The Municipality of Pontiac has shared the details of its vision for major upgrades to the Luskville Recreation Park, developed in collaboration with Loisir Sport Outaouais and A4 Architecture following community consultations done in the spring of 2024.
The plans were presented at a sparsely attended public meeting hosted at the Luskville Community Centre on Feb. 18. A first meeting was held at the Quyon Community Center earlier in February to share revitalization plans for the Quyon park.
The Luskville park, which stretches from Highway 148 back to the Gatineau hills between chemin Pilon and chemin Nugent, currently includes two baseball diamonds, a soccer field, a skating rink, and pétanque courts, much of the infrastructure for which needs to be upgraded.
The municipality’s plans to do so will reorganize the layout of the park’s sports fields and modernize the current soccer field, put in a new pull-through road at the mouth of the park to be used as a rest stop, formalize three distinct parking areas throughout the park, install better lighting and signage, and develop a network of hiking trails up the small escarpment at the back of the park, which is also on municipal land.
The first phase of this work, which Mayor Roger Larose said he hopes to complete this year, will include insulating the basement of the current service building so the washrooms can be used year-round, relocating the pétanque courts to the skating rink’s current location, and moving the skating rink to an entirely new location, likely next to the Paroisse Saint-Dominique in the village of Luskville, where it will be more accessible to the children at the Vallée-des-Voyageurs elementary school.
Among the six people in attendance at the presentation was Hélène Bélisle, a longtime Luskville resident who served a decade as a councilor for the municipality and another two decades as a school board commissioner after that.
“It’s a serious project, and I think the municipality, council and administrators, have made the effort to bring this project a little farther than other times it was attempted, [when] it seemed like it wasn’t taking off,” she said, noting she’s witnessed waves of interest and energy for revitalizing the park over the years, both from community groups and various municipal councils, but that this latest wave has given her hope the vision will become a reality.
“Recreation and culture is the soul of a community,” Bélisle said. “It is not an expense, it’s an investment.”
Katie Roberts, president of the organization Groupe Action Jeunesse Luskville, said the plans seem ambitious but was encouraged to see the municipality’s vision for improvements.
“A full-sized soccer field would allow Luskville to offer youth access to a sport that’s easily the most inclusive,” Roberts said. “Maintaining the park and trails and any upgrades completed will show Luskville youth that they are valued while giving the community a gathering place to be proud of.”
Several in attendance were happy to hear the rink would be relocated to a more accessible site, and discussed the possibility of using the municipality’s new on-demand transit service to get youth to the Luskville park.
Larose said he’s fairly confident he will secure $250,000 from MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais to complete the first phase of upgrades in both Luskville and Quyon parks, the latter of which will include installing a net around the ballfield and a shelter for ball players not on the pitch, as well as upgrades to the current washrooms.
But he said that to do any further work, the municipality would need to pass a borrowing bylaw, and that this will not be possible before the November municipal election.
“For this year we’ve got already enough work to do anyway,” he said. “Next year, if the council has the same vision, then we’re going to go ahead with all this.”
