Advocate reflects on years of community efforts to protect Lemay Forest as they mark one year since expropriation by the province.<\/p>\n
Lemay Forest is over 22 acres of public land in Winnipeg\u2019s St. Norbert neighbourhood. The land has been a matter of dispute for years <\/p>\n
Catari Macaulay Gauthier, one of the local residents, was advocating against deforestation in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year at this time, I thought we are going to be in it for a few years for sure,\u201d said Macaulay Gauthier.<\/p>\n
In April of 2025, the provincial government announced the expropriation of the land and is now planning to create a provincial park in Lemay Forest.<\/p>\n
In March, the province invited community members to get a glimpse of plans for the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that I heard the most is \u2018Leave it as it is,\u2019\u201d said Macaulay Gauthier<\/p>\n
A year after the expropriation announcement, John Wintrup, a planner working with the developer, says there has been no further communication on that matter.<\/p>\n
Wintrup adds that further legal proceedings are planned for December of this year for the land value appraisal commission to determine the compensation to the developer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a meeting with them a couple of weeks later, maybe a month later, and walked the lands with them to show what they were acquiring,\u201d said Wintrup.<\/p>\n
Lemay Forest also hosts a cemetery site for the Asile Ritchot orphanage, where at least 3,383 children died between 1904 and 1948. According to Wintrup, the developer was working on plans to mark the graves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were very excited because we were preparing to roll out the plans to look for the unmarked graves,\u201d said Wintrup.<\/p>\n
The coalition to save Lemay Forest also created a photobook representing the five years of activism to protect the forest.<\/p>\n
Gauthier says, since the beginning of spring this year, she has been out in the Lemay Forest almost every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so peaceful. And we don\u2019t have to worry about the sound of chainsaws,\u201d said Macaulay Gauthier.<\/p>\n
CityNews reached out to the province for a comment, but we did not hear back in time for broadcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Advocate reflects on years of community efforts to protect Lemay Forest as they mark one year since expropriation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-613368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}