An Interpretive Walk Through Mer Bleu

A mere 15 min­utes from our front porch, in Ottawa’s green­belt park­lands, is this trea­sure: Mer Bleue, a spagh­num bog and wildlife sanc­tu­ary named for a blue mist that rises mys­te­ri­ously under just the right weather con­di­tions. This morn­ing we decided to walk the Mer Bleue Board­walk Trail. The crunch of spring snow under our feet surely scared what­ever wildlife we may have oth­er­wise seen this frosty morn­ing, and we were left to read, unin­ter­rupted, the numer­ous inter­pre­ta­tion signs that mark the 1.2 km path. This is how I came to know not only about the blue mist for which the bog is named, but that bogs are com­mon fea­tures uch fur­ther north in the Boreal forests of north­ern Canada, and that Mer Bleue’s cur­rent topog­ra­phy was cre­ated some 9,500 years ago thanks to the retreat­ing Lau­ren­tide Ice Sheet and Cham­plain Sea. Deposits of sphag­num peat moss form a dense mat up to 6 m deep in some areas, which keeps the water uniquely oxygen-poor, exces­sively cold, and highly acidic. Accord­ing to one sign, the water here is 1000 times more acidic than milk.

Now, why am I going to remem­ber that for a long time to come?

Inter­pre­ta­tion is an infor­mal edu­ca­tional method used widely in muse­ums, parks and zoos to con­vey the mean­ing and value of a place. It is very effec­tive in a short period of time. Why? Because inter­pre­ta­tion offers high-quality com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the pre­cise moment when a vis­i­tor to the museum or park is awed by their sur­round­ings, the very def­i­n­i­tion of a teach­able moment.

Mer Bleue is part of Ottawa’s green­belt sys­tem of park­lands man­aged by the National Cap­i­tal Com­mis­sion (NCC), a Crown Agency of the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment. It has also been des­ig­nated as a Wet­land of Inter­na­tional Sig­nif­i­cance under the Ram­sar Con­ven­tion since Octo­ber 1995. Yet, it wasn’t always an inter­na­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant con­ser­va­tion area. Dur­ing World War II, the Royal Cana­dian Air Force used this area for bomb­ing prac­tice. Today it is threat­ened by urban sprawl, the unchecked activ­i­ties of beavers and those of us who don’t rec­og­nizeits sig­nif­i­cance. The NCC’s chal­lenge is to deliver fas­ci­nat­ing accounts of the ecol­ogy and the geol­ogy of the bog, and com­pelling sto­ries of the French set­tlers that described the blue mist, and to reveal to those of us per­haps more inter­ested in a Sun­day morn­ing walk than eco­log­i­cal advo­cacy why Mer Bleue should be inter­preted at all. Why does it mat­ter? In her book, Cap­i­tal Ram­bles: Explor­ing National Cap­i­tal Region, Kather­ine Fletcher answers that the moss mats full­fill a sig­nif­i­cant eco­log­i­cal niche:

…the wet­land serve as “lungs” of the earth, much in the same way as man­grove trees do in the trop­ics. Mer Bleue bog is crit­i­cal to the health of its sur­round­ing land­scape because it fil­ters con­t­a­m­i­nants from the water­shed region. It also ser­vices as nat­ural reser­voir by replen­ish­ing the water table. More than 75 per­cent of Ontario’s wet­lands have been drained, so it is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant that the NCC remains com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing Mer Bleue as an inter­na­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant con­ser­va­tion area (p. 75).

NCC’s inter­pre­tive walk is not meant merely to enter­tain or dis­sem­i­nate facts about bogs, although it does do that. It is meant to cre­ate empa­thy and mean­ing for this spe­cial place. Rem­nants of the last ice age. More acidic than milk. Unique flora and fauna. On this very spot a mere 15 min­utes from our front porch. Mean­ing­ful places mat­ter to us; we are far more likely to serve as envi­ron­men­tal stew­ards. The real suc­cess of the inter­pre­tive walk is that it cre­ates the kind of empa­thy that ensures Mer Bleue may will sur­vive many more thou­sands of years.

More

• La Mer Bleue: Neigh­bour­ing Carls­bad Springs offers this infor­ma­tive, slightly aca­d­e­mic descrip­tion of Mer Bleue bog, quite unlike the typ­i­cal tourist brochures.
• A Vir­tual Tour of the National Cap­i­tal Region: Inter­est­ing satel­lite imagery of the Mer Bleue bog from Satel­lite Impres­sions, which shows the dif­fer­ent veg­e­ta­tion com­mu­ni­ties quite clearly.
• Cap­i­tal Ram­bles: Explor­ing National Cap­i­tal Region: Kather­ine Fletcher’s insider’s guide to Canada’s national cap­i­tal region — West Que­bec (the Outaouais) and East­ern Ontario region that sur­round Ottawa. If you are vis­it­ing us, this book will guide you along 12 “ram­bles” through hills, lakes, water­sheds and her­itage vil­lages, includ­ing, of course, Mer Bleu.