Activity
In total, the Commission is in charge of about 16.19 square kilometres (6.25 sq mi) of parkland along the river, in addition to the Niagara River Parkway which spans 56 kilometres (35 mi). In this corridor, the NPC manages numerous trails, historic sites, picnic areas, and attractions. These include Journey Behind the Falls, the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, and the Queenston Floral Clock. The Commission manages Navy Island National Historic Site under a lease agreement with the Parks Canada. It also owns the Chippawa Battlefield Park, and has developed a historical interpretive walk at this War of 1812 site. The NPC also runs the Niagara Parks School of Horticulture and the adjoining Botanical Gardens. In 1997, the Butterfly Conservatory was added to the gardens.
Other significant properties include the Mackenzie Printery & Newspaper Museum, which holds the nation's oldest press; McFarland House, an 18th Century Georgian home offering tours, tea, wine, and light fare; the Laura Secord Homestead, home to the heroine of the War of 1812, and a National Historic Site; and Old Fort Erie, a War of 1812 site that is claimed to be one of Canada's bloodiest battlefields. In addition, the NPC has placed dozens of green plaques marking significant sites and events along the Niagara River.
Niagara Parks also operates the People Mover, a shuttle bus system intended to aid transportation along the Niagara River and help reduce automobile crowding near the Falls. The buses are powered by propane and include a trailer unit during most popular hours. In the long term, the Commission is planning for a fixed track transit system along the Niagara River Parkway, although no decision has been taken on the exact technology to be used.
NPC now attempts to protect the natural beauty and attract tourism along the Niagara River, Niagara Gorge and Niagara Falls. The NPC is a self-financed agency of the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation.
Read more about this topic: Niagara Parks Commission
Famous quotes containing the word activity:
“To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.”
—Max J. Friedländer (1867–1958)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a “work” of man.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)