Oakville mayor supports creating Canada’s largest municipal park right here
Published August 11, 2022 at 4:36 pm
Oakville Mayor Rob Burton wants to create Canada’s largest park right here in our own backyard.
The new municipal park would be built on 2,100 acres of land north of Highway 407 that would be purchased by the Town.
Town Council released its Draft Parks Plan 2031 for public consultation at a Wednesday (August 10) meeting and asked staff to review if additional protections would be advisable for the proposed new “eco park” category if Council were to agree to create the park.
The lands north of Highway 407 are mostly are mostly Greenbelt, Parkway Belt, and Areas of Natural or Scientific Interest (ANSIs) and carry significant protections as they are.
The Oakville mayor said buying these lands and turning them into the largest municipal park in the country could help prevent them from being “nibbled away” by a future provincial government.
“It would also be an amazing legacy to the future to have as much as a 2,100 acre Eco Park. For comparison, Central Park in New York is 800 acres and High Park in Toronto is 400 acres,” said Mayor Burton. “Vancouver’s Stanley Park is 1,000 acres.
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“Many, many years ago in the early 80’s, another council here had the foresight to acquire the land that became North Park, and that was about 200 acres.”
Burton adds that those who have come before us have done a similar thing to what he’s saying and we need to think about doing for our future.
“The area has the confluence of the Sixteen Mile Creek,” he said. “There’s lots of opportunities there for additional tree coverage to help us get to our 2057 40 per cent tree canopy objective that we unanimously adopted.”
The Oakville Mayor agreed when Town Councillor Ray Chisholm asked if next year’s review of the Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Library Plan would be a necessary next step to make possible the 2100 acre park opportunity.
“To get to activate this idea that I’ve revealed tonight,” Mayor Burton replied, “the next step would be the Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Library Master Plan (review). And that’s, you know, a regular process of what we do.
“The existing Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Library Master Plan is where we unanimously established that our standard for active park land in Oakville is 2.2 hectares per 1,000 residents on a Town-wide basis. That is our unanimous policy at the moment, from the last time that we did this.”
The motion by Town and Regional Councillor Tom Adams was unanimously supported by Council.
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