We're going to now give you three examples of urban parks. The first is Rouge Park, which is a national urban park. It comprises over 40 square kilometres and spans the communities of Toronto and Pickering, at the middle, really, of our greater Toronto area. One of the most important things about Rouge Park is that it's accessible by transit. You don't need a car to get there. That's an important characteristic of a place that is accessible to the community.
One point I'd like to make is that as our urban areas become more and more intense and as we preach intensification and transit and all of that, we still need to have reachable urban areas where we, our children, and our grandchildren can experience nature without having to drive for two hours. Rouge Park is not two hours away; it's a bus stop away, or, for some people, maybe a couple of bus stops.
It's particularly interesting because it has a human history that goes back more than 12,000 years. I can't even imagine what that means, but we've got artifacts and archeology referring to the Paleoindian and the Archaic periods. Then you've got the European settlers who came in the 1650s. You've got natural heritage resources in the park. One was an Indian portage, which then became used by the European settlers. The other is Bead Hill, an archeological site with the remains of a 17th century Seneca village, a national historic site accessible along the trails within the park. That's an important aspect of all the things that you can bring together. This is a huge park, and we’re very lucky that this park has so many attributes.
It also has numerous significant plant and animal species and communities within its borders. Its natural beauty and biological diversity have attracted people to these lands, which are now protected in Rouge Park.
The cultural and natural heritage contained within the park is definitely a resource worth preserving. You can see on this map the different land ownerships encompassed within Rouge Park. To create it, lands and funds were given from the Province of Ontario, the Government of Canada, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, municipal governments, and other agencies.
In the throne speech of May 2011, the federal government announced its intention to create a national urban park in the Rouge Valley. This would become the first national urban park in the country and one of the largest in North America. This is truly a momentous achievement for all the partners in this Rouge Park and for the public and the visitors who visit it and have so many resources at their...I was going to say “their fingertips”; it's more at their footsteps.
The Evergreen Brick Works is another one where we have collaboration by our newly found friend. We hadn't met before today, and he said, “I know your partner. I did the first plan for the Brick Works”, and I said, “Well, that's funny, I'm talking about the Brick Works”.
This is a 40-acre natural heritage park—not really a totally natural heritage park—in midtown Toronto. It's at Bayview Avenue and Pottery Road. You couldn't get much more in the middle of Toronto than this. Originally, it was the site of a brick factory that created many of the bricks for the houses in Toronto. It's connected to the Don Valley ravine system and many Toronto neighbourhoods. You can see it's not very far from our huge downtown. It's about a 10-minute drive from the CN Tower. Accessible by transit, by bicycle, and on foot, this park is something that acts as an environmental community centre.
They started building this in 2002, and it's been open since 2010, led by the City of Toronto and the Toronto Region Conservation Authority. Fundraising is an interesting question. They secured an initial $3 million in private funds from David and Robin Young, who are noted sponsors in Toronto.
That was pivotal to their achieving a provincial commitment of $10 million, and that was pivotal to the federal Infrastructure Canada giving them $20 million.
Am I over my time?