Canada’s newest national park is now in an unlikely place — in the backyard of the country’s largest, metropolitan hub, the Greater Toronto Area. And on Friday Rouge National Urban Park was promised more than $140-million dollars over the next 10 years, and more than $7.5-million annually, from the federal government. The forested area and wetland, east of Toronto, has been a hidden treasure for years, but that is about to change, says Minister of the Environment Peter Kent. He hopes once it is preened and restored, it will become a major tourist draw. “I think a lot of the people that may come to Toronto to shop or to go to a baseball game or whatever may also, in the fullness of time, be tempted to go out to the Rouge Park to kayak,” he said. “To see nesting birds, to see the leaves change as people do now.” The National Post’s Armina Ligaya offers five things you might not know about Rouge National Urban Park:
1) It’s 13 times the size of New York’s Central Park At 47 square kilometres, Rouge National Urban Park is Toronto’s largest park and is 13 times as big as New York’s iconic Central Park. In pure Canadian terms, that’s 31,308 NHL size hockey rinks. “This will be much larger… larger than Central Park in New York, with many more pristine areas within the different areas in the park. And a lot of different species,” said Mr. Kent.
2) It’s home to deer, river otter, coyote, and even wild turkey It’s bordered by the suburbs of Markham and Pickering, and both a river and a highway run through it, but Rouge National Urban Park is teeming with wildlife. Nestled inside its thick Carolinian forest and wetlands are more than 11,000 birds from at least 225 bird species, according to the Rouge Park Alliance. These include turkey vultures, trumpeter swans and wild turkeys — of which, the latter was re-introduced into the area after the native species was wiped out nearly a century ago by diminished habitat and unregulated hunting. The Rouge Park Urban National Park also has 765 plant species, 55 fish species, 27 mammal species and 19 reptile and amphibian species.
3) It may be bigger than Central Park, but it’s not really a central park Nevertheless they are trying. Rouge National Urban Park is as much as 65 kilometres from the downtown Toronto core (depending on which part of the park you are trying to reach). That’s a far cry from Central Park, which sits in the middle of Manhattan, or Stanley Park, which is right in Vancouver. To reach Rouge National Urban Park from downtown Toronto using TTC bus or subway, it could take as long as an hour-and-a-half. Mr. Kent said efforts will be made to better connect the park to its surrounding urban pockets via public transit. And, he added, the park may become more accessible as the city makes transit improvements ahead of the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto. “The transit connections will come with time,” he said. “There will be parking lots adjacent. There will be different modes of transit connecting it.”
4) Two national historic sites can be found within the park’s borders The human history of Rouge Park stems back more than 10,000 years, from the Iroquois villagers to the early European explorers. The Rouge River branch of the Toronto Carrying Place trail was originally a portage route along the Rouge River to the Holland River, linking Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe. The route was first used by First Nations peoples and later by early European fur traders, explorers and settlers. There is also an archaeological site with the remains of a 17th century Seneca Village, which was designated as a National Historic site. It has been closed from public use. But more recently, a more than 150-year-old farmhouse in Rouge Park has been used as a filming location for iconic Canadian shows such as Kids in the Hall and The Road to Avonlea.
5) It is intended to be the hot young rock-star park in Parks Canada’s repertoire Because Parks Canada needs help. The number of visitors to Parks Canada attractions have been tapering off, from 21.8 million in 2006-07 to 20.2 million in 2010-11 — a 7% drop, according to The Canadian Press. So, one of their strategies to get more Canadians to enjoy their national parks is to bring the park closer to them. Rouge Urban National Park is within travelling distance of seven million Canadians, or roughly 20% of the country’s population, the ministry says. Mr. Kent says by making it more convenient for Canadians to bask in their national parks, they may be more inclined to seek out others. “We want this to be a people place,” he said. “For a lot of people it will be their first, certainly new generations of Canadians, it may be their first experience with Canadian natural space and species. And we hope that it serves in future years as a springboard to get people into our more distant national parks.”