Solar pathway G8 'signature' project.
HUNTSVILLE — The sun won’t go down on a solar-lighting pathway the federal government is sourcing vendors to build for use during the Huntsville G8 Summit.
Once the summit is over, the lights, which will be installed at Deerhurst Resort as the G8’s “signature environmental project,” will be turned over to the municipality for permanent use in a yet-to-be revealed location.
It “will help to showcase innovative Canadian technology while leaving a positive lasting impression of the summit,” according to the electronic tender, which then notes the lighting will be “gifted to the Town of Huntsville for installation at a location within the town.”
The solar lighting is one of two G8 and G20 environmentally friendly tenders for signature projects currently available for bids on the federal government’s electronic tendering site.
Public Works and Government Services Canada also issued a request for proposal for vendors to build a living wall in the media centre — where thousands of journalists covering the G8 and G20 summits — will congregate in Toronto.
This signature G20 environmental project, according to the online tender information, will become a permanent installation in the Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place. A living wall is just that —alive. The bid request asks for pre-cultivated plants and an in-wall watering system as part of the project, which must be up and running in a month’s time.
The solar lighting isn’t the first eco-friendly project the Summits Management Office — that’s the group in charge of G8 planning —has undertaken.
Last month, volunteers planted 6,000 saplings off Etwell Road to rehabilitate a distressed plot of land there.
Also in June, eight trees, representing each of the G8 nations, will be planted in a downtown Huntsville location.
“To leave legacies in communities is not only a educational component but also a way of good stewardship on the (summit planners’) part,” said Huntsville councillor and chair of the environment committee Mary Jane Fletcher, especially since environment, she says, is absolutely essential to Muskoka’s survival.
The solar-powered pathway lighting is dark sky friendly, according to summit spokesperson Béatrice Fenelon.
“Leaving a lasting environmental legacy is an important component of the overall environmental strategy for the G8 Summit that will provide an excellent opportunity to reduce the overall environmental footprint of the summit,” she wrote in an email response.
Huntsville too will have its own living wall, though not as part of this tender.
In the eco-friendly University of Waterloo building, builders are constructing a wall of live vegetation 32-feet long by 14-feet high.