While cities across Canada mobilize courts and police against protesters camped in their public spaces, Occupy Ottawa continues to enjoy both remarkably mild weather and tolerant authorities.

Elsewhere, tents come down and handcuffs come out as the protesters run up against municipal bylaws. Occupy Toronto and Occupy Vancouver face new legal deadlines today.

Ottawa’s Occupiers, however, whether by dumb luck or crowd-sourced strategic brilliance, picked as their home Confederation Park, which is under the jurisdiction not of the city but of the federal National Capital Commission.

So far, the NCC has been an indulgent host, insisting only on a few ground rules like a prohibition on erecting permanent structures and politely suggesting it would like the park back for Winterlude in February.

A few blocks south, another group is occupying NCC land and wants to erect a structure they say is temporary.

The Canadian Museum of Nature, which last year completed a $216-million retrofit, now finds itself pinched for parking. Its west lawn was taken over by construction crews during the restoration. It was originally intended to be reinstated as parkland but now the museum wants to install a 150-space parking lot.

Earlier plans for an underground parking lot like those at the other Ottawa museums would have left the park intact, but would have cost over $10 million. 

While the museum is confident the NCC will greenlight the parking lot, neighbours are trying to apply the brakes. Roshell Bissett, who lives in the nearby Beaver Barracks complex, was incredulous when she heard of the parking plan.  
“Why would they take NCC property and make it into a parking lot?” she asked, “Especially since it’s the Museum of Nature … an institution that’s supposed to be representing the conservation of nature?”

Bissett has started a Facebook page to publicize the issue and is gathering names for a petition, but she’s also looking for practical alternatives to save the park. A local condo building, she said, has vacant parking spaces museum visitors might be able to use.

The surface parking lot plan is described as an interim measure, until underground parking becomes feasible or public transit to the museum improves. A couple of decades, maybe. Not long in the lifespan of a museum, but forever for a kid looking for grass to play on.

Bissett’s sceptical of assurances that the once the parkland becomes parking, it will ever be restored. She’s not alone.