One can’t help but be nervous when Environment Canada says it won’t reveal what, if any, plans it has for the Meanook Biological Research Station the University of Alberta is vacating.
Environment Canada has known since at least the fall of 2013 that the U of A is leaving, and likely well before that; why is it still coy about the station’s fate? Surely the the site is not such a hive of decommissioning activity on the part of the university that Environment Canada can’t step in and make a decisive assessment sooner than later?
It would be a shame to let the station fall to ruin or to actively demolish it. All sorts of research could still be undertaken there by the federal government. Alternatively, they could lease the site out to researchers from other institutions, just as the U of A did during the latter years of its lease.
If a small town can brainstorm ways to keep an old school alive, surely the government can do the same with an assortment of much newer buildings.
