About the Project

A wetland for thousands of years, the space now called Belle Park in Ka'tarohkwi (Kingston, Ontario) was used as a landfill from 1954-1974, and converted to a golf course that operated until 2017. At its entrance stands an unmarked totem pole carved by Indigenous inmates at the Joyceville penitentiary in 1973, and the park’s peninsula ends with a bridge leading to Belle Island, a known location of Indigenous remains. The park and island are surrounded by wetlands and the Cataraqui River.

Belle Park in recent years has often been considered a “problem” and approached through various scientific, management, legal and social policy frameworks. Recognizing toxic histories and ongoing challenges, the Belle Park Project nonetheless seeks to see the space as a generator of questions, relationships, and life. We hope that our work with Belle Park is not only of significance for people in Kingston/Ka’tarohkwi, but also for those seeking to understand or inhabit similarly complex sites in other cities. We draw from many disciplinary and community knowledges, giving special place to multisensory experience and artistic or research creation modes of thinking and doing. We are committed to developing and sharing high quality research and art through the life of the project, and doing so with and for people who care for and about this place.

With three lead researchers — Dr. Dorit Naaman (Film & Media, Queen’s), Dr. Erin Sutherland (Art, U Calgary), and Dr. Laura Murray (English, Queen’s) — and a core research team of Chief Dave Mowat (Alderville First Nation), Dr. Mary Louise Adams (Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen’s), Dr. Laura Cameron (Geography, Queen’s), Dr. Matt Rogalsky (Dan School of Music and Drama, Queen’s), and Francine Berish (Geospatial Data Librarian, Queen’s), the Belle Park Project works closely with graduate students and community members from a range of backgrounds.  

This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

 Project Team

Laura Murray

Laura Murray is a professor of English and Co-Director of the Cultural Studies Graduate Program at Queen’s University. She has focused much of her recent research and energies locally, aiming always to make research outcomes responsive to community needs. The Swamp Ward and Inner Harbour History Project (2015-2018) built oral and archival history into walking tours, a photography exhibit, and podcasts. Laura was a core member of Wellington X, a community group that successfully stopped the construction of a road through Douglas Fluhrer Park by the Cataraqui River. Her research on the eighteenth-century treaty history of the north shore of Lake Ontario, bringing together archival sources with Mississauga cultural and ecological knowledge, has been published in the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, the Journal of Canadian Studies, and Ethnohistory.

Dorit Naaman

Dorit Naaman is a documentarist and film theorist from Jerusalem and a professor of Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Dorit has published on participatory media production, and has worked on film and media from the Middle East, specifically engaging issues of nationalism, gender and militarism. In 2016 she released the innovative interactive documentary Jerusalem, We Are Here, which offers a model for digital witnessing of hidden histories. The Belle Park Project continues her interest in using creative and media practice to make visible, legible and audible that which has been actively erased or obfuscated.

Erin Sutherland

In 2015, as a PhD student in Kingston, Erin Sutherland curated “Talkin’ Back to Johnny Mac,” a series of artistic performances which engaged with the Sir John A. Macdonald statue in City Park (since removed). Now Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, she has a practice-based research program curating exhibitions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary art and is a founding member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, based in Edmonton.

Mary Louise Adams

Mary Louise Adams, Professor of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s, is an expert on processes of dominance and marginalization in sport and recreation sites, in educational environments, and in the media. For six years, Adams served as a member of the City of Kingston’s Belle Park Working Group. In her ongoing archival research, she has been examining shifts in municipal discourse and policy related to this site over the past century in the context of scholarship on parks, power, and policy.

Francine Berish

Francine Berish is the Map and Geospatial Data Librarian at Queen’s University. Her research explores decolonizing teaching approaches using university map collections. Her forthcoming publication, “Decolonizing librarians’ teaching practice: In search of a process and a pathway,” outlines a research project that allowed librarians to learn about their colonial histories and the need to decolonize curriculum, learning materials, and teaching practice. Francine contributes her knowledge on contemporary geospatial data and archival cartographic resources to the project.

Laura Jean Cameron

Laura Jean Cameron is a professor of historical geography at Queen’s University. Bringing to this project expertise in historical wetland environments, sonic geography methodologies, archival methods, Research-Creation, field pedagogy, and deep gratitude for time spent with Belle Park, she is an important resource for geographical research and methodologies, undertaking research and artistic practice with Typha (cattails) and related beings. In involving both undergraduate and graduate students in creative fieldwork activities, she will build on her previous pedagogical activities at the site. 

David Mowat

David Mowat has worked for 30 years on First Nation issues in Winnipeg, Waabaseemoong, Scugog Island and Alderville. As a researcher, writer, youth worker, economic development officer, consultation specialist, Band councilor, and as the elected Chief of Alderville First Nation from 2019-2023, he has remained committed to the positive advancement of his people. He has a passion for researching and understanding the treaty, military and settlement history of southern Ontario as it pertains to Alderville but also to the Mississauga Nation as a whole; as a traditional wild rice harvester, he is a staunch defender of aboriginal harvesting rights across Mississauga treaty areas. He has Kingston connections through the development of Manidoo Ogitigan, the spirit garden in Lake Ontario Park, and has worked extensively on treaty research and teachings with Laura Murray.

Matt Rogalsky

Matt Rogalsky teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario where he is Director of the Sonic Arts Studio in the Dan School of Drama and Music. Rogalsky’s work includes live electronic music performance, sound/intermedia installation, and study/recreations of late 20th century live electronic music. His collaborative research with Laura J. Cameron focuses on soundscape, listening practices, and the life and work of early Canadian field recordist William WH Gunn. Rogalsky and his students are a resource for audio recording connected with the Belle Park Project.

Contact us!

belleparkproject@queensu.ca