Belle Park Project

10/10/2026

I can't share link because of fb rules, but folks might want to go to tvo website and search for a doc called "Home," about Cobourg's unhoused encampment, now cleared. Interesting to think about similarities and differences with Kingston. Blurb: When the picturesque lakefront town of Cobourg, Ontario, becomes home to a growing homeless encampment it ignites a community-wide reckoning. Evicted from “drug houses,” cleared from a beach, and driven off county land, Cobourg's unhoused community finds an unlikely sanctuary: Brookside, a vacant heritage estate owned by the provincial government. With the looming threat of private development, the encampment's residents face their ultimate crisis: when there's nowhere left to go, what happens next? HOME is a timely and vital exploration of community, compassion, and the profound search for belonging.
Producer Linda Schuyler, Director William Bowles. See less

08/25/2026

Check out this post by Melissa Reid proposing a way to get water to park residents without so much plastic trash!

by Melissa Reid, August 2026 Walk into Belle Park and you’ll see a disgusting quantity of single-use plastic water bottles scattered around. To the average critic on social media, this is just more proof of an "unruly encampment." Clear the camp, they say.  But let’s look furthe

07/07/2026

As we work away on our film about the totem pole in Belle Park, we have shared two related short essays on our website. Here's the first!

by Emma MacDonald, June 2026 It was a night full of meaning. I remember the energy inside the old Garden City Arena in St. Catharines. People from all backgrounds, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, gathered around the totem pole with paintbrushes. Children ran through the space while strangers, t