Learning Centre

Restoring & Nourishing Water

Our watercourses are the backbone of our natural environment, providing habitat for aquatic life, sustaining the cities and towns that rely on clean water for their residents’ day–to–day needs, and giving us places to play and reflect.

The Ignatius Jesuit Centre property includes a portion of the Marden Creek, a watercourse that feeds the Speed River and eventually the Grand River. The stewardship of this creek is part of our mission statement that commits use to “the care of the land”. Our land management policy specifically includes restoring the Marden Creek watershed as a mandate.

Currently the Marden Creek is dammed on our property, forming the ponds you can see from Highway 6. The current dam, built the early 1900s, is in need of removal or repair, being well past the expected dam life span of 50 years.

We’ve also learned that the ponded water is causing environmental damage, limiting the range of the native brook trout and reducing water quality downstream.

It is for these reasons that we will be working over the next year or so to restore the Marden Creek to its natural state as a cold water stream. This will include slowly lowering the water level in the ponds so that the creek can reestablish its natural flow. The Wellington County Stewardship Council, Trout Unlimited and the Grand River Conservation Authority will be working with us to ensure this work is done in an environmentally sound manner.

An Important Part of Our Project

The dam which creates the Ignatius Jesuit Centre pond is located within the boundaries of the Plant an Old Growth Forest project area.

The Marden Creek and Speed River are integral landscape features in the Plant an Old Growth Forest project area. Reestablishing the natural flow of the Marden Creek will change the lay of the land over a significant portion of the project area. Once removed, the currently “pond” area east of Highway 6 will be incorporated into the naturalization plans of the project. This may entail re–planting with trees or other appropriate species, rerouting trails, undertaking in–stream work to develop even better cold water fish habitat.

Restoring Marden Creek

There is a concerted effort by a variety of environmental stewardship groups to return the Marden Creek to a cold water stream. For years, dams/ponds along the Marden have increased the water temperature, causing it to no longer be a cold water stream. As of the spring of 2009, Ignatius Jesuit Centre's pond will be the last one that is causing this problem.

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), an indicator species of good water quality, historically traveled the Marden Creek to Speed River. Their range currently extends to where the Marden enters the Ignatius Jesuit Centre property. At that point, the water temperature increases to the point that the trout cannot survive. The temperature increase is directly related to water being heated in the large pond.

Benefits of Restoring Marden Creek
  • Restoring the ability of the Marden Creek to find its natural course to the Speed River.
  • Ensuring healthy habitat for fish and other aquatic life.
  • Reestablishing fish passage upstream and downstream.
  • Improving water quality.
  • Improving the aesthetics of the creek.
  • Improving fishing opportunities (for cold water species).
  • Removing the risk of dam failure. (A failure could see large amounts of sediment released into the Speed River, harming aquatic life. It could also put land users in harms way should they be downstream at the time of a failure.)