, it started to build a case against them for the express purpose of laying hold of the new docks.

The docks are on Crown lands — the harbour waters — and it is true that the County manages those lands in place of the Crown. But on the surface, all one can see is a colossal case of mismanagement. Even as the County asserts a legal right to seize every last thing the Thompsons built in the harbour, it can have no moral right. Its latest series of vapid and circular arguments makes that much, at least, crystal clear.