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Green light for the green - Former PM’s new golf course |
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Paul Martin should be able to walk out his back door and onto his new green to tee-off by summertime, as work on the former prime minister’s six-hole golf course winds down on his Brome Lake property.
The par-22 course will cover roughly one-fifth of Martin’s 43-hectare property, the Martin Estates, also home to a farmhouse, tennis court and a herd of sheep.
The Quebec farmlamd protection agency the CPTAQ gave the green its green light in March, after the town of Brome Lake referred a zoning change request to the commission last year.
Building a golf course with fewer than nine holes makes a project exempt from the normally-required certificate of authorization from the provincial environment ministry. But a six-hole course also suits Martin’s needs, said Darrell Huxham, president of the design firm working at Martin Estates.
“It’s a good way to build a course without using up so much space,” he said of the course’s eight-hectare sprawl. “He can play it three times and he’ll have the equivalent of 18 holes.”
Huxham’s firm was fined by the town of Brome Lake last year for jumping the gun on construction of the course, landing him a $2,000 ticket for cutting trees too close to a waterway on Martin’s property.
Official permit in hand, Huxham said the course has now been seeded with blue grasses and fescues, native grasses that require few pesticides and will even create wildlife zones along the fairway.
“We are very conscientious about the local environment,” he said, and that the amount of fertilizers and pesticides used on the green will be “way below the norm” of other commercial courses.
He said the Huxham Golf Design Inc. course will be playable by August.
In a decision rendered March 3, a three-person CPTAQ (Commission de protection du territoire agricole du Québec) panel concluded that any work done to the course prematurely was no reason to refuse the project and that “the singularity of the request... justifies the authorization of it.”
In other words, while the commission was concerned with the project having a possible domino effect, that was offset by the fact that the use of the golf course would be exclusively personal and that its construction excluded any permanent infrastructure.
The commission determined that the course would have minimal impact on local agricultural activities, while the deforestation necessary did not affect any maple groves, which are protected under the CPTAQ’s mandate.
Brome Lake Mayor Richard Wisdom said the municipality has no objections to the project, calling Martin a good resident and neighbour who hasn’t received any special treatment in the process.
“He’s always been really excellent and conformed (to local regulations), just like anyone else in town,” Wisdom said.
Paul Martin continues to serve as Liberal MP in Montreal’s LaSalle-Émard riding, although much of his time is focussed outside the House of Commons working on initiatives promoting economic development in Canada’s aboriginal communities as well as throughout Africa.
The former PM is also set to publish his memoirs this fall, with the help of former CBC journalist Paul Adams.
By Sarah Rogers
May 16, 2008 |
Montreal Canadiens
