Category Archives: Heron Park News
Quiz Night!
After the lousy weather Friday and this weekend, what better way to relax and have a fun night out with friends (and not have to drive anywhere) than to go to O’Brien’s Pub this Sunday for Heron Park’s first Quiz Night? We’ll have a Heron Park Community Association team, Councilor Chernushenko’s staff, and the Glebe Community Association will be bringing their finest to compete. Come raise money for a new community centre in Heron Park, and display your trivia prowess at the same time. Questions are usually in general knowledge, entertainment, geography, sports, and such topics. Tickets are $15, and it starts at 7pm. Don’t have a ticket yet? You can get one at the door. Don’t have a team? Come anyway, and join another team – there’s always room for a few more!
President’s Report Spring 2013
This year’s Winter Carnival was very well attended, with around 100 participants, and was a great success. Kudos to all involved in organizing and providing the food: Colin MacLean, Rosella Mac Neil, Roselyn Mescher, Donna Silver, Randy Paladeau, and the Wednesday Night Program folks. Special thanks for the high attendance go out to Roselyn for hand delivering many flyers and to Rosella, Anne and Kate Kelm, and Anne Mac Neil for making the new signs. It was a great day in Heron Park.
We have an exciting upcoming event: Quiz Night at O’Brien’s Pub! This will occur on Sunday, April 14 at 7pm. If you want to enjoy a meal as well you should consider coming a bit early so you won’t be distracted from the quiz action. Teams of 3-6 people compete in a trivia competition for prizes and, more importantly, bragging rights as the Trivia Masters of Heron Park! The Board of Directors of the Heron Park Community Association has challenged the other Community Associations in Capital Ward and Councillor Chernushenko’s office to bring teams to compete against us. It is extremely generous of the other community associations to participate as well as extremely sporting to go up against our own skilled contingent! This is a fundraiser for a new community centre in Heron Park. Tickets are $15 each and are available by emailing heronparkca@gmail.com or calling me at 613 526-2680. I have enjoyed similar events with our quizmaster, Gordon Smith of SuperQuiz, before. He is very entertaining and it promises to be a really fun night.
Have you been wondering what the little square building is behind the Field House in Heron Park that was installed in January? It is a bunker (which I have christened “Archie”) and will be used to store chlorine for the wading pool in the summer and our snowblower for the rink in the winter. This will make it much more convenient for our rink maintenance squadrons to keep the skating surfaces clear of snow and means the Field House will be safer and more usable for other events while the pool is open. In view of all the benefits he brings, please join me in welcoming Archie to our community.
By the time you read this the skating season will have wound down for another year. This is the first year the Heron Park Community Association has managed the Kaladar Rink as well as the Heron one. It has been a pretty good season, although extremely challenging to get the base ice completed because of the heavy snow mixed with freezing rain back in December. We broke two snowblowers trying to deal with it, and that’s why the skating area wasn’t as large as we would have liked. Because of the new location of the rink boards, we are unfortunately no longer able to make an oval around it, but next year if the weather cooperates we hope to have a much larger secondary skating surface.
In January, Rosella MacNeill and I presented the case against the development at 1055 Secord before an Ontario Municipal Board adjudicator. This was a trial-like process where each side presented evidence, questioned, and cross examined witnesses. The builders hired a well-known and very expensive lawyer and a planner to present their case. We, on the other hand, could not afford to do so, so it was a daunting task, and we were not successful. Frankly, the cards are pretty much stacked in favour of developers at the OMB, so we didn’t stand much chance anyway. However, we cost them a great deal of time and money, and showed that we are not to be trifled with when future cases arise.
The primary reason why we lost is the way that Ottawa’s Official Plan trumps whatever the existing zoning says, and that brings me to the next point. The City of Ottawa is now reviewing and updating its Official Plan. They are required to do this by provincial law, and it’s a good opportunity to try to fix the problems that have cropped up in the existing one. The primary one, in my view, is that “intensification” is taken to mean by the development industry as “I can ignore the zoning law and build whatever I want”, and most of the time, they’re right. To take part, you can go to this URL to learn more and to fill out the online survey: tinyurl.com/aprj5w5.
Quiz Night At O’Brien’s
We are hosting a Quiz Night at O’Brien’s Pub, 1145 Heron Road, on Sunday, April 14 at 7 pm as a fundraiser for a new Community Centre in Heron Park. This is a fun trivia competition for teams of 3-6 people. The quizmaster, Gordon Smith, is really entertaining and it’s a fun night our with friends. Councilor David Chernushenko will be bringing a team from his office staff, and the Heron Park Community Association and a few other Community Associations in Capital Ward will be competing for bragging rights, and there are prizes for the top teams. Please join us this night for a fun evening and to show your support for a new Community Centre in our neighbourhood. You can reserve your tickets by sending a message using the Contact Form below: (we don’t put an email address on the web page because it generates too much spam)
The Taming of the (Discounted) Shrew
Hello Neighbours
Winter Carnival
Our annual Winter Carnival will be held at Heron Park on Saturday, February 2 from 11 am to 2 pm. There will be skating, broomball, games, prizes, chili, hot dogs, hot chocolate, pancakes, and desserts! The carnival is for both southsiders and northsiders – come one, come all!
Annual General Meeting
Just a reminder of the AGM this Tuesday, Nov 6 at 7 pm at Billingswood Manor, corner of Bank and Ohio. Guests include David McGuinty, MP, and David Chernushenko, Capital Ward Councilor. There will be coffee and snacks! All Heron Parkers welcome!
Holmwood Hoarding
The people who live on Holmwood Ave have added artwork to the hoarding that currently surrounds Lansdowne Park. They are really quite nice, much nicer than the wall of condos and big box stores being built behind them.
Emerald Ash Borer
The devastation to Ottawa’s ash trees by the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is and will continue to have a tremendous impact on our City for many years to come. Ash trees make up 35% of Ottawa’s tree canopy so the threat of losing the majority of these majestic trees is also a threat to Ottawa’s tree canopy as a whole.
To better inform residents and Ottawa-area community associations about what they can do to help protect their communities and save as many ash trees as possible, the Federation of Citizens’ Associations of Ottawa is hosting a public forum and panel discussion on the Emerald Ash Borer Tuesday, October 9th at the Overbrook Community Centre, 33 Quill Street.
We’ve gathered all the key players who were engaged on the ground fighting the Emerald Ash Borer this summer in Ottawa. They know the extent of the infestation and the threat it poses to Ottawa’s urban forest. Come hear directly from the people who know the facts and can tell us what we can do to minimize the impact of the Emerald Ash Borer in our communities.
The forum begins at 6 pm with a Meet & Greet with industry professionals. Ottawa area tree service providers and City officials will be on hand to speak to the public. If you or someone you know has an Ash tree on their property, this is the time to come because you will have a chance to speak 1-on-1 to these experts about your situation. At 7 pm, the expert panel discussion will begin. The FCA will pose four questions to the panelists designed to help flesh out the complexities of this issue. After a short break, we’ll open up the discussion to questions from the floor.
This is an excellent opportunity to become better informed so you can help inform the residents living in your community, so please join us at 6 pm on Tuesday, October 9th at the Overbrook Community Centre, 33 Quill Street.
Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority
We received the following letter from the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority. I think it’s interesting in light of our recent issues with the development at 1055 Secord. Such developments have the potential to significantly impact the management of stormwater because they reduce the amount of land that is open for water to infiltrate. This means more rainwater runs off through the storm drains, lowering the water quality of Sawmill Creek and the Rideau River.
Heron Park Community Association;
The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority would like to take this opportunity to update your association regarding its plan to produce a Lower Rideau Subwatershed Report (LRSR).
Slated for publication in February 2013, the Report will be a means to report on existing conditions in the Lower Rideau, along with progress made towards addressing the issues, watershed management objectives and targets described in the Lower Rideau Watershed Strategy (LRWS) that was published in September 2005.
Specifically, the LRWS was prepared to address several current or emerging issues, including:
- · Continuing excessive aquatic plant and algae growth in the waterway (attributed to nutrient loading from both rural and urban lands)
- · The challenge of optimizing stormwater management solutions for infill developments in the urban area
- · Ongoing degradation of aquatic habitat and riparian zone quality, due to continuing development pressure and increasing recreational uses on the waterway
- · The continuing need for more effective coordination of effort amongst the many government organizations with regulatory or operational responsibilities
Staff at the RVCA have begun the process of collecting and analyzing data on key indicators of watershed health to be reported in the Lower Rideau Subwatershed Report for the period from 2006 to 2011. We have also prepared a list of key watershed condition indicators and a division of the Lower Rideau Subwatershed into smaller catchment areas for more detailed environmental conditions reporting (please see the attached map).
It will be important for the Lower Rideau Subwatershed Report (2012) to enable a comparison of the present status of the River and its tributaries with their status as we understood it in 2002 and to show how government agencies have been working together to address the objectives of the 2005 Strategy.
The RVCA welcomes any contributions that your organization may wish to make to its production, including supplying any information you may have to enhance the reporting of indicators over the identified time period.
If you have any questions at all about the upcoming Lower Rideau Subwatershed Report, please do not hesitate to contact Martin Czarski (martin.czarski@rvca.ca, extension 1163) or any of the other RVCA staff you work with.
Yours sincerely,
Glen McDonald MCIP RPP
Senior Planner
Rideau Valley Conservation Authority
P.O. Box 599, 3889 Rideau Valley Drive
Manotick, Ontario
K4M 1A5
