Pontiac De-paving Day Photo Review

Community Effort to Remove Pavement on Pontiac Street and Reclaim Paradise!!

Last Saturday, a family-friendly event was led by Councillor Jeff Leiper to de-pave one block of Pontiac Street and to re-connect the green space of Champlain Park directly to NCC lands accessing the Ottawa river.

The Councillor received sponsorship from the City with funds from cash-in-lieu of parkland money and a small grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Energetic community volunteers showed up to dig up sections of pavement and transfer them to City dumpsters. The volunteers were organized by Enviro Centre and Champlain Park Community Association, with coffee from Bridgehead and bagels from the Ottawa Bagel Shop.

In the near future, the City workers will finish digging the gravel base, adding soil, and seeding the area. The NCC will remove the fence and gravel on their side. Volunteers plan to landscape the NCC land with native species of ground cover, shrubs and trees. As Joni Mitchell sang in her song “Big Yellow Taxi”, “you don’t know what you’ve got, ’till it’s gone”. It’s not often a parking lot gets turned into parkland!

Enviro Centre team with Champlain Park Community Association volunteer, Debra Huron, set up coffee (Bridgehead) and bagels (Ottawa Bagel Shop) as well as supplying tools and safety gear for volunteers. Photo by John Arnason.

Continue reading “Pontiac De-paving Day Photo Review” →

Election of Officers and Call for Volunteers

With the Champlain Park Community Association annual general meeting coming soon (October 29), it’s time to ask for volunteers to help our community as a board member. Of course, informal volunteering to help with an event or other activity is always welcome.

  • You can ask to be nominated for any of the listed board positions.
  • Names of current nominees are listed on the chart. Most are current Board members who are willing to stay on. However, all positions are open to further nominations.
  • We have a position called “Member at Large”. This allows people to be on the board without a specific “portfolio” and to contribute in a variety of ways as per your interests. Some of our current board members started as Member at Large and then “specialized”.
  • Please see the organizational chart to get some ideas of how you might contribute if you are interested in becoming a board member or other type of CPCA volunteer. Note the chart will be updated after elections at the AGM.
  • If you are thinking of joining the board in the future, attending some of our open executive meetings (advertised on our website) is a good way to familiarize yourself with the work of the community association.

You may also want to see the agenda for more about the meeting, including guest speakers (notably talking about the recent river flooding).
Continue reading “Election of Officers and Call for Volunteers” →

Enviro Meeting – October 17

Thursday, Oct 17, 2019 at 7pm in the Fieldhouse

Agenda items

  • This year’s Enviro accomplishments – i.e. reviewing the 2019 Enviro Report
  • Please bring your ideas and suggestions in helping our community make a difference in our environmental footprint
  • Discuss future plans and call for volunteers for projects for upcoming 2020 year

All are welcome!

Garden Club: Creating a Corner Pollinator Garden – October 8

Laurie Fagan informs us about the next garden club meeting topic, this Tuesday:

Berit Erickson was in a quandary about what to do with her front lawn after she lost a huge tree in January 2017. She started reading, and reading some more and even more when she realized the answer was creating a corner pollinator garden.

The transformation has been incredible and she’ll share her story with slides at our October meeting next Tuesday the 8th at 7:00 pm. Read more about it at https://cornerpollinatorgarden.net/about-my-garden/

The meeting will be in the field house at Champlain Park, corner of Cowley and Clearview. Drop is fee is $5.00; all are welcome.

Depaving Commences

Here’s a quick photo essay of the core work cycle at the depaving ceremony this morning. There were other things happening too, like a kids amusement spot with pumpkins and paint (they helped out near the end, moving small road fragments), an outfitting area and sponsored snacks. Hopefully we’ll have time to write a longer story later and give credit to the people and groups who helped with the depaving event.

The pick-axe crew at work, digging up the slabs.
Loading slabs onto the wheelbarrows. Councillor Jeff Leiper (in white) lends a hand.
Back and forth the wheelbarrow convoy goes.
Lining up to drop off asphalt squares. The front end loader lifts batches of them up into the dumpster.

SJAM Winter Trail Fundraising Night – October 9

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/506124356611489/
More info about the trail: https://champlainpark.org/sjam-winter-trail/

Since the trail is funded and run by volunteers, they need to raise the money to keep it running (gasoline, snowmobile repairs and that sort of thing) this winter. You can donate to them in the usual ways, or visit the fundraiser, where they are auctioning off or giving away some interesting items (see https://twitter.com/SJAMWinterTrail for teases).

Wednesday, October 9, 2019 at 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Mill St. Brew Pub Ottawa
555 Wellington St., Ottawa, Ontario K1R 1C5

Champlain Park’s Annual General Meeting – October 29

Champlain Park Community Association (CPCA)
Annual General Meeting (AGM)

Tuesday October 29, 2019
at the Champlain Park Fieldhouse
All community residents are welcome to come for a meet and greet with refreshments at 6:30 pm, followed by the business meeting at 7 pm.

Community Association Memberships can be purchased at the door.
Chair: Nick Xenos

Agenda

Report from City Councillor:

Jeff Lieper

Financial Report from CPCA Treasurer:

Josh Bizjak

Election of Board for 2019/20:

Nick Xenos

Guest Speaker (30 minutes):

Michael Sarich, Senior Water Resources Engineer, Ottawa River Regulation Planning Board will be providing updates on 2017 and 2019 river flooding and will take questions from the audience afterwards.

Business Items:

  1. Approval of minutes of previous AGM 23 Oct 2018 – Secretary1 (2 minutes)
  2. Reports from the Board (5 minutes each)
    1. Membership Report– Jennie Hornosty
    2. Civic Engagement – Roland Dorsay
    3. Social – Carol Arnason
    4. Planning and Zoning – Heather Pearl & CoChair1
    5. Environment – Daniel Buckles and Adrian Bradley
  3. Other Business
  4. Adjournment

For information about the board election, please see our call for candidates.

Supporting documents

Depaving Pontiac Street Ceremony – October 5

We’re holding a depaving ceremony on Saturday, October 5th 2019 from 09:30 to noon. Come and grab a chunk of asphalt (already pre-scored into squares) from the section of Pontiac that we’re converting to park, and throw it out! This is literally a community effort. Equipment and safety gear will be provided.

[Scoring the Pavement with a Circular Saw Cutter]
Continue reading “Depaving Pontiac Street Ceremony – October 5” →

Tree Planting Help Needed – September 28

Join the enviro committee of the community association on Saturday September 28 at 10 am (till noon) on Pontiac Avenue between Patricia and Keyworth Avenues (across from the north end of St. George school) as we plant Tamarack, Elderberry, Paper Birch, and other trees that will bring more ecological diversity into the Champlain Woods.

Bring your own gloves. If you have shovels and wheel barrows, those are welcome, too! We will go ahead rain or shine.