Protecting the Park’s Status Quo

Abstract

AbstractThe McInnis scare prompted a renewed push for legislation from the Ottawa-Valley chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS-OV) as well as action from the park’s governing body, the National Capital Commission (NCC). CPAWS recommended a new Gatineau Park Commission; however, this call went unheeded by parliamentarians and was only met with promises from NCC officials to “study” legislation. Having expropriated McInnis and two other subdivision proposals on private lands in the park, the NCC prepared an acquisition strategy with the “long-term objective” of eliminating remaining privately-owned land within the park, which had also been given a new status by the federal government as a National Interest Land Mass (NILM). This chapter focuses on the negotiations between the NCC and ‘‘park custodians’’ at Kingsmere and Meech Lake. The first section documents the reaction of park residents to the 1990 master plan revision, which, as shown in the previous chapter, reaffirmed the NCC’s need to implement the 1989 Acquisition Strategy. The second section documents how the NCC, under Chair Marcel Beaudry, was downsized and privatized; further, under Beaudry, the NCC annexed the Meech Creek Valley lands as part of the boundary rationalization, but also sold off parkland for residential development despite the park’s status as NILM and its importance to the “green image” of Canada’s capital. The third and fourth sections describe the subtle change within the NCC, one sought by the property owner associations. Whereas previous master plans had emphasized the management problems introduced by private lands, the NCC now understood Kingsmere and Meech Lake residents as ‘‘park custodians’’ with a long-term future in the park.