There are national parks and provincial parks and territorial parks and so many other kinds of parks it can leave your head spinning. But who helps oversee them all? The Canadian Parks Council. Dawn Carr is the former executive director and at a time when the value of parks is being questioned, Dawn is an important voice that can help us understand why we need to value them. But she also believes we need to accept the challenge of redefining what a park is for people and nature. As a teenager, Dawn spent a summer working with Ontario Rangers – a role that sparked a lifelong passion for wilderness. Through the Canadian Parks Council and now Nature Conservancy of Canada, Dawn has worked to demand better of our parks system and our country.
Joining us by Skype from her office in Peterborough, Ontario, Dawn spoke with us about the changing role of parks, today and tomorrow.
What do you think?
- Should we learn to constantly re-examine what we so often take as a given?
- Does this approach make the process more important than the product? Or are there times when getting something done still has more value than the process?
- In the case of parks, if we focus on perfecting the park creation process, will we create more support for existing protected areas? Or, in an effort to bring everyone on the same page, will we fail to create enough new parks to protect biodiversity?
- Do we worry too much about perfecting a model that has, more often than not, worked and been emulated? Do we risk over-thinking a good idea?
- Or is that a false question? Should we always question everything and find new ways to perfect even the best of ideas?