By Craig Westcott/November 9, 2022
The Rotary Club of Waterford Valley will hold a special ceremony this month to name two bridges spanning the river that bears the club's name in honour of past members who were instrumental in caring for the waterway and developing the trail along its banks.
The ceremony, which, which is open to the public, will dedicate one bridge in memory of long-time provincial cabinet minister and Mount Pearl MHA Neil Windsor and the other in honour of former Fisheries Products International executive and provincial deputy minister Sandy Roche. Both men were charter members of the club. Plaques will be placed near the bridges thanking the men for their service.
After the ceremony there will be a reception at Smitty's Restaurant in Merchant Square.
Rotarian Bob Parsons said the club has been working on the cleanup of the Waterford River and the improvement of its linear park trail for years.
"We're over 30 years working on that," agreed fellow Rotarian Bob LeDrew.
"We're custodians of the river from St. John's harbour right to Paradise," said Parsons.
Both LeDrew and Parsons are former past presidents of the club and remember the late Neil Windsor and late Sandy Roche very well.
Roche was instrumental in bringing the three municipalities through which the river runs – Paradise, Mount Pearl and St. John's – together to work on its protection, said Parsons.
"In addition to the (naming of the) two bridges, we have story boards being fabricated," said LeDrew. "There are three of them that are going to be installed, one in St. John’s at Bowring Park, another one in Paradise at Shelby Street, and one in Mount Pearl at Twin Falls."
The one in Paradise, off Shelby Street, will be near Neville's Pond.
"That's where the Waterford River starts," said Parsons. "It's the headwaters, that and Bremigan's Pond in the (Paradise) industrial park. Everything west of that runs the other way down to Octagon Pond and towards the ocean."
Not only is the Waterford a beautiful river, said LeDrew, but it also contains one of the finest breeds of brown trout in North America. "And not everybody understands or knows about it," he said. "That's what we're trying to do with these storyboards, tell the story of a river."
The storyboards, which won't be ready for a while yet and will be unveiled at a later ceremony, will also be dedicated to the memory of Roche, Parsons noted.
"Sandy was the guy in our club who brought the three municipalities together and spearheaded a study on the whole river," Parsons said. "We've been looking after the river now for years, but Sandy was the one who 'did it,' we'll say."
Friends and Lobbyists of the Waterford River (FLOW) also deserve credit, Parsons said, for helping to preserve and protect the waterway. And so do the three municipalities, he added, for staging cleanups every year along the river.
"You'd be surprised at the number of businesses along Topsail Road that were just dumping stuff into that river year after year after year," said LeDrew. "But for the last 20 years, there has been a great concentration on making them aware and some of the owners of those businesses have really come on side and cleaned up their act, and it's wonderful. There's been tremendous support. And a lot of the money that we have to have these plaques made came as a result of donations that a lot of those businesses made, especially after Sandy passed away. In his memory they made donations to us, which we're very grateful for."
Windsor, meanwhile, was instrumental in securing government funding over the years for much of the trail infrastructure that has gone into the linear park alongside the river, Parsons said. "There are five bridges in there and a trail. We had that constructed over the years and used to hire students and they would do all the work and we would have an engineer from our club look after it," he said.
"This was over a period of years," said LeDrew. "It took a long time. We'd get these grants, and we'd have to administer them and hire and pay staff."
These days, the Grand Concourse Authority is looking after much of the work, at the behest of the club. It's the Grand Concourse that has been hired to assemble and install the storyboards. LeDrew said the Authority is doing a wonderful job.
"They're doing it at cost... and it's going to be there for a long time," added Parsons. "I think it's an important thing that people should know about it."
LeDrew agreed, noting the river is an unappreciated regional jewel.
"Oh my God, it's an absolutely gorgeous river, there's no doubt about it,” LeDrew said. "And it's so underutilized, because it's unpublicized."
The November 28 ceremony will begin at 2:30 p.m. at the bridge just off Dunns Lane near the former Chateau Park in Mount Pearl and will include members of the Windsor and Roche families as well as invited guests.