By Carol Crabbe
Ottawa’s Rideau Canal may soon join the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza as a World Heritage Site.
If the canal is chosen, it will have a higher economic benefit for Eastern Ontario and Canada, and there will be a “higher awareness of its real value,” says Christina Cameron, the director general of Parks Canada.
She led the nomination committee which presented the credentials of the Rideau Canal to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Paris last January.
The Rideau Canal has already been designated as a national historic site in Canada.
Its selection as a World Heritage Site would “move it onto the international stage,” says Pam Buell, the communications manager for the Eastern Ontario Field Unit of Parks Canada.
According to Buell, who also helped to put together the documents for the nomination, the committee decided to focus on the “outstanding engineering achievement” of the canal in the 130-page document that was submitted to the World Heritage Centre.
The design and engineering of the 200 kilometre long waterway “is the feature that we feel is the most outstanding aspect,” Buell says.
The process for nominations, which takes about two years according to Cameron, starts with the federal government choosing different sites in Canada as possible World Heritage Sites.
Last year, Canada submitted a tentative list of 11 such sites. Some of the suggested sites were Gwaii Haanas in British Columbia and Klondike in the Yukon.
With its recommendations, the government also had to provide such criteria as an extensive description of the canal, its history, and an explanation of the nominating country’s policies for managing cultural sites.
Buell says the same criteria will be followed to nominate each of the other 10 sites on the list for the next few years.
Right now, the nomination is before the World Heritage Committee. Buell says the next step will come within the next 12 months, when a representative from the World Heritage Committee will be sent to Canada.
This representative will tour the canal, meet with leaders of the surrounding municipalities and will then either recommend it to the World Heritage Committee or reject the nomination.
Both Cameron and Buell are optimistic about economic benefits the canal will have on surrounding businesses if it becomes one of the 45 places approved by the World Heritage Committee. However, not all these businesses are as enthusiastic.
Demetri Papoulias, the manager of Malone’s Lakeside Bar and Grill in Dow’s Lake Pavilion, says even though the location of the restaurant brings in business, this business is seasonal and only peaks with planned events like Winterlude.
He says he thinks if the Canal is chosen as a World Heritage Site, the number of tourists might increase, but the number of local people coming to the restaurant “won’t change much.”
If the nomination for the canal is approved, it will join 13 other World Heritage Sites in Canada. The Rideau Canal would also be the first World Heritage Site in Ontario.