Parks Master Plan

Introduction

The Town of Huntsville is a thriving municipality of approximately 18,000 residents. It's close to 70,000 hectares, are made up of the geographic townships of Brunel, Chaffey, Stephenson and Stisted. These townships, comprising the communities of Huntsville, Port Sydney, Utterson, and the south end of Novar amalgamated into the current structure in 1971. The historic Town centre is surrounded by large rural areas of forest, wetlands and around 144 lakes as well as the smaller communities mentioned above and Hidden Valley, a newer resort community. With Arrowhead Provincial Park falling within the municipal boundary and world-famous Algonquin Provincial Park close by, Huntsville is well known as a nature, recreation and resort destination.

It is also the fastest growing community in Muskoka, resulting in an associated increase in the expectations for the planning, development and ongoing maintenance of a variety of types of public green spaces most often referred to generally as parkland.

Due to these expectations, which were specifically identified in the Huntsville Strategic Economic Development Plan completed in 2002, the creation of a Parks Master Plan would be the first step towards providing a long term direction for parkland acquisition, development and long term maintenance in the community.