Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll be sharing my time with the members from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke and Brampton North.

In Essex county, we have a road called County Road 50. It goes down by Lake Erie, and there’s a big curve in the road, and when you get to the big curve in the road you get to a place called the John R. Park Homestead. That is located directly on the north shore of Lake Erie. The homestead is a fascinating place. It’s managed by the Essex Region Conservation Authority. The curator is Kristin Ives, and she was just recently named president of the Ontario Historical Society.

Now, the John R. Park Homestead has many interesting buildings. They all date back to the 19th century—that’s the 1800s. There’s a home, of course, and there’s a barn, but the most fascinating part of the homestead, in my opinion, is the sawmill. It’s pretty fascinating for a few reasons. First of all, it’s fully operational. You can actually start up that saw and cut wood with it. But you might not appreciate how rare that is if you’re not from Essex county. Il se peut que vous n’appréciez pas l’importance de la scierie si vous ne venez pas du comté d’Essex.

Les habitants originaux d’Essex étaient des fermiers français. C’étaient les habitants originaux qui ont défriché la terre. Actuellement, il existe beaucoup de fermes actives, mais cela veut dire aussi que les forêts n’existent plus à Essex. Le comté d’Essex a plusieurs petits boisés, mais on ne pourrait pas dire que nous avons des forêts.

La scierie est importante car il y avait un temps dans notre histoire qu’on pourrait construire une scierie et on pourrait faire des bonnes affaires. La ferme John R. Park est importante parce que vous êtes près d’une vraie scierie. C’est une marque de l’époque passée.

Ça, c’est le passé, mais aujourd’hui, Essex est bien différent. That was the past, but today Essex is very different. For example, you can walk about 800 feet from my house, stand at the corner of the second concession and Middle Side Road, and look north, and if you do that at night you’ll see some lights in the distance. Those lights are actually 33 kilometres away, and they’re the lights on the Ambassador Bridge, which spans the Detroit River and joins Windsor and Detroit. You can literally stand at the corner of the second concession and Middle Side Road and see 33 kilometres without any obstruction. That is how flat Essex county is, and that tells you something about the topography of the area.

As you travel north from that point, you go past the River Canard watershed, and you arrive at what we often call the Ojibway Prairie. That’s a pretty unique space, as my friend the erudite member from Windsor–Tecumseh was speaking about. It bears the name of one of the First Nations of the area. That nation was among General Isaac Brock’s allies during the War of 1812. It’s fitting they should give their name to the area.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about Ojibway Park, according to the Ontario Parks website, because it is an official park. It consists of native prairie, savannah and open woodland. It has layers of sand, silt and clay that cover the bedrock—in some areas, 30 metres deep. That’s rare. Many of those layers were laid down 10,000 years ago or more.

In the springtime, it’s wet, and in the late summer, it’s dry, and that makes it ideal for prairie vegetation. It includes over 500 flowering plants. Some of those are mints, lilies and figworts, and 18% of those plants are considered rare in Canada. It also has interesting fauna, including Butler’s garter snake and the bobwhite.

But the extremely important point to remember is that it’s already a park. It’s a provincially protected park. It was established in co-operation with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the province of Ontario and the city of Windsor. And I’d like to congratulate my colleague from Windsor–Tecumseh for his forethought by bringing this motion, and I’d like to recognize, also, the member from Windsor West for her concern about this issue.

I think this is a motion we can all get behind. I’ll certainly vote for it myself and encourage others to do so as well.