Oka provincial park opens at half-capacity after Quebec reaches deal with Kanesatake Mohawks

The Mohawk Council of Kanesatake has agreed to the partial reopening of Oka provincial park — as long as people from the island of Montreal, the epicentre of Canada's pandemic, keep out.

Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Otsi Simon said Tuesday his council agreed to take down checkpoints at the entrance to the park and stop telling people to leave the park, following negotiations with Quebec that were concluded on Monday.

Simon said in a statement released late Tuesday that provincial representatives listened to the council's concerns about the possible spread of COVID-19 to the Mohawk community adjacent to the park, about 60 kilometres northwest of Montreal. He thanked them for "making the accommodations through understanding and compassion."

Simon said the reason the checkpoints were put up on May 20, the day provincial parks across the province were to reopen, was due to fears that reopening the park to the public would trigger a second wave of COVID-19. 

Government officials will reopen the park, but at 50 per cent capacity until the end of the summer, the Mohawk council's statement says.

It says only visitors from communities in the vicinity of the park, in the lower Laurentians, will be permitted access to the park, and access to Kanesatake itself will be restricted.

Provincial health authorities also agreed to test both symptomatic and asymptomatic people in Kanesatake, in an effort to get a better picture of COVID-19's effects on the community. 

Simon said all results obtained from those tests will be kept confidential. 

"We want to make sure the community stays safe," Simon said. 

SEPAQ makes no mention of keeping Montrealers away

In a statement released jointly by SEPAQ and the public health directorate for the Laurentians Tuesday, the region's public health director, Dr. Éric Goyer, said these are "transitional measures" that will evolve as the need arises ro as epidemiological conditions change.

The temporary measures SEPAQ is taking include:

• The closure of the western entrance to the park, off Highway 344, as well as the closure of Oka park's Calvaire sector.
• The closure of the western entrance to the cycling path through the park. Physical barriers will be erected, and police will patrol the area to keep cyclists off the path at busy times.
• Washrooms in the park will be open and will be rigorously maintained.
• A follow-up committee will be established in co-operation with public health authorities, and the transitional measures will be evaluated as the epidemiological situation changes.

In addition to those temporary measures, Oka beach will be operating at half-capacity all summer, in order to allow for physical distancing.

However, there is no mention of visitors from outside the lower Laurentians region being barred from the park, as the Kanesatake chief said in his statement.

"We are confident the approach to reopen the park gradually, in concert with public health authorities, responds to the needs expressed boy by our visitors and by the community of Kanesatake," said Catherine Grenier, a senior official with SEPAQ, in the statement.

Oka Mayor Pascal Quévillon said last week that he say no problem with the park partially reopening, as long as people respected physical-distancing rules.

"COVID-19 is here to stay," Quévillon said last week. "We have to learn to live with the virus."