GG shuts rink, grounds in latest drama from The Crown
Author of the article: Kelly Egan
Publishing date: Jan 07, 2021 • Last Updated 3 hours ago • 3 minute read
A reader walked by Rideau Hall the other day, astonished to find the gates shut and the skating rink closed.
It’s how the feds roll, mere mortal. In an evolving crisis, why be useful when it’s easier to be safe?
The grounds consist of 80 wonderful acres and the rink, a beauty, is artificially frozen. At a time when people are desperate for somewhere to safely walk, exercise or — Lord forgive us — have a little fun, would it not be an opportune time to keep the grounds open?
Oh, no, hapless citizen. COVID-19 precautions, we’re told, require a closing of the building and the grounds to minimize the risk of transmission of the virus. So sayeth the office of our vice-regal, wherever she happens to be.
It will not be lost on the public that the City of Ottawa has done the exact opposite. It has kept its artificial rinks and parks open, though restrictions have descended on the number of skaters. Still, open is open. And this isn’t just a jurisdictional quirk, but a philosophical message.
It comes of this larger question.
The federal government, in all of its arms — principally the National Capital Commission — owns vast amounts of recreational land in the national capital region, tens of thousands of acres, including the Greenbelt and Gatineau Park. In the middle of a pandemic, when a city of a million is looking for a place to stretch its legs and clear its mind, what is the federal government’s responsibility to nimbly refocus some assets for the public good?
I think it has a big one. The feds act like they have none.
You’ll recall the outcry last summer for the NCC to open a portion of its parkways for cyclists, as there was little traffic anyway and droves of pedallers on the bike paths.
Well, it took a high-profile advocacy campaign and a good deal of kicking and screaming, but the NCC eventually opened up “bikedays” on its more popular parkways and closed a section of the Queen Elizabeth Driveway for pedestrians and cyclists.
(That the NCC needs a cellphone company to sponsor the bike days just seems bizarre for a Crown corporation that can afford to fly commissioners in from all over Canada for quarterly rubber-stamps fests.)
It’s as though Ottawa, the capital, doesn’t know what to do with Ottawa, the city, nor its cooped-up people, and it has been that way for decades.
For years and years, the NCC did nothing to encourage cross-country skiing on its multi-use path. It took a community-funded effort to get the path groomed by a man (Dave Adams) who worked endlessly for practically nothing on a section of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway.
(Now we’re told, not in so many words, that there are too many people using it. And, weirdly, the NCC’s contribution, the winter bistro at Remic Rapids, never seems to be open.)
What of the other assets? Why isn’t there a massive oval rink at LeBreton Flats, for instance? Why hasn’t anything been done to bring people to the empty site with temporary attractions, to illuminate its longterm potential, summer or winter?
Why doesn’t the NCC create pop-up toboggan hills on its lands to alleviate the pressure at places like Carlington Hill?
Why not corral 10 sidewalk plows and have the NCC clear every damn path in its inventory? What is it doing differently in the Greenbelt at a time of need?
The point is this: Is anyone at NCC headquarters or at the federal level thinking about how to quickly retool any of its properties to accommodate a pandemic-stressed population?
The issue is pressing today, more pressing tomorrow, as Quebec is headed toward a severe lockdown that will further limit access to Gatineau Park, if not make interprovincial travel near impossible.
Alternatively, if the feds are so convinced that outdoor crowding of any kind is a COVID-19 risk, then shut the whole business down. Have the courage of the conviction. Shut all the trails and parks and parking lots, cancel Winterlude, forget about the Rideau Canal skating season and tell everyone to just hide in their basements until spring.
Instead, we have this half-witted approach of a little here, a little there, take the bag of chips and go home, Ottawa.
Town, Crown, frown — the meter, the rhyme, never changes.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-291-6265 or email
kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...from-the-crown
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