GUELPH POLITICAST #510 – The Unknowable(?) History of the Waterfowl Park (Real Audio News)

Last week’s discussion at city council about the City of Guelph buying a portion of the old Kortright Waterfowl Park lands on Niska Road captured a lot of attention from the community and community activists. No one’s going to debate the need for more parks and open space, but it’s hard to get a full sense of the history of *this* because it goes back before the internet, so can we ever really have a firm sense of that background and the stakes?

We’re going to try harder this week with a Real Audio News segment. In this one, you will first hear delegations from the September 22, 2023 and June 28, 2024 Grand River Conservation Authority board meetings where they discussed the Niska Land Management plan. After that, you will hear the delegations from the July 16, 2025 special meeting of Guelph City Council where the land management plan was discussed in connection to the Strategic Plan. And finally, to wrap up, you will hear a portion of this week’s Open Sources Guelph interview with Ward 6 Councillor Katherine Hauser about where the work to protect the waterfowl park goes next.

For some supplementary reading, you might also want to check these links out:

Let’s get into the Wayback Machine on Niska on this episode of the Guelph Politicast!

You can hear the whole interview with Councillor Hauser on Open Sources Guelph on Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU. You are encouraged to check out the further reading linked to above, and a final decision about the rezoning of the property as open space/parkland should come back to council sometime in June or possibly July. You can also hear the two part Policticast pods about the Niska lands by clicking here and here.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Photo courtesy of the Grand River Conservation Authority.