Restoring Native Biodiversity

The Daniel Avenue turkey (A.K.A. the Patricia Avenue turkey) has delighted our front and back yard vistas all summer long, another sign of native biodiversity coming back to life in Champlain Park. Last summer a deer spent a month or so grazing the same area, rabbits abound everywhere, and we have enjoyed glimpses of foxes here and there. The ground hogs are not as much fun, or the occasional skunk, but overall relatively harmless creatures if left alone.

More widely appreciated are the trees and gardens along the de-paved section of Pontiac Avenue, and in various fragments of the NCC forest (A.K.A. the Champlain Woodlands). To celebrate these spaces, the Environment Committee has installed a sign at the ball diamond. The piece of wood is from the same Grandmother oak tree removed in 2011 from Northwestern Avenue that also graces the outside wall of the Field House (the dated cookie). The tree was a sapling in 1857, a decade before Canada became a country.

Sebastian Hadjiantoniou from Daniel Avenue created the sign while Mark Hartley of Clearview Avenue built the stand (and the earlier installation on the Field House). Our stalwart captain of engineering works, Kris Phillips of Northwestern Avenue dug the hole and poured the cement base. Daniel Buckles (Daniel on Daniel) launched the project, donated the wood and stickhandled the various bureaucracies to get it done.

Heartfelt thanks to the Champlain Park Community Association for important financial and administrative support, and to the office of Councillor Jeff Leiper, where a solution to the permissions puzzle was found. The City of Ottawa provided funding for tree planting on the various terraces, as did the the Ottawa family of Peter Sims (1980-2021), a committed climate activist.

We hope you are enjoying the trees and gardens this summer, along with the flowering and edible planters. The sign is intended to give local residents and the many people that pass through our community a bit of the story behind restoring native biodiversity in Champlain Park.