NCC Evicts Cottagers
According to an Ottawa Citizen story the National Capital Commission has given the descendants of former NCC chairman Alan Hay 30 days to vacate a cottage near Meech Lake.
That intro pricks up ones ears, and the eviction must be heartbreaking for the family who've used the cottage for 70 years, but the article goes on to explain that the issue wasn't a complete surprise because the basement of the house had been found to contain radon gas, the family had taken measures to try and reduce the danger. One supposes that the NCC as current owner of the property is seeking to limit it's liability.
Of course the story touches on all sorts of other Gatineau Park issues from heritage to property ownership and usage. A drag all round, but based on decades of past happiness.
Oh, and there's a video with that Citizen story (you have to sit through an ad) giving a sense of the place and resignation of the family.
April 9th, 2010 - 21:54
I spoke to one of the descendants today, Alan Rankin, where he notes the NCC had told them a few years ago the house would be demolished – before the radon scare and before any testing was done. NOt that radon gas is not a problem, but it can be mitigated, as others have done, and the family is prepared to do this although the NCC has given a very short window of 30 days for 70 years on occupancy.
I urge others to comment and support this family, and to write the CEO of the NCC to express your dissatisfaction at the way this family is being treated.
http://www.gatineauparc.ca
April 10th, 2010 - 00:16
Well, I think the NCC should back off and let these people continue to enjoy their little corner of peace and quiet. It should instead expropriate any and all residents located near the Meech Lake beaches and boat launch.
The NCC’s 1989 Gatineau Park Property Acquisition Task Force noted that those properties posed a serious threat to the park’s public vocation. We’ll be posting that document shortly at http://www.gatineauparc.ca.
You should read it, Chuckles, would likely curb your status quo cheerleading. Maybe even spark a little indignation that would make you take a position on something really important, like park legislation.
April 10th, 2010 - 00:28
There’s a reason the Hay cottage and all its neighbours on the south side of Meech Lake Road were expropriated.
In 1964, or thereabouts, Rod Sparks (Percy’s son) made a deal with the Ottawa Ski Club’s John Clifford to build a ski resort on the property located at the foot of Skyline… And when the NCC got wind of it, bang! they pressed the expropriation button.
Interestingly, the house right next door to the Hay cottage, built originally by one of Percy Sparks’s daughters, was demolished a few years ago. It’s occupants were evicted in the fall of 2004–only a few weeks after I took the MRC police to the dope plantation I’d found nearby.
But before the house was demolished, I found a lot of evidence confirming its previous owner had been a serious dope grower (see http://www.gatineauparc.ca documents section, letter to the Auditor General for the details…).
Turns out the person renting the property, 464 Meech Lake Road, was administrative assistant to the federal transport minister …
So the NCC was renting property to a serious dope grower who worked for the federal transport minister.
Anyone caring to look can still see evidence of dope growing on the property.
Now, chuckles, you may understand a little better why I execrate all forms of NCC cheerleading…
April 10th, 2010 - 10:48
Any pothead will find the mysterious fire @ 420 Meech Lake Road curious!!
Let the record show that it is ONLY Mr. Murray making these claims. No police report, only a letter to the auditor general.
What is a “serious” dope grower anyways??
April 10th, 2010 - 18:58
Well, Mr. Brown, if that’s your real name, you obviously can’t read… and are a pathetic and insignificant little naysayer…
The pot grow op was at 464 Meech Lake Road. You can check the evidence for yourself. A serious pot grower is someone who grows weed for more than just his consumption, you little twit …
And here’s the text of the Ottawa Citizen–the item made news from coast to coast, had you bothered to check your facts (there is a police report as well):
Chelsea Man Finds Marijuana in Gatineau Park: NCC’s failure to snuff it out ‘defiles’ memory of former landowner Sparks, By Dave Rogers, Ottawa Citizen, August 12, 2004, p. D1
The National Capital Commission is “defiling the memory of the father of Gatineau Park” by failing to stop marijuana cultivation in the heart of the region near a road the prime minister takes to his Harrington Lake residence, a park advocate says.
Chelsea resident Jean-Paul Murray, a Senate speech-writer, said he stumbled on about 60 marijuana plants last week during a walk near Chelsea Creek off the north loop of the Gatineau Parkway.
The plants are near a parking lot up the creek from the Gatineau Park Visitor Centre and close to Meech Lake Road, used by Prime Minister Paul Martin and thousands of others.
Mr. Murray said the plants are in a valley once owned by Roderick Percy Sparks, a man he said played a far more influential role in founding Gatineau Park than prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who is still more widely regarded as the park’s founder.
Mr. Murray complained to NCC officials on Saturday after he found the marijuana, bags of fertilizer, watering cans and empty bags of a soil mixture for starting seedlings. The carefully tended plants were still there yesterday.
NCC spokeswoman Catherine Fortin said park conservation officers searched twice for the two marijuana patches, but were not able to find them.
Ms. Fortin said NCC officials won’t report the grow operation to police until they locate the plants.
Mr. Sparks dedicated 25 years of his life to the creation of a national park in the Gatineau Hills and for 10 years was chairman of the Federal Woodlands Preservation League, a lobby group that encouraged the first government purchase toward forming Gatineau Park.
During the 1930s, Mr. Sparks and other members of the league argued there should be a national park in the Gatineau Hills.
They said the widespread cutting of trees for firewood endangered the area’s scenic beauty. The government created Gatineau Park in 1938, but it is not a national park and has no legal protection as a park.
Mr. Sparks wrote the master plan for development of the park in 1952. The plan recommended that all private property in the area, including his home, be expropriated.
Mr. Sparks’ vacant house on Meech Lake Road in the park burned under mysterious circumstances in 2001, two months after Mr. Murray, the former managing editor of the federalist Cite libre magazine, began asking questions about its owner.
There was no electricity or combustible material – other than the building itself – to create a fire risk, nor was there evidence of fire starting in the nearby woods.
No cause for the fire was ever made public. The police did not release a report and the report from the fire authorities was almost a blank. There was no cause, no suspect and little investigation.
The NCC demolished the burned remains of the Sparks house after the fire, Mr. Murray said.
Percy Sparks was unpopular with federal Liberals because he helped to bring down the Mackenzie King government and in 1926 advocated expropriation of private property within the park.
“The way I see it is Percy Sparks made a lot of enemies by denouncing rum runners in the 1920s,” Mr. Murray said. “I think this is almost a repetition of history. There are people defiling the memory of Percy Sparks by doing illegal things around his place.”
“Percy Sparks was an outstanding Canadian and a role model for future generations. I think this kind of neglect is not respecting his memory or his legacy which is Gatineau Park.”
The NCC has hired a pair of Outaouais historians to study the origins of Gatineau Park after it received information that contradicts the popular notion that Mackenzie King was the father of the park.
The $23,000 historical study of the park’s origins by Michel Filion and Serge Gagnon, two Universite du Quebec en Outaouais professors, is to be released this fall.
* * *
NCC Going to Pot
On August 2004, I reported a considerable marijuana grow op located near the North Loop in Gatineau Park to an NCC Conservation office, giving him my phone number and telling him to call me if he had trouble locating it. I never heard back from him or the NCC.
A few days later, speaking to a Citizen reporter about the mysterious fire at 420 Meech Lake Road, which I wanted the authorities to investigate, I also mentioned the marijuana plantation. The reporter asked me whether I’d take him to it and I agreed. We had no trouble finding it.
Next day, August 13, the item was on the cover of the Citizen’s City section, and I was being barraged by the press with requests for interviews. Only did one, with CBC radio in the morning. News of the event was also being reported by most major newspapers in the country on August 14.
I also took several MRC des Collines police officers to the grow op and handed them a pager I’d found in the nearby woods, and took them to a large stash of Gro-mix, garbage bags and watering cans. The NCC, for its part, claimed they’d tried to find the plantation without success … and without ever trying to contact me.
* * *
A path through the woods leads directly from the grow op to a residence located at 464 Meech Lake Road. On November 12, 2004, I went for a walk on that property, since I’d long suspected its previous occupant had been manager of the grow op. Now, I’d found compelling evidence that he was.
On Wednesday, November 10, I believe, I talked to the NCC access to information coordinator, who informed me that 464 Meech Lake Road was an NCC property, as were all even numbered properties in that vicinity of the road. Said it had been occupied by the assistant to a federal minister, had been vacant since October 31, and slated for demolition in the next week or so. On Friday, November 5, I discovered that the house had been emptied and vacated – due to the huge pile of garbage at the roadside. Gates and posts had been removed. I checked things out, found nothing unusual. I noticed a name written on one of the garbage boxes.
Anyhow, I’d gone back several times to check things out. And, on November 12, about 75 feet from the house, I discovered the footprint of a grow op. About 40-60 plant beds filled with Gro-mix, seeds, seed pods and plant stumps on a nice sunny hill side, all of which led to the inevitable conclusion the occupant was a serious grower.
The house was emptied and vacated only about two-and-a-half months following the grow-op discovery. There was evidence the door to the back shed had been forced open, and the fishing line hanging from the ceiling may have been used to dry the plants. As well, inside the house I found a tiny room whose walls were covered with foil, and whose windows were covered – like maybe it was a plant nursery …
So, since this is an NCC property, we can surmise that the agency was renting to a pot grower. Was the occupant evicted, or was he told he had to go? Had there been any previous reports of suspicious activity?
On November 16, 2004, at about 3:30 p.m., I spoke to Dominic Lafrenière, the lead investigator with the MRC des Collines Police force whom I’d taken to the grow op on August 13. I described what I’d found at 464 Meech Lake Road, told him about the shed, forced opening of the door, seed beds, etc.
He inquired whether the plant stumps were from this year or last. Suggested it was difficult to determine who is responsible for grow ops, since properties are often sublet, and sub-sublet … He seemed not to know about this property – though I’d told him on August 13 there was a road directly to the house from the grow op I’d shown him.
He mentioned he’d speak to his boss, Dubé, and see if they could dispatch resources and personnel to check it out. Never heard from him again.
I made an access to information request with the MRC police to get their occurrence report. It was pretty much a blank and seemed to indicate there had been no further investigation, no suspects, no arrests, etc.
* * *
History meet gets interesting with show and tell pot
By Mike Caesar, The Low Down to Hull and Back News, November 24, 2004
If you ever doubted history is alive, the NCC’s recent visit to the Gatineau Valley Historical Society would have cured you.
The normally staid monthly GVHS meeting was buzzing after Chelsea resident Jean-Paul Murray gave the NCC a flashback to the recent past, producing to the packed room a marijuana plant, stock and seeds that he said he found on property at 464 Meech Lake Road. “Is this clear evidence of mismanagement of the park?” asked Murray, questioning Gatineau Park Director Jean-René Doyon on a link between the property, which was the site of a small cottage until its demolition last week, and the 90-plant pot plantation he found near Chelsea Creek last summer.
Murray said the property was directly linked to the plantation by a trail.
“I have no information on that,” Doyon told The Low Down after the meeting.” This is the responsibility of the MRC police and we have to deal properly with those issues. I don’t want to make a show out of it.”
April 10th, 2010 - 21:17
There ya go,
Any “little twit” knows that a ’serious’ grower starts with clones, not pesky seeds.
Just sayin…
April 10th, 2010 - 21:51
I defer to your greater pothead knowledge. Cause I don’t know much about the subject.
But the real issue, Mr. Twit, is that the NCC was renting property to a serious dope grower … who, last I checked, was still working for the federal transport minister (she had worked for his predecessor, a Liberal, as well).
Kinda makes me wonder if that’s the reason Tory MP Brian Jean, the parliamentary secretary to John Baird, tried to discredit me when I testified before the Commons Transport Committee last fall. Kinda makes me wonder about Marcel Proulx’s similar attempts as well — he’s a Quebec MP, and the former Transport Minister was — wait for it — Quebec lieutenant to the pm…
And kinda makes me wonder why the former Chelsea mayor — your fellow twit, albeit far more insignificant — went around a meeting of regional officials on August 7, 2007 at the palais des congrès telling everyone “I” was in a conflict of interest over my Gatineau Park activities.
Trouble is with these mediocres they don’t realize that everytime they attack me they strengthen my resolve to bring the status quo,and them, to its knees.
“My good blade carves the casques of men, my tough lance thrusteth sure, my strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure…”
On the park file anyway…
So you see, chuckles, you gotta get up way more early to give nearly as much blood on the Gatineau Park file as I have. In English and French…
How much do you love Gatineau Park? Go ahead, I dare you to tell me… or preferably show me …
April 11th, 2010 - 06:52
Once again I request that debate refrain from personal remarks. Thank you.
April 11th, 2010 - 09:33
You should try climbing out of the cave Charlie. There is more to the park than the shadows dancing at the back of the cave that you portray as the reality about it.
If you want to play this game, you shouldn’t cower before the harsh facts… If you really love Gatineau Park.
Or is it the segregationist status quo that you really love? As in keep the people out of the park…
April 12th, 2010 - 07:11
On topic: Citizen reader comment on the story.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Make+exception+cabin/2790817/story.html
April 12th, 2010 - 19:36
I really am to rough on Charles. He’s a good sort, really, I think.
But it’s hard to be nice when you don’t take prisoners and really do love Gatineau Park…