World War II veteran Bill Parfitt made a case to North Bay City Council to rename parkland at Four Mile Lake to honour war veterans.
“Four Mile Lake Veterans Memorial Beach” received the full support of council.
See: City beach may be renamed
The 95-year-old Parfitt told council both Four Mile Lake and Otter Lake are significant to the city’s history.
“Veterans of two World Wars and their families swam and fished in these natural havens. These veterans served in two battalions in World War I, 159 and 228 Battalions, in the Algonquin Regiment in World War II, as well in the merchant seamen service, the Canadian navy and the Canadian air force,” stated Parfitt.
“I am 95 and put in my time in World War II, and some of my swimming pals didn’t’ come back, and some of the Otter Lake swimmers didn’t come back.”
He explained that a petition to improve the Four Mile Lake public beach and park was circulated several years ago.
Parfitt called on council to act on the petition, receiving full support from Royal Canadian Legion Branch 23 which has agreed to take on the responsibility of erecting memorial placards at the site.
“We support veterans not only past, but present-day veterans and veterans of the future. Anybody using that park will see the name up on a placard. There will be some significance there and it is going to help teach our young people possibly a little bit more about what veterans have done and what their dedication to the country is,” explained Jim Thompson, Legion Branch 23 past-president.
“The Legion has a program with the federal government that they build new memorials, repair old memorials, or make placards, that sort of thing. So, we have some funding available that we could put some signage up on site. We’re excited about it. We’re very proud of these things going forward. There are not many monuments being built these days, so it is a nice thing, certainly for this area.
City Councillor Mark King who moved to have the renaming approved, calls it a first step.
“From a financial standpoint, it is very doable. The project would involve road access and a parking lot. Matt Parfitt owns a construction company and he has agreed to provide his equipment to do all the construction work, so I don’t see it costing a lot of money” said King who proposed selling a piece of city property located at the corner of Chadbourne and Springdale to help cover any costs.
“It used to house the community centre. There is a storage building that the parks department is using there, but other than that, the property is not being used. I did talk to the deputy mayor about maybe moving forward with the sale of that property. We could use those proceeds in order to cover the cost of any construction.”
Parfitt raised the need for public washrooms and change rooms.
“We haven’t really discussed that. I have had communication with neighbours there. There is a concern about water quality and what that would look like. The fact that we would have to go to some sort of washroom situation I think would involve a number of agencies like the North Bay Mattawa Conservation Authority to make sure something was built there that was proper for that location,” said King.
“The other part of the scenario is, that lake is part of the Trout Lake watershed, so there are setback requirements that would have to be looked at. So, there would be a fair bit of planning involved in it. That would be good planning actually for the engineering students up at Nipissing University to get familiar with some of the restrictions and bylaw requirements.”
King went on to explain that making those changes will take time.
“We passed the authority for naming, but it didn’t address the issue of construction. So those are the next steps that I will be working towards.”
