{"id":8312,"date":"2018-05-10T10:12:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T14:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/?p=7088"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:14:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T13:14:27","slug":"the-second-meech-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/2018\/the-second-meech-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Meech Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n
\n
\n
\n

\n The Second Meech Lake\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Blog by Michael Lait<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the minds of most Canadians, \u201cMeech Lake\u201d refers to the failed constitutional accord that grappled with recognizing Quebec as a \u201cdistinct society.\u201d Through my PhD studies, I have come to recognize that there is also a distinct society at Meech Lake, one which has been relatively successful at preserving its distinctiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, there are several characteristics which the \u201ccottage community\u201d at Meech Lake shares with other lakeside cottage communities scattered throughout the Canadian Shield. First, its spatial layout conforms to the standard pattern of a single-tier, linear band of cottages hugging the shoreline. Moreover, its spatial layout represents the ideal of that cottage country since there are almost no cottages on the opposite shore, thus providing Meech Lake cottagers with a viewscape of pristine nature, i.e., Gatineau Park. Second, the Meech Lake \u201ccottage\u201d community is witnessing both an increasing number of conversions to permanent year-round residences, and the construction of \u201cMcMansions<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what makes Meech Lake distinct? It is the historical relationship between cottagers and the surrounding Gatineau Park. Cottagers first started \u201csummering\u201d at the lake in the 1870s, even before the extension of the railway. By 1900, Meech Lake (and nearby Kingsmere Lake) was well established as Ottawa\u2019s cottage country. Cottagers were politicians, legislators, civil servants, and lumber barons seeking an escape from Ottawa, which, at the time, was an industrial city more than a government capital. Indeed, in 1903, the federal government hired a landscape architect who, as part of the overall beautification of the capital of Canada, recommended turning Meech Lake into a nature reserve. Subsequent planners retained by the federal government recommended that the Gatineau Hills, including Meech Lake, be turned into a national park. Because of the constitutional limits that the federal government has over private lands, Canada\u2019s national parks have always maintained a policy of complete public ownership. Thus, the national park proposal was diametrically opposed to the interests of Meech Lake cottagers, and they were aware of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid 1920s, cottagers established the Meech Lake Association, an organization which continues to this day. The MLA wanted to \u201cbeautify<\/a>\u201d its \u201csummer colony\u201d which meant, among other things, improving local roads and keeping out \u201cundesirables\u201d such as the poor, French, and Jews. During the Great Depression, many farmers were clear-cutting their woodlots for a quick influx of cash. This deforestation had the effect of renewing calls for a national park in the Gatineau Hills, albeit not from Meech Lake cottagers. Rather they formed the Federal Woodlands Preservation League which pressured the federal government to stop clear-cutting in the \u201ccapital\u2019s forested hillsides.\u201d My thesis documents the events leading to the creation of Gatineau Park in 1938 by the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King, a cottager at Kingsmere. Interestingly, Prime Minister Mackenzie King and many officials in the federal government wanted a national park adjacent to Canada\u2019s capital. Even though many farmers and local residents were expropriated by the federal government under the pretense of establishing a national park, this was not the end result. Rather, \u201cGatineau Park\u201d was made by and for Kingsmere and Meech Lake cottagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous studies ignored the formative role of Kingsmere and Meech Lake cottagers in Gatineau Park which extends beyond the park\u2019s establishment. In 1942, the Meech Lake Association protested \u201crumors\u201d of a public beach at Meech Lake. For three decades, there were no public facilities at Meech Lake, even though, ostensibly, the park boundaries encompassed the lake. The 1942 protest would not be the last time cottagers asserted control over Meech Lake, and an entire chapter of my thesis is dedicated to the controversy that erupted when, in the summer of 1970, the park\u2019s governing body, the National Capital Commission, decided to open the first public beaches on the lake. Since then, the MLA has, on several occasions, sought to close these same beaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meech Lake cottagers \u2013 like so many cottagers elsewhere in Canada \u2013 assert territoriality over adjacent water bodies as if they were privately owned. The Meech Lake Association operates as a private form of local government, ensuring the interests of cottagers are served, more or less, by public agencies such as the NCC and the local municipality. One of the more challenging questions to have arisen during my thesis defence concerned the hard distinction (then implicit) that I\u2019m drawing between the cottager\u2019s \u201cprivatopia\u201d and the \u201cparktopia\u201d of complete public ownership. At the moment, Meech Lake exists somewhere in between as a mixed-use\/ownership area, albeit with numerous conflicts between cottagers and park users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move towards the public ownership of Gatineau Park could entail displacement of families that have enjoyed the cottage privilege at Meech Lake for generations. The scholarship on national parks is replete with examples of the \u201cprogrammed death\u201d of entire communities, as state authorities expropriate land for national park purposes. Canada is no exception to this, and the interested reader is directed to Alan MacEachern\u2019s Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970<\/em>, as well as the work of John Sandlos documenting the expulsion of Indigenous peoples from national park territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Capital Commission, for its part, has indicated in all of its Gatineau Park master plans that it intends to purchase properties on a willing seller basis, but its acquisition program has been repeatedly thwarted by costly expropriations to prevent subdivisions on private lands, including one at Meech Lake. Parliamentarians have tabled legislation for Gatineau Park addressing the issue of private lands, but Kingsmere and Meech Lake cottagers have voiced opposition to any restrictions on their rights to private property. As no legislation has yet been passed, the park\u2019s status quo as a mixed-use\/ownership area remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My PhD research revealed how the cottage privilege became entrenched in what was supposed to be the capital\u2019s national park. Like the Meech Lake ingrained in Canadian history, the second, i.e., geographical, Meech Lake is contentious because of a \u201cdistinct society,\u201d one that despite its political influence and historical significance, has gone unrecognized in the scholarship on Gatineau Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. MacEachern, A.A. 2001. Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970<\/em>. Montreal: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Sandlos, J. 2008. \u201cNot Wanted in the Boundary: The Expulsion of the Keeseekoowenin Ojibway Band from Riding Mountain National Park.\u201d The Canadian Historical Review<\/em>, 89(2): 189-221<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog by Michael Lait In the minds of most Canadians, \u201cMeech Lake\u201d refers to the failed constitutional accord that grappled with recognizing Quebec as a \u201cdistinct society.\u201d Through my PhD studies, I have come to recognize that there is also a distinct society at Meech Lake, one which has been relatively successful at preserving its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-departmental-blog"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8312"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20777,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8312\/revisions\/20777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/socanth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}