Springwater Park occupation continues

Several animals moved from the park earlier this week

By Cheryl Browne, Barrie Examiner May 30, 2013
SPRINGWATER TWP. – Teenagers climbing the fence of the white fox’s den made the native women at Springwater Provincial Park fear for the animals’ plight.

Les Stewart, of the Springwater Park Citizens’ Coalition, has fought to keep the park open since the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) announced it was changing it to a non-operational designation last fall.
Stewart said he was astonished to see kids trying to enter the white fox’s pen.
“I know Chrissy can take care of herself,” Stewart said, at Camp Nibi, the Anishinaabe name for fresh water, or spring water. “So we worry about the kids.”
He also saw several kids throwing stones at the trumpeter swan and believed without 24-hour surveillance, acts of vandalism would continue.
Several Anishinaabe women moved in to occupy the park the day after the MNR closed it on March 31.
They’ve been treated well by the visiting Ontario Provincial Police officers, as well as MNR staff during their two-month-long occupation.
With a former ski-lodge stuffed with bedding, food, clothes and a small wood stove to keep them warm, they have settled in to wait out the politicians who are attempting to determine how the non-operational status of the park can be challenged.
The Anishinaabe women want to use the park as a native educational place of healing — and the local residents remember it as a animal sanctuary — have joined forces to keep the park a natural woodlands.
MNR staff allowed about a dozen of the animals to be moved earlier this week, including the lynx, a black bear, a bobcat, eagles, a hawk, a falcon, raccoons and a silver fox, Stewart said.
They animals have been moved to the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Muskoka’s Lake Rosseau, he said.
“They’ve done their bit. They’ve been extraordinarily well cared for here with veterinary, medical and feeding. But this is not an amusement park. It was like a 1950s freak show with them on display,” he said.
The Camp Nibi women were advised in advance the MNR staff would be relocating the animals, and they were allowed to calm them by offering a native smudging before the animals were transported north.
“The (MNR) said the animals were as calm as could be,” he said.
On Thursday afternoon, Christine Brown worked on native beading crafts in the shade of the pavilion sheltered from the hot sun outside.
Brown was readying for Sunday, June 16, when she’ll host a craft circle and teach visitors how to make walking sticks during a Father’s Day celebration.
Her mother is from the Mohawk Six Nations tribe near Brantford, she said.
“I’m occupying. I’ve been here for about a month now,” she said as she continued the intricate bead work. “It’s nice here.”
There is a pot-luck dinner held Saturday’s at 5 p.m. and everyone is welcome.