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Windsor-Essex residents can now display their support for the proposed Ojibway National Urban Park with lawn signs in their front yards.
MP Brian Masse (NDP — Windsor-West) hosted the lawn-sign campaign in collaboration with Wildlands League and Friends of Ojibway Prairie at Mic Mac Park on Saturday. Rainy conditions did not deter the crowd, as more than 200 signs were handed out throughout the afternoon.
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“Once people experience the park, I think they would appreciate how much more we need it,” said Joan Murphy-Walker, a member of the Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club who collected her sign on Saturday.
“If you don’t have it at all, if you grow up without it, you don’t understand the issue of cutting down a tree or taking down a little area and building on it. Even though it is little, it does mean a lot to keep those areas protected for all of us.”
The campaign was launched just weeks after the park’s future was thrown into limbo when the Liberal-NDP governance agreement unraveled, raising concerns about a possible snap federal election.
“We’re setting up something here for the future,” Masse told the Star.
“This is just another way of showing support to the Senate, and later on to the House of Commons, that the community cares about this and wants this.”
While there are two routes to establishing Windsor’s national urban park, Masse said both approaches are complementary.
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Public policy will be developed through Parks Canada, while Masse’s private member’s Bill C-248, currently making its way through the Canadian Senate, aims to enshrine the highest level of protection for the green space into law.
Masse is preparing to present the amended bill to the Senate for a third and final vote. Asked if the provincial government would include a parcel of land it owns in the park’s proposed area, Masse said he was still unsure.
The proposed park sits at the city’s southwestern border and the northern boundary of the Town of LaSalle. Though relatively modest in size, Windsor’s Ojibway National Urban Park would become only the second of its kind in Canada, after Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto.
Windsor was one of six municipalities chosen for Parks Canada’s National Urban Park program. In the 2024 budget introduced in April, the Liberal government allocated more than $36 million over five years towards creation of Windsor’s national urban park.
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