Gatineau Park

We first saw Gatineau Park, the semi-wilderness area just north of Canada's capital city, in the province of Quebec, about forty years ago, when we first moved to the area with our children. We were always outdoors people, inclined to spend our leisure hours picnicking, hiking, loving the embrace of nature, natural greenery. It wasn't long before the park became, as it were, our second home. Every spare moment we would hie ourselves up to the park, to the various areas we soon became well acquainted with, the more solitary, the furthest from human habitation, the more intriguing, the most appreciated.

We had no idea, at that time, what black flies were, but we speedily discovered how vicious those little beasts, usually appearing mid-month the month of May, stretching to the midway point of June. After the black flies came the horseflies and the deer flies, all of them hungrily in search of human flesh. Or so we felt; needless to say the animals that live there, from deer and moose, bear and raccoons, all feel the sting of those miserable blood-and-flesh suckers.

It was the allure of other attractions that kept pulling us to the fabulous natural beauty of the park. We hiked obscure, little-marked trails to our hearts' content. All of us, our two sons and our daughter, became hooked on spending our leisure time there. In early June we picked wild strawberries, late June wild blueberries, a little later it was raspberries, and finally in early fall we would pick huge luscious ground blackberries. All of these berries found themselves on top of our stove, bubbling away in a large pot, ladled into jam jars.

We picked so many berries we were simply unable to eat them all fresh, so we ended up happily indulging in jam-making. We once picked wild rose hips and made rose-hip jelly, something quite different. We acquired a 16-foot canoe, and all of us learned to paddle the thing, enabling us to explore in ways we hadn't experienced previously. Canoeing, we came close to loons and to great blue herons, watched shore birds, saw beavers slap the lake water and dive, dabblers at rest in the placid lakes, witnessed snapping turtles swimming under our canoe, saw bass make their spring nests.

This was all before the introduction to the park of mountain bikes. On our long, convoluted and soon-to-become-familiar hikes that took us to heights where we could look down on lakes difficult to reach, we saw and experienced all that nature could offer its lovers. In the winter, on snow shoes, startling a buck on a height, and watching him nervously paw the snow, before hurtling himself down off a ridge away from these intruders. Seeing the ethereal beauty of conifers completely covered with snow, presenting a magical view of a winter wonderland. In the spring and summer the appearance of wildflowers in their seasons.

We'd haul ourselves up dried-up mountain streambeds, full of large rocks, see newts and frogs, garter snakes and colourful birds. Hummingbirds and orioles, bluejays, chickadees, song sparrows, white throats, Pileated woodpeckers and all manner of other birds, along with raccoons and the occasional skunk presence. Even the occasion to come across a small black bear, as startled by us as we were by him. How we valued that treasure, long, long before it became a popular destination for bicyclists and hikers with the National Capital Commission advertising it as a natural destination for residents of the area. We had the place to ourselves, back then.

Since then, we have seen a deterioration of access points, and an opening up of others to various old treasured trails, as skiers began to increasingly use the park in winter and campers in summer. The fire tower above Luskville Falls left to wrack and ruin, no longer required, a fine interpretive nature centre shut down, for cost-cutting. And worst of all, some parcels of land sold off to private owners and houses and cottages beginning to crop up here and there, public land leaking into private.

The national treasure that Gatineau Park represents not protected as the natural treasure that it represents. It's long past time that this wonderful area of parkland and wilderness receive the status it deserves, the protection that the status of a designated national park would give it.