By John Francis
Our whole family went down to Bluewater Park to watch the finish of the Bruce Peninsula Multisport Race — the one that combines, cycling and running through the bush with open-water kayaking. It’s a challenging course (this year it featured cycling through knee-deep mud) and anybody who finishes feels they have accomplished something.
The grueling nature of the race contrasts nicely with the finish line at Bluewater Park in Wiarton. Racers run the final half-kilometre on a paved path along the serene and lovely shore of Colpoys Bay. It’s a truly beautiful setting — a kilometre of public shoreline, including a broad, public sand beach. The grounds — acres of them — are nicely manicured with shade trees, a playground, a splash pad, a ballfield, Wiarton’s historic art-deco train station, lots of benches and picnic tables, a shoreline boardwalk, flush toilets… It’s got room to set up a whole carnival midway without getting crowded.
Bluewater Park is a truly gorgeous spot; it’s a wonder that the rest of the world hasn’t discovered it (the way they have discovered Tobermory, the Grotto and Lion’s Head Lookout).
And on a lovely Saturday afternoon in mid-August, there was lots of parking available, even when the race finish line was at its busiest.
Compare that to pictures of Lion’s Head Homecoming Weekend — it’s a pretty drastic difference. Half the population of Northern Bruce Peninsula was jammed into a couple of hundred feet of beach at Lion’s Head Beach Park.
I don’t mean to criticize Lion’s Head Beach Park — it’s a truly beautiful spot — but wouldn’t it be nice to have a place as uncrowded as Bluewater?
Why don’t we have anything like Bluewater Park?
Well, because of history. And there’s one thing about history — you can’t fix it.
Nobody in our century-plus of municipal government thought to preserve a large chunk of shoreline for public use. (In fact, Lion’s Head Beach Park is preserved only because of the long-ago foresight of the Eastnor Horticultural Society.)
But maybe we can fix what we do with the small bits of public shoreline we do have.
A large chunk of the municipally owned shoreline at Lion’s Head Beach is taken up by a trailer park. Couldn’t we shift those trailers back from the water and give municipal residents access to the shoreline they own?
This was one of the scenarios proposed under a new recreational plan (the other option was status quo).
And then there’s Tobermory.
Much of the “public” shoreline in Tobermory is as ugly as sin — concrete abutments and corrugated steel walls. (Perfect spot for a family outing!)
And the most valuable real estate in this corner of Ontario, the head of Tobermory’s Little Tub Harbour, is — wait for it — a paved parking lot.
Brilliant!
And on the lovely, low cliff along the south side of the harbour, we have — the world’s ugliest pine trees, obscuring (obscrewing?) the view. Not lovely, graceful, native pine trees, oh no. Nothing this ugly grows naturally in Canada. These are special “ornamental” pine trees, intended to be trimmed to low shrubs except nobody trimmed them. But they aren’t just an ugly presence that blocks the view; their low branches and thick carpet of dead needles make certain that the space beneath them is as unpleasant as the trees themselves.
The business community at the head of the harbour has been lobbying unsuccessfully to get rid of them for more than twenty years.
The Chamber of Commerce proposes a bold improvement — take out the ugly pines and build a viewing deck along that low cliff, leaving the native trees in place. The municipality, to its credit, seems to be taking this proposal seriously.
And then there’s the 500-foot piece of overgrown, rocky shoreline between the old fisheries and the Grandview Motel along the east shore of Tobermory’s outer harbour. What could/should we do with that?
And the “gap”? And the road allowance beach at Dunks Bay? And the road-allowance accesses to every other bit of shoreline on Lake Huron, Georgian Bay and all the inland lakes?
We can’t have Bluewater Park, but we could have a lot more than we do now.
