Whitemouth Falls park plan sparks wrangling

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/08/2012 (4801 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What do the great grey owl, endangered lake sturgeon, a gravesite 9,000 years old, a hydro dam, and a tennis court have in common?

A provincial park, of course.

Can apparently competing interests such as these live happily side by side in this province? Manitobans may be about to find out.

Manitoba Hydro has released a portion of its landholdings at Seven Sisters Falls, and the province is tucking those extra hectares into a newly expanded Whitemouth Falls Provincial Park.

With the Aug. 31 deadline looming for public response to the province’s draft park management plan, it is drawing some fire that could turn into a tug of war between neighbours.

Provincial law requires a management plan for each provincial park. The plan for Whitemouth Falls notes the treaty and aboriginal rights, conservation interests and water-stewardship issues involved.

Manitoba Hydro released 121 hectares in 2007 to expand Whitemouth Falls Provincial Park. The parcel included transmission lines, drainage works and access to the Seven Sisters generating station and townsite. The park expansion has already occurred, the proposed management plan notes.

The great grey owl, Manitoba’s official bird, uses the site at the junction of the Winnipeg and Whitemouth rivers as its major nesting area.

The location is a natural nursery for lake sturgeon, now on the endangered list. The waters teem with fish. White pelicans use the rocky island in the Whitemouth to fish.

The Winnipeg River watershed is part of an aboriginal land claim that’s the subject of a court case.

“We have an outstanding claim for the area, and it’s been in the courts since 2008. And nobody’s been in touch with me to engage us in any way,” Sagkeeng First Nation Chief Donavan Fontaine said Friday.

The fact the site includes extensive ancient burial grounds is highly significant, he said. He’s now looking into what the Ojibwa community can do to protect them.

Learning about a proposed development at the same time is “pretty shocking,” he said.

There are two development-minded submissions, one from the Seven Sisters Community Association and another from the Whitemouth Regional Development Corp., that want to turn the area into a major tourist attraction.

They want a return to the amenities that used to exist at the townsite after the dam was built in the 1930s.

That involves extending sewer lines, building a fish-cleaning facility, two docks, a playground, a campground, an observation tower and tennis and volleyball courts.

“There could be (room for it all) if it’s managed properly. We had 25 to 30 campsites in there when I was working for Natural Resources in the 1970s,” said Seven Sisters resident Jack Hildebrand.

(Natural Resources is the former name for Manitoba Conservation, a provincial department.)

“The thing is, we ask for the moon, and hopefully the park will give us something,” Hildebrand said.

Meanwhile, advocates for aboriginal, treaty and archeological interests oppose using the extra land from Hydro for a recreational park.

“The magnitude and importance of what was unearthed in the area of the Whitemouth Falls is enormous… ,” say two area residents, Allison Mantrone-Cardinal, the widow of Cree elder Don Cardinal, and Diane Maytwayashing, a traditional Ojibwa woman with family ties to Long Plain and Lake Manitoba First Nations.

“It is because of this we recommend that the park be reclassified as a heritage park and that development be monitored closely to prevent damage to yet-undiscovered artifacts.”

Their comments are part of a written submission that opposes development plans. They want no development.

In the 1970s, the site’s rich archeological heritage was literally dug up when a bulldozer clearing a path exposed human bone fragments.

A subsequent University of Winnipeg archeological dig discovered “the earliest physical remains in all of Central Canada at the Whitemouth Falls and (adjacent) Bjorklund archeological sites,” former U of W professor Jack Steinbring wrote in his 1980 report.

In addition to three ancient burial sites, one grave is estimated to date back about 9,000 years.

The draft management plan for Whitemouth Falls Provincial Park is part of a public consultation process.

It can be viewed at www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/parks/consult/index.html .

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca