LANSDOWNE – Just a day after the county was rocked by the announcement that the Hector Heritage Quay in Pictou was closing, it was announced Wednesday that another county landmark likely wouldn’t open this season.
Directors of the Lansdowne Outdoor Recreational Development Association, or LORDA, will make a final decision tonight on whether the facility can open this year, but president Gene Cole says the board has really been left with no choice.
The organization needs $55,000 to open its doors in May, but all of the federal and provincial grants it’s applied for have been denied.
“Unless something radical happens between now and (Thursday) night, and assuming all of the board shows up, I would say the general consensus will be that if we don’t have the money, we can’t open,” Cole said Wednesday afternoon.
The reasons vary, says curator Dave Leese, but the park, which offers seniors and disabled people a place to camp, fish and enjoy the outdoors free of charge doesn’t seem to fit anyone’s funding criteria.
“This is something I’ve worked all my life for, and it’s about to go down the tubes,” said Leese. His family leases the land the park is on to the association for a dollar every year.
“I’ve spent a lifetime building this place and it’s going to crumble over foolishness.”
Leese doesn’t understand why all their funding requests have been turned down.
“It seems disconcerting to me. We supply services to assist citizens and give the people who really need something like this a place to go to make their lives better. I just don’t understand it, it seems like someone has a dislike for us.”
The only funding LORDA has for this year is about $6,000 that has come in through community donations this year and a few grants from the county.
LORDA’s liability insurance will lapse in May, and there’s no money to renew it. Additionally, the park has put off making necessary repairs for the past two years due to lack of funding.
The park hasn’t heard yet whether the $30,000 in funding to hire students this summer has been approved yet, but even if it is, they have no funds to pay their share.
The board has been working desperately to try to turn things around at the park, Cole says, which typically sees more than 15,000 visitors each summer from across the province. It’s heavily used by local nursing homes and organizations like Summer Street Industries.
One of the board’s ideas was constructing a new building on the site to help offset their expenses, but $90,000 construction costs requires funds that LORDA doesn’t have on hand to pay out.
The proposed structure would have bay doors on either end, where buses could drive inside, allowing the seniors and disabled people to exit the vehicles out of inclement weather.
Inside, there would be tables and a canteen set up, where users could watch LORDA’s maple syrup production – currently 165 trees are tapped and LORDA is selling its maple syrup to try to raise funds – and enjoy pancake meals.
LORDA approached ACOA for 60 per cent of the funding, the province for 30 per cent and pledged to raise 10 per cent themselves.
None of the funding came through.
“We wanted the building to become more self-sufficient, so we wouldn’t have to go through all this every year,” Cole said.
“It would be a way to get the seniors and the disabled out in the winter months and give them the opportunities to meet their peer group and help build things.”
The board will meet tonight, but unless someone can pull the $55,000 or so needed to operate the facility this season out of their hat, it’s likely the decision will have to be made to close.
However, Cole said, if something were to change before the park was set to open the first Saturday in May, the board would consider holding an emergency meeting to reverse its decision.
Anyone wishing to make a donation or who may have an idea to raise funds can contact LORDA at 396-4470.
The rest of the story...It is hard to sit and read the comments made by "The Tim Hortons Advisory Committee" when you have close connections to the "Real Truth"...Lorda is a charitable non-profit organization that operates free of charge to all people. Seniors and disabled are the only people who are allowed to fish but all are welcomed to use the park. Fundraising, is carried out through ticket sales, auctions, sales of maple syrup that is collected and manufactured in the park and other fundraising endeavours. The board of directors is made up of people from our area who volunteer their time. The only people who are paid are summer students, who are employed on grants paid for in part by the government. The remainder of their wages are paid by the park. The curator, who lives at the park year round for insurance and maintenance purposes is only paid for the hours that he works during the season that the park is opened. This is a wonderful place for all of us young and old...but as usual people would rather spend their time looking for negative things instead of volunteering their time and support towards good causes like LORDA. Come out...for a visit and you will see that Lorda is the "Real Deal".