A Brief History of Belle Park

For thousands of years, the space now known as Belle Park was a marsh, some 44 hectares in size, extending from the west shore of the Cataraqui River to Belle Island. From 1952 to 1974 the City of Kingston used the area as a landfill. By 1978, the landfill had been covered over to serve as a golf course. In 1996, Janet Fletcher, a Kingston resident, successfully sued the City for allowing toxic leachate from the dump to enter the river; court-mandated monitoring and remediation has been in place since then. The golf course closed in 2017. In 2020, an encampment was established in the park by those who could not otherwise find housing, and it continues to this day despite repeated threats of displacement. Beavers, birds, coyotes, and many varieties of plants also make homes in this place. The City commissioned and approved a “Master Plan” for the park in 2019. The plan is yet another imposition of control, rather than a response to the space as it is. Stage 1 of the plan is yet to be implemented.