Dear editor:

I beg the pardon of the individuals who are the advocates proposing the reconfiguration of the gateway signage at the convergence of Mississagua and Queen streets as I express my objection to their plans.

I have never really understood what the rationale has been for the feature that presently exists at this location, which is an attempt to enhance a billboard of advertisements for community events.

The feature is comprised of a tilted earthen mound adorned with shrubbery and annual floral plantings and displays information that often does not keep pace with events as they come and go.

The present proposal eliminates the earthen mound and replaces it with a 40-foot masonry wall displaying a large script spelling out the name of this town. It includes a 25-foot-high obelisk representing the first lighthouse on the Great Lakes.

A bumpout into Queen Street for the purpose of extending floral plantings, combined with enhanced landscaping on the opposite corners, is intended to beautify the streetscape.

I am profoundly disappointed as I consider the funding expended to hire a landscape architect who has produced such a dismal design.

This is the type of feature that a corporation would mount to mark the entrance to the parking lot in front of an industrial complex located beside a multi-lane commercial strip to attempt a visual reprieve in the otherwise disfiguring blight of megalopolisian sprawl.

This design looks as if it were a recycled plan lifted out of the file folders of any one of any landscape firm's corporate client accounts.

I wonder if the design is so uninspired because, at least subconsciously, the design realizes the scenery behind the proposed feature is so superior and so resplendent and this site can only be improved by removing all impediments and exposing the verdant and pastoral beauty of the vista looking across the NOTL golf course.

Peter Babcock
NOTL