GUELPH POLITICAST #391 - A National Park (If We Can Keep It)

Since it closed in 2000, the Ontario Reformatory, and the 108 hectares that surround it, have been the source of much conversation, optimism and fantasy. We got the Guelph Innovation District Secondary Plan, we’ve got a Heritage Conservation District Study, and now we’ve got a project to turn the area into a national park. Is creating a national park the end game for the OR Lands we’ve been looking for?

Creating a National Urban Park system was an initiative started by the federal government in 2021, when they pledged $130 million to create 15 sites across Canada with local partners. To become a national urban park, any proposed site has to meet three criteria: it has to conserve nature, connect people with nature, and advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. The OR Lands check all three boxes. 

Now, you may be thinking that the OR Lands are already well protected by various heritage designations, but it's the connections to Indigenous heritage that are the most at risk;  an old accessory building that was home to a program that helped Indigenous inmates work through their trauma and led many of them to overcome a life of substance addiction and crime. The proof is there in murals on the wall, in the basement of a building that’s outside the current heritage protections for the rest of the site.

With that heritage at stake, we turn to an expert. Former chair of Heritage Guelph P. Brian Skerritt is leading this effort to turn the OR Lands into a National Urban Park and he joins us on this week's podcast to tell us about it. He'll talk about why the OR lands are the best candidate for a national park in Guelph, the difficulties in accessing the Indigenous history on the site, and what Skerritt would ideally like to see on the property in terms of ensuring that all the heritage there is preserved.

So let's talk about making a national urban park on this week's Guelph Politicast!

You can learn more about the creation of National Urban Parks at Parks Canada website. You can add your name to a petition in support of the OR Lands Urban National Park at the petitions page of the Our Commons website. The Heritage Conservation District Study is in it’s second and final phase, and you can learn more about that on the City of Guelph’s website.

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