Closing park a bad gov’t decision

By David Hawke Orillia Packet & Times October 12, 2012 

What does one do with a one-eyed fox, a clawless bobcat, an aging black bear and a lonely wolf? For the staff at Springwater Provincial Park, this question is both real and a heartbreaker, as Ontario’s provincial government has just announced this park and nine others will be closed as of next spring.

Springwater Provincial Park, in Midhurst and just west of the Simcoe County Museum on Highway 26, has a unique history in the legends and lore of our parks. The animals found here in cages are part of an interesting tale of our fascination for captive wildlife. During the 1960s and ’70s the parks branch of the Department of Lands and Forests made great effort to attend exhibitions, fall fairs and sportsmen’s shows in an effort to educate the public about the awesome diversity of Ontario’s landscape and the wildlife found therein. Live animals, such as a red fox, timber wolf, beaver and skunk, were used as “lures” to get people to stop by their booth and talk to a park warden or conservation officer.

Between shows, the animals were housed at Springwater Park, in cages tucked within the woodlands and freshwater springs that are so characteristic of the area. But times change. As the live animals were less in demand at shows, the anti-captivity sentiment was growing in the urban areas, thus leaving the animals to while away their time pacing behind chain-link fences and become a park attraction.

One of the saving graces of this situation was, and continues to be, that the animals were not bought from breeders nor taken from the wild just to be on display. These are basically rescue animals, saved from the exotic pet trade or hand raised by well-meaning but terribly uninformed people who found an “orphan” deer fawn or caught a baby raccoon in the barn. These animals, when rescued, would have probably been “put down” had there not been pens available at Springwater.

But now, the year 2013 looms ahead and the pens, offices, desks, information kiosks and staff of Springwater Provincial Park must disappear by March 31, as deemed by the government of the day.

Not only have the captive birds and animals been given the boot; so, too, have the washrooms, playgrounds, picnic tables (of which I estimate to be about 200 in number), buildings and roads. It is to be designated an “inoperative park” and be devoid of any government support. It will, unfortunately, become another Copeland Forest, soon to be claimed by the mountain bikers and bush-party gangs as their secluded playland.

There is such a rich history within Springwater Park, including a monument dedicated to the “Boys of Vespra” for giving of their lives in the Great War; it stands beside a large and beautiful pond that was hand dug in 1924 to provide water to the blossoming tree nursery.

The immediate area was denuded of trees in the late 1890s and early 1900s, with abandoned farms and open stretches of dune sand making up the northwest portion of Simcoe County. Starting in 1922, the Midhurst Tree Station (later to be called Springwater Provincial Park) was the birthplace of our world-renowned Simcoe County Forests; trees planted in those early years remain growing there today, quite tall and very impressive.

But will public outcry and journalists waxing nostalgic be enough to make the provincial government change its mind on this closure or at least rethink a more viable option to allow the park to retain at least washrooms and managed trails? Sadly, I think not.

From personally experiencing the closure of five world-class wildlife-interpretation centres by the feds in 1984, to the asinine closure of the Midhurst Tree Nursery in the 1990s (the other portion of the original Midhurst Tree Station), to the ridiculous “Common Sense Revolution” of the Mike Harris years, government never backs down from a stupid decision. It seems to think that would make it look weak. I guess stupid is better than weak if you’re a politician.

Perhaps a Friends of Springwater Park will form and have bake sales and raffle off birdhouses to pay for a couple of porta-potties at the front gate. And, too, perhaps I should apologize for my pessimistic attitude, but from what I’ve experienced, this has about the same odds as seeing the Avro Arrow program reinstated.

This latest government program is called “transformation,” and I would be greatly and pleasantly surprised if government actually listened to the public outcry of dismay and transformed this really bad decision into an acceptable one.

David Hawke can be reached at david.hawke55@gmail.com.