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 Co-Director of the Cultural Studies Graduate Program at Queen’s University. She has focused much of her recent research and energies very 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 articles 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, Canada. In 2016 she released an innovative interactive documentary, Jerusalem, We Are Here, offering a model for digital witnessing. Dorit’s in-production collaborative project A Totem Pole on a Pile of Garbage: Contending with Colonial and Environmental Violence in Kingston, Ontario is situated in Belle Park and Belle Island, and continues her interest in using creative practice to make visible, legible and audible that which has been actively erased or obfuscated. Dorit is publishing on participatory media production, and has been working on film and media from the Middle East, specifically on nationalism, gender and militarism.

Erin Sutherland

Erin Sutherland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Calgary specializing in Indigenous art and curatorial practice. She is also an independent curator and a core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2015, as a PhD student in Kingston, she curated “Talkin’ Back to Johnny Mac,” a series of artistic performances which engaged with the Sir John A. Macdonald statue in City Park (now removed).

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. In her ongoing archival research on Belle Park, Adams has been examining shifts in municipal discourse and policy related to the park site over the past century. For the past six years, Adams has been a member of the City of Kingston’s Belle Park Working Group, an advisory committee involved in the development of a Master Plan for the park. Her contribution to the proposed project will consist of continued archival research on the political and environmental history of the dump/golf course/park 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 will contribute 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 will be an important resource for geographical research and methodologies. Over the course of this project she will undertake complementary research 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 most recently as the elected Chief of Alderville First Nation, 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. Recent projects include works of Research-Creation related to Gunn; for example, Rogalsky has created an ambisonic surround mix of Gunn’s classic monaural 1955 LP A Day in Algonquin Park. Rogalsky and his students will be a resource for audio recording connected with the incubators, with art performances, with podcasts, and with the VR piece.

Contact us.

belleparkproject@queensu.ca