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George's Island
I've seen Georges Island talked about in at least three different threads so I thought I'd start one to focus the discussion.
It seems many of you agree that it's crappy that it's not open to the public and that something should be done about that.
I was fortunate to visit the island in 2010 as part of a Licensed Professional Planners event. It is a VERY cool spot and I'd love to go again. At that time the Parks Canada staff were quite open about plans for the island. IIRC Parks Canada does indeed want to open it to the public. The Father's Day events and concerts on the island in the past few years have been somewhat of a pilot project to get a sense of how that would work.
As we all complain about, the island still isn't open to the public. A couple of the reasons they gave for that:
1) Providing washroom facilities is a real challenge. It's easy enough if it's a weekend event and you can just do port-a-potties, but for a long-term opening you need permanent washrooms. How do you get septic on that island? Do you do composting toilets and barge the waste out every so often?
2) The island still needs a ton of repairs to make it safe for the public. Doing that is an expensive and lengthy challenge because you need to barge everything in.
3) Finding a sustainable model for getting people there is hard. The island can only comfortably hold so many people. The question is, can you get enough people there and through the site in a day to cover the boat and entrance fee and not have it so expensive that no one wants to go?
Is suspect it's also been slow because, well... it's the Feds. It probably doesn't help that this current government isn't big on parks or culture unless it has something to do with warmongering. Too bad Georges Island wasn't a huge part of WWI.
Last edited by IanWatson; Nov 12, 2014 at 2:34 AM.
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