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June Newsletter

Hi all Friends of Kingston Inner Harbour,
We are off to an amazing start –
some ongoing, some over, some upcoming:

1) Ongoing Turtle Tally Project
2) Call for Proposals: ON THE WALL street art festival
3) June 3/4/10/11 Turtle Awareness Project
3.1) Letter Forward from Kenny Reulland
4) June 5 Welcoming C3: bird, bee, butterfly houses etc.
5) June 9 Commuter Challenge on the new K&P
6) June 10 Grand Opening – Urban section of the K&P Trail
7) July 18 Wheelchair Rally on new K&P Trail
8) August 21-26 ON THE WALL street art festival with Celebration of the Arts on Sat, Aug 26.
9) Councillor Lisa Osanic’s concerns about Beavers – petition
 
1) Ongoing Turtle Tally Project – Whole lot of layin’ goin’ on!
You may have noticed some rectangular bits of screening on gravel sections in Douglas R. Fluhrer Park.  These are put there to cover turtle nests.  Please do not touch or remove.  The covers are placed there for two weeks when the smell is strongest and attractive for predators.  After two weeks they will be removed.  The turtles are well overdue for nesting.  Normally nesting occurs in May and June but this year May was simply too cold and too wet.  Best laying days seem to be when there is a torrential downpour at night followed by a hot muggy summer day.  Yesterday Kathleen and I covered 10 nests.  It was just those perfect conditions.
If you see turtles nesting, please give them a wide berth (20 -30 m) and contact harbourturtles@gmail.com.  Please include a photo if you can so that someone from our group can come and see where to cover the nest.  Thanks so much.
 
2) Call for Proposals for this year’s ON THE WALL festival.
Contact: Mat Poirier – ONTHEWALLkingston@gmail.com
Looking for artists who would love to paint on the retaining wall behind Rideaucrest!  Open to individual artists as well as groups of all sorts.  Each artist/group will receive $100 for completed project – on the final Saturday at the Celebration of the Arts in Doug Fluhrer Park.  
For details see poster at the end of this update
 
3) June 3/4/10/11 Turtle Awareness Project.
Thanks to the Community Foundation, the Turtle Awareness Project was a huge success. Leaders included Kenny Ruelland of reptileandamphibianadvocacy.com with his live turtles and snakes as well as Laraib Kazmi and Sarah Wash, two Biology students from Queen’s University.  Traditional Knowledge Keepers were present at each event to share Indigenous teachings. Many thanks to Grandmother Laurel for organizing this and for enlisting the help of the amazing Kevin Deer from Kahnawake, QC.  In addition, artifacts and printed materials were generously lent to us from the Kingston Field Naturalists and donated by the Toronto Zoo’s Adopt-a-Pond program. we also organized a craft where kids could paint rocks into turtles.
 
3.1) Letter Forward from Kenny Reulland
This is SO upsetting. I’m forwarding this letter from Kenny Ruelland of reptileandamphibianadvocacy.com who helped us out so splendidly with our Turtle Awareness Project over the past two weekends.
Please do what you can if you see anyone hurting our amphibians and reptiles.
Also, PLEASE give the turtles space (20 metres minimum) to lay their eggs.
Please don’t return them to the water if they are trying to find a place to lay. Please spread the word!

Hi Mary,

I’m extremely upset and disgusted at what I found this evening in Douglas Fluhrer Park. Someone had killed a large, seemingly gravid (pregnant) Northern Watersnake right on the path, then quite literally put it on display. It’s head was smashed on the path, where there was a large splatter and trail of blood leading to the large rock along the shoreline where it was “on display”. I can not express how upset I am.

PLEASE spread this widely and help me make a HUGE deal of this to the city. These senseless, barbaric acts can not go unnoticed. Our scaly and slimy animals need just as much (in fact, more) help as the furry ones. Just a few months ago there was outrage about the killing, torture and display of a cat in Parrot’s Bay Conservation Area. There is no reason this situation should be any different.

Thanks in advance,

Kenny Ruelland
Reptile & Amphibian Conservationist
reptileandamphibianadvocacy.com
kennyruelland@reptileandamphibianadvocacy.com
 
4) June 5 C3 Event
C3 is a boat that is travelling up the Atlantic, through the Northwest Passage and down the Pacific. Participants include scientists and artists and a diverse group of citizens.  On June 5, they stopped in Kingston and were welcomed to Doug Fluhrer Park by the Friends of Kingston Inner Harbour.  Thanks to support from Lee Valley, participants built some bird, bee and butterfly condos that will be installed in the park at some future date.  The visit also included a shoreline walk observing wildlife, traditional Indigenous teachings with Grandmother Laurel as well as a drum circle led by Yessi Belsham Rivera.
Truly a most wonderful evening.
 
5) June 9 Commuter Challenge on the new K&P
A fun time had by all on this gorgeous spring day.  Thanks so much to volunteers Sue Hitchcock, Vicki Schmolka, Gavin Anderson, Judith McKenzie, Roger Healey,and Dugald Carmichael for welcoming participants, to Darren Keuhl of the Kingston Police Force for providing safe passage across the Sydenham Road when I had been worried about signage, and to all of the wonderful participants.
 
6) June 10 Official Opening of the K&P Trail
June 10 marked the official opening of the Urban portion of the K&P Trail complete with bench dedicated to Doug Knapp (the K&P Trail’s initiator and 35 year supporter), ribbon cutting and displays along the trail by so many different organizations.  The Friends of Kingston Inner Harbour are happy to have had the opportunity to support this K&P Trail initiative in recent years. Thanks are most certainly due to Sue Hitchcock of the city for organizing this wonderful event and to Neal Unsworth, Manager of Parks, and Luke Follwell, Director of Recreation and Leisure, for all they work they did to make this trail possible.
Congratulations on a job well done.
Have a look at the super interactive map.
https://cityofkingston.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=efca572f91d24cddac817af7d2fb5ab0
 
7) July 18 Wheelchair Rally
In recent years, policy has been to integrate people with disabilities into the community at large. However, this has meant that very few events have occurred specifically for smaller groups within the disabled community where they can have a chance to share fun experiences.  This Wheelchair Rally hopes to help fill that gap.  In partnership with Easter Seals Ontario and the Kingston Community Health Centres, we are organizing an event where wheelchair users will go from Doug Fluhrer Park up to Quattrochi’s and back – or for as far up the trail as comfortable.  Refreshments and a craft will be provided.  We are most grateful to the Community Foundation’s Canada 150 grant program for supporting this event.
 
8) ON THE WALL, 2017 including Celebration of the Arts
Again, we are most grateful to the Community Foundation’s Canada 150 Grant program for their support for the Celebration of the Arts scheduled to occur on the final Saturday of this event – Aug 26.  
The Celebration of the Arts is a participatory arts event. Visitors are invited to join in one or more arts activities. If you are an artist, dancer, singer, musician, actor, poet, visual artist, mover and shaker etc., and are interested in leading something on Aug 26, please contact Mat Poirier at ONTHEWALLkingston@gmail.com, or me at inverarymary@yahoo.com.

The street art festival, ON THE WALL, will go from Aug 21 – 26.  
On June 6, Council unanimously supported waiving the graffiti by-law for a week to allow artists to create works on the wall without fear of arrests or fines.  In 2014, this event won the Kingstonist’s award for being the most exciting new arts event of the year.  Our long term goal is the creation of a permanent legal wall.  This year, artists will register for the event rather than engage in a juried competition.  We are hoping lots of artists and community groups will consider participating.  There are up to 30 spaces available and each participating artist or group will receive $100 on the Saturday following completion of their project.
 
9) Councillor Lisa Osanic’s concerns about Beavers – petition
“Right now, the city is hiring trappers to drown beavers.  That is the city’s protocol to deal with any beaver dam complaints.  There is an expert in Boston who has taught municipalities how to install flow devices that allows water to still flow under beaver dams – therefore, saving beavers and preventing the flooding that dams cause.  I have a swampy area in my district where trappers were just hired last week to drain the water and put in more traps. The trappers have been in this swampy area for 2.5 years. Hmmm, now they need more traps. I don’t think trapping beavers works because like the experts say, new beavers just move in to take over the territory.  
If you could help me distribute this petition to your email list of contacts, that would be wonderful!  The City of London has brought this expert in from Boston to teach them how to install the flow devices. London did about 5 pilot project areas.  I want to do the same in Kingston, That will be the  motion – to fly him in and teach staff. The Pilot project area will be the swampy area in my district.   I want a petition to be presented at council with the motion.  Here is the petition.
http://www.ipetitions. com/ petition/stop-killing-beavers- in-kingston
Thank you!
Lisa

So that’s it for now.  Hoping you are having a chance to get out in that wonderful sunshine.  
Cheers,
Mary Farrar,
President, Friends of Kingston Inner Harbour
www.friendsofinnerharbour.com