INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wondered what makes where you live special; what makes you want to stay? Sometimes these things are obvious; sometimes they are not. Sometimes they can be overlooked or taken for granted and eventually lost. This applies to all places including Eastern Ontario.

Eastern Ontario is a special part of Canada. It has its own character and is a complete region; a place where people can feel comfortable throughout their lives.

The purpose of this project - the Eastern Ontario Visual Character project - is to identify what it is about this wonderful place called Eastern Ontario, that makes it special, and to codify these traits, so we are aware of them, and therefore, less likely to overlook them in the future.

WHAT IS VISUAL CHARACTER?

Visual character refers to the physical features that distinguish areas as unique landscapes. It focuses on the characteristics of what you see rather than how land and buildings are used.

For the purposes of this project, we are identifying those positive features of visual character that define Eastern Ontario as a unique place and how best to ensure that these characteristics remain strong into the future. The Ottawa Citizen newspaper (June 2008) aptly titled it ‘Saving the ‘Eastern Ontario Look’.

The features of Eastern Ontario have been categorized as follows:

• Natural Areas

• Waterways

• Agricultural Landscapes

• Special Places

• Mainstreets

• Scenic Routes

• Architecture

 WHERE IS EASTERN ONTARIO?

Eastern Ontario (approximate 2006 population 1.9 million) is a region of the Province of Ontario, Canada, which lies in a wedge-shaped area between the Ottawa River and the St. Lawrence River. It is bounded to the north and east by the Province of Quebec, to the south by New York State in the United States, and to the west by Southern Ontario, a sister region of Eastern Ontario. For the purposes of this project, the western boundary of Eastern Ontario is roughly defined by an imaginary line between the shores of Lake Ontario, just west of Trenton, and the shores of the Ottawa River just west of the Town of Petawawa.

It includes the counties of Prescott and Russell, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Lanark, Renfrew, Leeds and Grenville,  Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, Hastings and Prince Edward and the Cities of Ottawa, Kingston, Belleville and Cornwall.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

• To assess and document the positive visual characteristics of Eastern Ontario

• To identify the opportunities and roadblocks to retaining and enhancing these features over time

• To make the information widely available

HOW WAS IT DONE?

This project involved two distinctive phases:

 Phase 1: Project Development (2007-08)

• Project initiation Meeting

• Tours, Observations, and Image recording

• Project team Presentation and Discussion (Smiths Falls)

• Development of Observations Matrix

• Identification of Opportunities and Constraints

• Development of Presentation Strategy based on Samples of each feature (Mapping, PowerPoint and Movie Clips)

• Presentations (Gananoque Workshop, Frontenac Arch Group, OPPI Council, Queen’s Lecture Series…etc)

 Phase 2: Website Development (2008-09)

• Website design and construction

• Completion of fieldwork and turning samples into more comprehensive sets of presentation materials

• Launch and Manage Website

WHO CREATED THIS SITE?

This project, including the contents and design of this web site, was developed between 2007 and 2009 by a group of volunteer planners from across Eastern Ontario. The idea to undertake this work originated from a series of town and rural planning workshops held in Brockville, Almonte and Gananoque, Ontario. These workshops and this project were sponsored by the Ontario Professional Planners Institute. The volunteers include:

Phases 1 and 2   

Jean-Guy Bisson, Mike Hendren, Donald Morse, Randolph Wang

Phase 1

Stephen Boyle, Krista Burgess, Bliss Edwards, John Edwards, Geraldine Johnston, Marcus Letourneau, Don Maciver, Susan Millar, David Sherwood,  Manuel Stevens, Grace Strachan, Louise Sweet Lindsay , Andres Velez-Guerra

Many thanks to the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve for providing assistance and for hosting this website and to the City of Ottawa for providing translation services.

CONTACT THE PROJECT TEAM

if you have any questions and comments, or if you wish to be part of the EOVC project team, please contact the Project Manager.

© 2010 EOVCP All Rights Reserved