Toronto Rouge National Urban Park Visitor Centre | 6.99m | 1s | Parks Canada | Moriyama Teshima Architects

FWIW city of Pickering council recently reiterated in a recent public meeting keeping Twyn Rivers open as one of only 3 roads connecting Pickering with Toronto (the others being the 401 and Kingston Rd/Hwy 2).

I also expect near the visitor centre is where the Meadoway cycling trails of both Toronto and Durham Region will meet. I wonder if they will connect the two via Plug Hat/Beare/Finch or actually run through the hydro fields down the big hill off Zoo Rd. (towards The Cedar trail/Beare Wetlands Loop and across the CN tracks). Twyn Rivers is far too steep (30% incline on the west side is a pain in the you know what to climb on a bike) and looks to be outside of the scope of the Meadoway projects. The visitor centre seems to be a great destination hub (along with the zoo) for cycling. I hope all project teams coordinate with each other (I will certainly be submitting this feedback to all 3 projects).
 
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Northern Light said:
I knew I had the image for the work somewhere.............

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Yay for that potential water crossing south of the Twyn Rivers parking lot. We'll be able to park at the lot and climb the big toboggan hill without the long hike around :)

For those that don't know, there is a hill on the south side of Little Rouge that is great for sledding.
 
Coolibop said:
Yay for that potential water crossing south of the Twyn Rivers parking lot. We'll be able to park at the lot and climb the big toboggan hill without the long hike around :)

For those that don't know, there is a hill on the south side of Little Rouge that is great for sledding.
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A former Ski Hill!

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From: https://i0.wp.com/scenesto.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/caper-valley-ski-slope-1975-1.jpg?ssl=1


And yes, there was a crossing.......the abutments are still there..........but it disappeared a long time ago.
 
I had a look at all the docs here; and then looked at the original proposals.

I'm not surprised they didn't bring this one back to the public last summer as they were supposed to.......

I believe they are billing this is a riff on the 'Forest Passages' concept on the previous page.............

But this is nowhere near as bold or interesting.
 
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For now, I'm going to park this Rouge Park news here; though it may merit its own thread in due course.

At the March meeting of the TRCA Board of Directors, they had an agenda item to move to turn over additional lands to Parks Canada for the purpose of expanding Rouge Park.

The new lands are generally part of the Agricultural Reserve, but also include some additional parcels the TRCA has acquired over the years. An interesting tidbit here is that it was Parks Canada who initiated this
process, suggesting they have an internal mandate to proceed with expansion of the park.

Report here:


Maps with the parcels in question identified:

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And

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Honestly, If the park extended its true boundaries to encompass all the parcels in question (and the intervening lands) I think that would be incredibly exciting.

The prospect is one of expanding the park by 25% or more.
 
Northern Light said:
An interesting tidbit here is that it was Parks Canada who initiated this
process, suggesting they have an internal mandate to proceed with expansion of the park.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if this was related to the Greenbelt encroachment by Doug Ford. Steven Guilbeult has said multiple times that allowing development in park-adjacent lands negatively impacts the park, and maybe expansion is seen as a way of protecting more lands permananetly from this current government.
 
it's a lot of stranded parcels which are non-contiguous with the primary park area.

It would basically take over the Durham Regional Forest, which is a pretty large natural heritage area and already full of excellent trails.

Not opposed to this overall, Durham Region Forest is a bit of an underutilized asset right now as not many people are aware of its existence. Getting some additional facilities and awareness in would really allow the public to better capitalize on it.

Interestingly a few of those southern parcels lie dead in the middle of the greenbelt removal area here. @allengeorge may not be far off the mark, as much as the Greenbelt really may not be federal jurisdiction. The Feds are playing the same games with the 413.
 
So we're clear, prior to all the current Greenbelt kerfuffle, Parks Canada was engaged in discussions w/the province for a significant chunk of the Agricultural Preserve.

Of course, those had not resolved themselves when the latest nonsense began.

I'd like to see the Park extend to the Seton lands to the east and absorb them. It would provide some good habitat and trails; a site for a future large, purpose-built campground, help establish a critical mass of area for restoration (while maintaining some agriculture) that would enable (potentially) a wildlife corridor all the way up to the large intact forests to the north-east.
 
Many proponents of the reserve speak to its valuable farm land that is dwindling. I imagine we'd have the same hurdle if we wanted to convert agricultural preserve lands for other park/Recreation activities, no? Complaining about loosing precious farmland when it's replaced by houses versus replacing it with parkland (arguably less damaging) seems a bit two-faced if were using loss of farming as the main reason for maintaining. It is an Agricultural Preserve after all...
 
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Coolibop said:
Many proponents of the reserve speak to it's valuable farm land that is dwindling. I imagine we'd have the same hurdle if we wanted to convert agricultural preserve lands for other park/Recreation activities no? Complaining about loosing precious farmland when it's replaced by houses versus replacing it with parkland (arguably less damaging) seems a bit two-faced if were using loss of farming as the main reason for maintaining. It is an Agricultural Preserve after all...
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Rouge Park is maintaining farmland within its current footprint and would surely do so in any expansion.

They generally require farmers to go organic and minimize any ecological harms in their practices, but are otherwise happy to keep some farmland.

The restoration component is specifically about creating wild linkages, so animals can move about freely (many would not cross a farmer's field, as they would be exposed, aside from which, farming equipment can be dangerous to smaller wildlife (rabbits, snakes, frogs etc.)

Let me show you what's going on in the existing park first:

Everything in the image below is within Rouge Park now:

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Note the extensive farmland still present, and for the majority, there is no intention to remove it. What is happening is that restoration is ongoing proximal to the Little Rouge Creek to create/enhance a corridor for wildlife.

You should be able to make out on the image above, near the bottom and to the left of the Little Rouge, you can see a dark green patch where the trees are remarkably well lined up, LOL That's restoration with mechanical planting, precision restoration as it were.

Below is an example area of expansion (contains some of the TRCA parcels in question):

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I would envision about 25% of this being restored, you can see the existing natural bits, most of which follow small waterways.

The idea would be to create 300M wide ribbons of green in a N-S direction (roughly the way the water flows down to Lake Ontario), and at least one E-W ribbon going across that would link the Seton area to the main Rough Park. Seton is the upper-right of the image above, while Rouge Park is just peaking out on the extreme left.
 
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I know it's not directly related to the visitors centre, but thought I'd add couple of shots I took today of bridges on the opposite side of the twyn rivers parking lot and near mast trail crossing. Not sure they'll met their end of spring deadline... But it's coming along.
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