Algonquin Park – fall of 2011

The Algonquin Park – the oldest, but only the third largest, in Ontario - is iconic in Canada…and likely in many people’s mind around the world! Famous for his camps, boys and girls come from faraway places to enjoy its wilderness! (I remember, as a teenager, considering going as a “counselor” to the Taylor Statten camp – Camp Ahmek for boys – probably the oldest camp in the Park, established some 90 years ago; but then plans changed that summer…

It’s fall and it is beautiful! And we are lucky: warm (it reached 24 degrees one afternoon) and not a cloud in the sky -I even went in the water, even if below 15 degrees! And it is "2011 - The International Year of Forests", proclaimed by the UN!

The park is huge: more than 7600 square kilometers (that is as big if not bigger than PEI or Delaware!), of which a good 80% is considered “backcountry” where you go for multiple-day canoe trips (there are, according to an official publication, some 2456 lakes, 2100 backcountry campsites and 2000 kilometers of canoe routes in the park!).

The park was founded in 1893; there were, and continues to be, logging operations, already going on since the middle of 19th century (Ottawa loggers – J.R. Booth, lumber baron, builder of a railroad between Ottawa and Georgian Bay) – very lucrative harvesting of the white pines, now carried out by a provincial crown agency (the Algonquin Forestry Authority which replaced, in the 70s, some 27 separate operating companies). The founding of the park stopped any wish for agriculture from expanding in the area (which could have been tempting for those who came “late” to nearby Muskoka area to settle and farm (see blog entry, September 2009). A chronology of the Park’s history is contained in a “Technical Bulletin” (#8), reprinted in 2002. There is also a “Logging Museum” in the Park, and a publication tracing the history of logging, reprinted in 2008.

The Park is crossed in the south by Highway 60, on a distance of some 56 kilometers, going on an east-west axis. That is the zone most people coming to Algonquin Park experiences. A “Master Plan” was established in 1974 by the Ontario Government setting preservation and activity “zones”, including a “Development, Access and Natural Environment” one (less than 5% of the Park’s land) along the highway where the organized campgrounds and other “high-intensity uses” are located – such as Arowhon Pines Lodge, and the only 2 other lodges in the park: Bartlett Lodge on Cache Lake, and Killarney Lodge on Lake of Two Rivers, further east along the highway. The Park is well "used": more than 210,000 day-visitors a year, plus some 100,000 campers along Highway 60, and 65,000 campers in the backcountry!

The Algonquin Park was of course named to commemorate one of the great Indian tribes of North-America. The Algonquins themselves though (“of Golden Lake”) proposed in 1988 to take control of the Park (the Constitution Act of 1982 recognized aboriginal rights, and I suppose it is on that basis that the Algonquins are pursuing their claim). The land claim dispute, which extends now to lands beyond the Park, and includes not only the Ontario Government but also the Federal Government as parties in the dispute, has not been settled yet, to my knowledge, and negotiations are still carrying on toward what is referred (see below) to as a “modern-day treaty”… (http://www.algonquinparkresidents.ca/assets/documents/algonquin_land_claim_update_sept2010.pdf)

I was curious how the management and maintenance of the Park were paid for; I thought perhaps out of the logging operations – no! I learn that Ontario has some 329 parks (119 of which are “operating”, that is offering recreational facilities) and 294 “conservation reserves” protecting major natural features, visited each year by millions of people. 80% of what it takes to manage this is funded through user fees and other park revenues such as firewood sales, canoe rentals and park stores, leaving (only) 20% to be paid out of the “Consolidated Revenue” as we say in government circles (read the tax payers…

I read as well that one can rent cabins, all around the backcountry – I have seen advertising for at least a good 15 of them in the Park's "Information Guide" annual newspaper – most of them only reachable by canoe. That is an idea: you go on a canoe trip and then rest for a few more days in a rented cabin…maybe for some summer vacation in the next couple of years…

Arowhon Pines, October 8, 2011