As a child, I spent a lot of time hiking and camping in Rondeau Park with my family, and later with friends or on my own.

Always with a camera and sometimes in a canoe or small motorboat and later by kayak, the park has so many surprises and beauty to offer in all seasons.

I've often thought of what a privilege it would be to live there. Of course, my desires are no more important anyone else's. A mature culture places it's highest values over personal desire. Without that, the land and waters are left ruin by excess of unchecked desire.

There have been many attempts to characterize the “History” of the Rondeau Sandspit, in terms of the dominant European style, technologically dependent culture.

The way we organize our living conditions, our roads, houses, vehicles, chemical applications, the building materials, spacing of houses, compaction of the earth, choices of plant and animal species we introduce are all part of our material culture. That culture was premised on a world view of supremacy over nature, dominance over other cultures and the historically tragic assumption of the “endless bounty of the earth”.

Originally purchased by the English in 1795 as “Ordinance Land”, for military purposes the Point Aux Pins deed was transferred to the Province. A young Ontario government of 1894 chose to provide leases to a few people within our second Provincial Park, rather than selling the land outright.

Then, as now, the founding park planners knew that permanent European style settlement was not in the long term interest of the region.

As well, a new consciousness was emerging among the educated that our place within nature, was not as a “Lord of the Land”, or even the “Pinnacle of Evolution”, but simply another species, bound by those same laws of nature and the same drives of procreation, territoriality, competition and cooperation that all life on Earth shares, but with the advantage of a technologically advanced culture that consumes, displaces and simplifies natural systems, rather than extending from them as a functional component.

The Rondeau Sandpit and lands surrounding Rondeau Bay, have been periodically occupied, over many thousands of years by first Nations peoples. Most recently, before the 1650’s the Chonnonton who called themselves, “keepers of the deer” also called Attawandaron (people who speak a little differently) by their Huron cousins, hunted, fished and lived peacefully in summer camps, for centuries.

They left little trace of their occupations, save the colonies of Yellow Lotus brought from the, once great Lenape Nations to the east by ancient trade routes. These people sustainably farmed the inlands for at least five centuries, trading their superior flint technology and artistic cultural wares for precious corn, bean and squash seed.

The last First Nations peoples living on the Rondeau Sandspit, two extended families, parents, their children and elderly grandparents were rounded up and removed by the RCMP in the mid 1890s and force marched through Blenheim to Walpole Island, to make way for settlement by the dominant European culture.

Most certainly, a trail of tears!

After the extirpation, began the short history of the Rondeau's Leaseholders.

There continued to be ongoing tensions created by the leaseholders as to the true purpose of our Provincial Park.

In May 1974, a "Rondeau Provincial Park Advisory Committee" was created to gather expert opinions on the future of the park and to solicit:

"...views of the public in the form of letters or briefs from individuals and groups with an interest in the planning of the park.”

Local residents were sent a Comment Sheet that provided topics for consideration such as “What are your views about the character and image of the Park, and Why?”

The letters illuminate class tensions between different types of park users.

Tensions that do not come to light when park users are lumped together as one group.

Some of the letters stated that campers, day-users, and cottage coexist harmoniously.

However, other letters suggest that the white, Christian, middle-class cottage owners were the “right” kind of park user and
that they, unlike the
"tent camper" and day-use visitor, were invested in the long-term health of the park and were essentially on-site caretakers. 

One letter writer speaks to racial tensions in the park, stating that removal of “white cottagers” might lead park use to become:

“oriented to the Shrewsbury and North End black communities.”(*)

This ongoing legacy of negation of inclusiveness and democracy in Canada through privatization is intolerable!

(*) Source:

Letter to Rondeau Provincial Park Planning Committee #2, Undated (circa 1974),

James Gordon Nelson fonds, 1.5.7.1.26.1 (1), LA.