Save the Lundy's Lane Battlefield historic site!
Niagara Falls City Council rejected the opportunity for federal funds to conserve a National Historic Site and create a park commemorating Aboriginal, Black and Women’s History and the outcomes of the war (including 200 years of peace and friendship along the world's longest undefended border).
The City Council approved development of central battlefield lands as parking lots and an apartment building.
Land that has always been green space will be paved and some of the mature trees pictured will be felled.
As War of 1812 Bicentennial commemorations began last year, the City of Niagara Falls purchased lands that have been publicly owned for the past 135 years in order to carve them up and sell off most to private interests.
Public lands will be lost to intense multi-residential and commercial use.
This decision needs to be reversed!
Lundy’s Lane was the bloodiest battle of the War of 1812 and the last time Canada ever suffered a major foreign invasion. Its horror, and the peace that grew from it, holds lessons for the world.
If the City's plan succeeds, the opportunity for visitors to experience and understand the battlefield from the US perspective will be lost. The experience from the British-Canadian position on the hill will be undermined:
’Drummond saw at a glance that the ground would make a good defensive position. The gentle southern slope of the hill would allow his artillery to transform the cleared fields in front into what a later generation of soldiers would call a “killing ground.”’*
Future visitors standing where the defenders stood will be severely challenged to envision the “open sunlit area” into which the US forces emerged. They will see parking lots and an apartment building where soldiers charged and fell.
Help us reverse this act of disrespect!
Learn more at www.thebattleoflundyslane.ca
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* Donald E. Graves Where Right and Glory Lead! The Battle of Lundy's Lane, 1814 ISBN 1-896941-03-6