One historic park down – my highest praise for those who tried to save it!

At the time of this blog’s composition, Jan. 2007) I have just recently learned that a well known public park in Bracebridge, Ontario, has been sacrificed to allow for more urban development. A park that I played in as a kid, a park where my own youngsters came to run off some pent-up energy, initiate a game of baseball and enjoy the recreational equipment, and where thousands of citizens celebrated agricultural society fairs for over a century…, has now become home to a university campus. An important recreational space in a park-starved urban core will be sacrificed for a place of higher learning.
Since this debacle began a year ago, our family had joined up with concerned residents of the Jubilee Park neighborhood, and last winter during a public meeting to discuss the project, I was proud to carry a placard protesting the compromise to this sliver of open space that has been important to the town since the late 1800’s. I was proud to be associated with a group of people trying to protect their rights as taxpayers, as neighbors of the project, and as stake holders in the community. It was as much a wake-up call about the rights and privileges of a municipal council, and how intrusive local government can be when the mood strikes. There isn’t a property owner, a resident of this province, who shouldn’t be aware just how much change can be imposed on a community’s future, a street, a neighborhood, by a group of pretty ordinary folks, who let elected office go to their heads. The next debacle may be in your ballywick. You need to know your rights long before the surveyors and soil testing equipment show up. The Jubilee Park defenders were caught by surprise and had very little time to mount a campaign to save the site. And it cost a considerable amount of private funds to defend those rights thought to have been inherent and non-negotiable in the Hollow neighborhood. Selling off a public park? Who would have thought this would have ever become an issue prior to news of the university project in January 2006?
The residents who opposed the project for sound, logical, good planning reasons, were let down by the judicial process they believed would protect their rights; rights you would, as a citizen of this province, expect would be safe-guarded. An urban park. For urban, inner community kids and adults. It was sacrificed in the name of progress and educational opportunity. I can only ponder if the urban studies department of the subject university would consider it a worthy project to study the action of their own university, to compromise an urban neighborhood’s last morsel of open space.
No matter how many arguments were made in support of the park’s re-development, nothing, not even the most recent judicial decision can trump the reality, a badly needed open space, in an established, historic, urban neighborhood has been unnecessarily compromised, when alternative sites could have, should have been explored. In this day and age when environmental issues are being red flagged all over the place, and global initiatives to spare the earth are launched in weighty succession, it’s so depressing to find that here in the beautiful Ontario hinterland, good urban planning is, well, not of particular interest to the stewards of our resources.
I applaud all those who stood up to the power mongers at town hall, and forced the issue into the public domain….., for everyone to see, and acknowledge the price to be paid, as a mission of council, to inspire long term economic progress. They are titanic builders, having no regard for any encounter with an iceberg(s). One day they will face the true consequence of their imposition of faulty logic. Thank goodness there are still people in our district, who will fight for their rights despite the stacked odds of being out-resourced and out-funded by a determined, narrow-visioned town hall.
Sparing the park was the right thing to do. Thinking about the every day neighborhood uses of the park, the opportunities it has afforded the community generally for decades, would have clearly imprinted a greater need for advance consultation before the deed was announced. The disrespect this group of 2006 councillors demonstrated to the entire town, was as irresponsible to the democracy they are sworn, by law, to protect, as this regional historian has ever seen develop in the history of all our Muskoka communities. It does not paint a picture of good governance for the future and my suggestion is that ratepayer groups and citizen action committees need to beef up their enterprise, their mission statement, or live with a disturbing new trend of….”we’ll do what we want, when we want, to whoever we want!” Consequence free you might say.
To the hale and hardy folks I came to know in this courageous fight to save an historic Muskoka park, “we live to fight another day!”

A walk in a snowy woods to get perspective

I can be steaming mad, on the verge of bursting blood vessels, yet this snowy woodland at Birch Hollow (Gravenhurst) always soothes the savage beast. I can enter here with the taste of fire and brimstone on the tip of my tongue, and editorial rage about to ooze out of my fingertips but about twenty feet into this tranquil enclosure of snow-laden boughs, I calm to the pleasantness of immersion. As this public greenbelt is afforded to the neighborhood here, as a privilege of the subdivision, I do feel great compassion for those in The Hollow neighborhood, of Bracebridge, who have just lost their historic Jubilee Park, for the sake of a new university campus having a place to set up operation. In light of this unfortunate judicial decision to allow the park to be sold-off, I don’t know how we would muster the mission to save this even more vulnerable open space, in Gravenhurst, should it catch the attention of town council on a development binge. To preserve it, would be the most intense, worthwile fight of my life. This place is precious not only to our family but to every resident, every creature, every plant, every tree that thrives here as a result of its continuous well being.
On nights after attending meetings in support of saving Jubilee Park, over the past year, I would walk our dog over into these comforting woods and ponder how any one today, in this enlightened free world, could dismiss the importance of good old fashioned “open space!” Places to unwind, wander, play, and outstretch arms with ample room to spin clear of the citizenry at large. I live in a typically urban settlement, where neighbors mow their grass regularly, all times of day or night, drive two vehicles whether they need them or not, have loud leaf blowers, electronic gizmos that beep, chime and play music, and similarly live in company of pet owning folks who have a penchant for letting their dogs poop on my lawn, regardless if I’m standing watch or not. And when they get ticked off about the length of my blades of grass, my clutter in the driveway and on the lawn, and the garden ornaments I prefer to theirs, they can also amble angrily into these beautiful, forgiving woods on their own, and be uplifted by spirit and solitude to a cheerful life refrain..
While I have to live and work in this urban dynamic, I can not survive without this daily touch with natural immersion. The fact this tiny acreage of trees exists here, is the reason I have continued to reside in Gravenhurst. I would feel much less enthusiastic about my home if this safe haven was compromised in the same fashion, as the Jubilee Park neighbors were robbed of their oasis from the urban hustle and bustle.
Making money off these woods! That’s what it would amount to, if municipal attention was raised about this modest forest amidst urbanity. I have never once thought of fiscal prosperity while walking through this amazing wetland. I have never felt a desire to exploit it because of its urban potential, or to suggest it be the site of condominiums or more residential housing. I have only thought about how much it has improved all the lives of all who call this ballywick “home.” How when we emerge from slumber, and take that first glance out the window, what magnificence we are greeted with, these snow attired evergreens, maples and leaning old birches; the birds and squirrels, the deer and rabbits criss-crossing all the live long day.
If I must, I shall defend this place, this healing wee forest, with whatever is required to spare it from the conquest of the empire builders.
Help save the nature of Muskoka. Protect a forest or wetland from urban misadventure. Look at your closest public park and appreciate, as with the news of the day, it’s an insecure land use at the discretion of those who call themselves good governance.


CHECK OUT MY OTHER BLOG @ http://gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.com/