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March 2010 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Point Pelee National Park La Mauricie National Park Waterton Lakes National Park National Historic Sites Notebook GateWay TenBest

National gems

MY PARENTS once took my sister and me on a classic Trans-Canada Highway road trip from Montréal through Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, then onto the ferry across the Northumberland Strait to Prince Edward Island. Our destination was Cavendish Beach in P.E.I National Park. On that trip, two scenes were deeply imprinted in my childhood memory: the long, sweeping strand of red sand and the quaint old white clapboard house with a green roof, green shutters and, of course, green gables.

When I returned to both places four decades later, I was amazed at how those memorable scenes sprang back to life practically unaltered. You can’t say that about too many travel destinations; many end up in states of decline or become crowded or developed beyond recognition, depending on their trajectories as tourist traps. But not Parks Canada’s properties. They’re impeccably preserved.

For the most part, our national parks and historic sites stay exactly as you remember them, no matter how long it’s been since your previous visit. That, in fact, is the whole point of having a national institution like Parks Canada, our partner in this issue, dedicated to conserving — uncommercialized — large tracts of untrammelled lands, pristine marine environments and places of historical significance.

Many of them are remote enough that they aren’t at risk of being loved to death. In this issue, though, we’re highlighting those that are less than a day’s drive away from large urban centres: Point Pelee southwest of Toronto, Waterton Lakes south of Calgary, La Mauricie northeast of Montréal, Saint-Louis Forts and Châteaux in Québec, Lower Fort Garry near Winnipeg, and the Trent-Severn Waterway near Peterborough.

On my return trip to P.E.I. National Park, a third scene imprinted itself. Seventy kilometres to the east of bustling Cavendish Beach are the Greenwich Dunes, a sensitive system of mobile parabolic sand dunes on the tip of Greenwich Peninsula. They migrate up to four metres a year, depending on wind and weather, and harbour a small, delicate ecosystem found nowhere else on this continent. To me, these three scenes represent all of the gems that our national parks system keeps safe — gems which this issue celebrates.

Eric Harris