SIR: After C-K council designated the cottages of Rondeau Cottagers Association members as a “cultural heritage community,” you asked for “Information, please” in your Aug. 14 editorial on why cottages should be removed in 2017.
The following facts can be found by anyone in a history of Ontario provincial parks, “Protected Places,” by Gerald Killan, the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act of 2006 (online), a review of the Act by Paul F.J. Eagles of the University of Waterloo (online), an April, 2013, study of “The Economic Net Value to the Crown of Current Cottage Leaseholds in Algonquin and Rondeau Provincial Parks” (online), and in municipal and provincial government records. Rondeau was not created just for cottages. The first priority of its local supporters was to protect “the forest primeval,” and end the “vandalism” of unchecked logging often overseen by the rangers appointed to protect the forest.
The Mowat government of 1894 and its Commissioner of Crown Land, A.S. Hardy, were clear that they wished Rondeau to remain in a natural state and not become a manicured park.
Cottages were brought in as a revenue source along with commercial fisheries, exploratory gas and oil drilling, maple syrup production, the building of stone hunting clubs, various carnival-type games and other commercial enterprises. But cottage leases only supported the park in one year, 1935, when dire economic times led to the firing of most park employees and deep budget cuts.
Even though leaseholders paid their own taxes for the first time in 2014, the Ministry of Natural Resources would need a 50% increase in revenue from leaseholders to cover all expenses linked to cottages and a 131% increase to “forego financial opportunity costs and recover direct costs.”
As Mr. Blake mentioned, Rondeau covers more than 8,000 acres, but only 2,120 acres are terrestrial and 90% of that is covered by Carolinian forest and areas accessed only by trails. Of the other 10%, or 210 acres, 50 acres are covered by cottages which also block 13,677 feet of water frontage and public beach. Hardly the less than 1% claimed by the RCA.
Rondeau Park contains 12 provincially rare ecosystems including freshwater sand dunes, tall grass prairie and black oak savannah; habitats recognized as internationally endangered and all impacted negatively by cottaging. There are also 132 provincially significant species, including 28 endangered species (Dobbyn and Pasma 2012).
Aerial photos clearly show the historical and continuing damage done by 200-plus private paths through the “protected” dunes and the historical and continuing destruction of native plants and habitat. The MNR’s first priority under the new Park Act is the management of parks to, “maintain their ecological integrity and to leave them unimpaired for future generations.”
The MNR has clearly shown over the last seven years that they are unwilling and unable to enforce the laws put in place to protect this environmentally unique and rare park with cottages in the mix.
Rondeau and Algonquin are simply the last vestiges of failed late 19th and early 20th century policies to grant special privileges to the wealthy and powerful that never produced benefits for the environment, the public purse or the majority of Ontarians.
Linda Hind
Rondeau Park and Chatham
Far far far left. Sell your cottage and leave. There are many cottagers- i would say ….all of the cottagers are true stewards of the land and trees and frogs and skinks and so on…. Lets look ten years into the future…. Cottages gone— campsites on the lake and bayside. Vegetation and trees stripped for firewood, beer bottles in the lake and beach, litter and sharp objects left in the sand. Rondeau is in the great vegetative state that it is in due to the vested interest of the evil cottagers. The only reason the park wants the cottages gone is to make money on camp sites lake and bayside. If you do the math it wont work. And the precious vegetation and wildlife will be destroyed by the weekend camper, if u disagree take a drive into the camp grounds and see if you can find one tree growing. If a camper is able to break it off and use it for a fire poker its gone. Stripped clean.
This is the future of your sand dunes and vegetation. Stripped clean. For what ever reason mr and mrs hind have a hard hate on for their fellow cottagers… If they were really friends of rondeau, they would see the cottagers as protectors of the land.