By David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen, December 11, 2013
OTTAWA — Residents of tiny Nicolls Island, in the Rideau River north of Manotick, got home earlier this week to heavy equipment tearing trees out of the ground in a city park on the mainland, just metres from their houses, for a drainage project nobody even told them about, let alone asked.
“Nobody on the island knew they were going to do this, or had heard anything of this, and it was disturbing,” said Steve Mousaw, who lives close enough to the park on the other side of the river channel to hit it with a fishing lure. “They didn’t tell anybody. They didn’t tell us, and it’s basically a done deal.”