A new project by Parks Canada will assess the visual elements of the Rideau Canal that helped create its historic appeal and work to develop guidelines that ensure it will be protected.
“Our mandate is to ensure that the values of the canal are preserved long into the future and that the canal provides an economic factor for the communities that it runs through, both for tourism and for business,” says Pam Buell, a communications manager for Parks Canada.
After the Rideau Canal was designated a World Heritage Site in 2007, Parks Canada proposed The Rideau Canal Landscape Strategy to develop a common vision for the canal, says Buell.
The strategy will help create guidelines that can be used to assess development along the canal, says Heather Thomson, a heritage planner for Parks Canada.
“There’s a lot of interest in development,” says Thomson. “The issue is just to make sure that it’s the quality of development everyone collectively wants to see and it doesn’t create a place like everywhere else. It has to be recognized that it’s a national historic site of Canada.”
The Lansdowne Live project which borders the Rideau Canal could be affected by the strategy, says Buell.
“There is the possibility that we would like that whatever happens at Lansdowne Park to be sensitive to the fact that it borders a national historic site and a world heritage site,” says Buell.
“The strategy is a mechanism for working in the future, so that planners in the city of Ottawa have a common understanding that this is the way we should be managing our section of the Rideau Corridor,” she adds.