By Andrew Macdonald
Rick Perkins, the Conservative candidate in South Shore-St. Margaret’s, has come out strongly with a promise to protect the Blockhouse Hill park from a massive housing development.
Since 2023, when former Lunenburg mayor Matt Risser envisioned a massive housing development on the park, created in 1753 by Governor Lawrence and called the Lunenburg Common Lands, the site has been under threat.
The former Lunenburg town council voted to use the Blockhouse Hill green space for a housing development.
Running now for federal re-election, Perkins wants the parkland kept as parkland, and says the land should become part of Parks Canada, designated a national park, and thereby get money from Parks Canada.
While Liberal contender Jessica Fancy-Landry says town council must listen to residents over any development of Blockhouse Hill, Perkins is demanding the massive development to be stopped.
Both candidates took questions on Blockhouse Hill from The Macdonald Notebook. Fancy-Landry’s position on the park is reported in the next article in this edition.
“Over the last two years, I met with the Friends of Blockhouse Hill and have worked very closely with them,” says Perkins.
“The UNESCO designation requires buffer zones. Now, the actual historic site is the boundaries of the town, so the recognition does not include the buffer zones, but you can not have a UN site without buffer zones, and Blockhouse Hill is a buffer zone, as is Lunenburg Academy and the cemetery.”
The Town was designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site in 1995. Parks Canada oversees the UNESCO designation in Canada.
“I have opposed — and will oppose — the development of housing in Blockhouse Hill. There are lots of other places where they can develop housing around Lunenburg that do not infringe on the potential loss of the UNESCO site.”
Perkins, in an interview, blamed government incompetence.for a lack of funding from Parks Canada for Lunenburg’s UNESCO designated site.
“The incompetence of this Liberal government is that this is the only UNESCO heritage site as a town in Canada that Parks Canada that does not financially support.”
Perkins said he written several time to the federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault because that portfolio looks after Parks Canada.
“I asked why that designation and support are not granted to Lunenburg from Parks Canada. As is typical of the Liberals, he did not respond, he couldn’t care less,” said Perkins.
He contends Parks Canada financially supports “every other UNESCO site in Canada – but not Lunenburg.”
A massive housing project on Blockhouse Hill “is absolutely the wrong thing to do. That park is required as one of several buffer zones to keep the UNESCO heritage designation. Without the buffer zones, in my view, the UNESCO designation is in potential jeopardy,” Perkins tells The Macdonald Notebook.
(For South Shore Liberal candidate Jessica Fancy-Landry’s position on Blockhouse Hill, see next story.)
South Shore Conservative candidate Rick Perkins. Contributed
