Beach access to open this summer at shut down N.B. provincial park

A New Brunswick provincial park will be open soon after being closed this summer.

The New Brunswick government has reached an agreement with Woodstock First Nation to manage beach operations at North Lake Provincial Park this summer.

Access to the park and beach, located in York County near New Brunswick’s border with Maine, has so far been restricted this season as result of provincial budget cuts announced in March.

“Ever since we’ve tabled the budget what we’ve heard is, ‘Open the beach, keep the beach open, keep the beach accessible to the public,’” said Tourism, Heritage and Culture Minister Isabelle Thériault. “So that’s what we aimed for.”

Thériault said the provincial government made a request for proposals asking for temporary management of the park, and that Woodstock First Nation was the first to submit.

A statement from Woodstock First Nation Chief Tim Paul said council quickly expressed interest after learning the park and beach wouldn’t open this summer.

“We have a team of summer students who are eager to be a part of this opportunity,” Paul said.

The beach will be open to the public, free of charge, from July 13 to Sept. 7. Operating hours will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday through Monday. The beach will be closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

North Lake Provincial Park was one of 10 sites identified in March’s provincial budget as having 5,000 or fewer visitors. The province said it wouldn’t operate those sites this summer and would attempt to divest the properties to local groups for management.

Dawn Paul, a member of the Woodstock First Nation band council, said her community’s objective was to maintain park and beach access for everyone.

“We’re thinking about all the people who use that park,” said Paul. “There are people who don’t have access to lakefronts, there are people who don’t have access to swimming pools that use the lake all the time.”

The Municipality of Lakeland Ridges also submitted a proposal for temporary management of the park, and in recent weeks had become more vocal about the site remaining closed.

Mayor Greg Grant said he was disappointed the municipality wasn’t chosen to oversee temporary management of the park, but was happy beach access would soon return and congratulated Woodstock First Nation.

“If it’s not going to be us, that’s a good partner to have,” said Grant, who was elected mayor in May.

Grant was critical of the provincial government, saying the Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture largely ignored queries from the municipality.

“We got nothing for six weeks, absolutely held in the dark,” said Grant. “We have tried on so many levels to contact them, to get them to call us to say, ‘Yes, we’re still thinking about it, yes, you’re still in the queue, or, yes, we’re thinking about assigning somebody else, but stay with us we haven’t decided yet.’ Just let us know.”

Thériault said the province was already in advanced discussions with Woodstock First Nation by the time it received a proposal from Lakeland Ridges.

“Woodstock First Nation was ready to go so that’s what we wanted for the population,” she said.

Prior to 2022, the park was last leased to Partners for Youth. About $1 million in upgrades were made to turn the site into a provincial park under Blaine Higgs’ Progressive Conservative government.

When the park’s closure was announced by Susan Holt’s Liberals, the PCs accused the provincial government of carrying out political payback against the former government and Higgs, who grew up in the area.

In a statement last week, and prior to this week’s announcement, PC MLA Richard Ames said it was “another example of abandoning rural New Brunswick while playing the worst kind of politics with people’s lives and livelihoods.”

Thériault dismissed the suggestion of closing the park for political reasons, saying the province’s decision came down to metrics.

“The Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture can’t operate all of the things in the province,” she said. “We’ve got to focus.”

Local residents have raised doubt about the North Lake Provincial Park seeing less than 5,000 visitors in a year, saying the number of people who went to the beach weren’t tallied into the total.

Thériault said agreements have been made this summer with local organizations to take over the temporary management of Bonar Law Provincial Heritage Place in Rexton, and Sheriff Andrews House in Saint Andrews – two sites marked for closure in the March budget.

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