At its Annual Meeting in August 2007, TIARA officially launched a project to seek nomination for Canadian Heritage River Status for the St. Lawrence River.  There are 36 Heritage Rivers across Canada and remarkably, the St. Lawrence is not among them. Spearheaded by TIARA President Peter Macklem, work on the project began in late 2006 by TIARA Board sub committees. 

The nomination process requires extensive collaboration and formal motions of support from each of the municipal governments that front the Canadian side of the river.  Ideally, the designation will be from Kingston and Frontenac Islands right through the province of Quebec, provided we can obtain support of Quebec based champions to independently manage their part of the nomination process.  At the same time, with the help of Save the River in Clayton New York, TIARA hopes to identify river based non-government organisations in New York State which might be interested in pursuing a similar designation from the American Heritage River Programme.  We think it would be simply wonderful if a two-country designation could be celebrated at the same time.  After all, we do share a tremendous history.

TIARA Board members have begun making delegations to local governments along the Ontario side of the River, including the Band Council of the Mohawk of Akwesasne whose support will be crucial to the success of the project.   So far, our delegations have been very well received and we have obtained full support from each of the cities, towns and townships that we have visited.  TIARA funds are not being used for this project.  

TIARA Directors are contributing their time, efforts and mileage voluntarily, as they do for all of  their TIARA related commitments.  However, funding for research is available from the Canadian Heritage River Programme which is managed nationally by Parks Canada and provincially by Ontario Parks.  We expect to obtain approval for our funding request shortly.  This will allow us to pay summer students who will be hired from various locations along the river to research, compile and report the required local scientific, cultural and historic background information which makes up a large part of the nomination application.  We anticipate the entire process to take two or more years. 

We are asking TIARA members interested in contributing to the project either by doing or supplying existing research into the river’s scientific, natural and cultural history, to please contact us. 

                  Visit our Heritage River project website    http://www.slhr.ca