Angell Woods file lands in court
Beaconsfield Mayor Georges Bourelle was grilled in Quebec Superior Court last Thursday about what the plaintiff’s lawyer described as an abusive use of an interim bylaw that prevented his client from developing a swath of privately owned land in Angell Woods.
The woods, located north of Highway 20 near the Beaurepaire train station in Beaconsfield, have long been a popular place for nature walks, even though much of the territory is privately owned.
The two biggest owners of private property in Angell Woods are Yale Properties and Seda Holdings. Yale Properties owns 3.5 million square feet and Seda Holdings owns about 1.9 million square feet.
Both owners are separately suing the City of Beaconsfield.
Justice Johanne Mainville began hearing the Yale Properties case on March 13.
Yale Properties has also targeted the Association for the Protection of Angell Woods (APAW) in its lawsuit because it says APAW encouraged people to use the woods as a public nature park.
Last week, Yale Properties lawyer Alfred Belisle argued that the Bourelle administration had purposely stalled the creation of a special planning project (SPP) for the 105-hectare woods. The interim bylaw could only be dropped after an SPP was adopted.
Belisle argued that Bourelle had been an outspoken champion of preserving the entire woods ever since being elected to office in November 2013 and that the mayor’s vision for the conservation of the woods played a role in slowing the SPP process.
Bourelle told the court he was in favour of protecting the various ecologically sensitive elements of the woods. He added that his council had inherited the interim bylaw because the previous administration had tried but failed to adopt an SPP before the 2013 civic election.
“We had to start from scratch at that point,” he said.
The interim bylaw was put in place in 2010 to give the city and its residents the necessary time to come up with a plan.
Belisle told the court that Yale Properties submitted two development plans for consideration, one in 2010 and another in 2012. He showed maps detailing the proposed development and told the court the projects took into account the ecological sensitivities of the woods.
Yet Bourelle and two former city councillors who testified the same day said they had never seen the two Yale plans.
Belisle asked former councillors Karen Essen and Rhonda Massad why it was they hadn’t seen either of Yale Properties’ proposed development designs. Both testified that the mayor at the time had been known to withhold information from council.
Massad testified she was in favour of the interim bylaw back in 2010 because “council wanted to be proactive as opposed to reactive. We wanted to consult with the public and do something that was planned, not haphazard.”
Essen testified that during her mandate she was worried about both the interim bylaw and about plans being drawn up by an urbanplanning company hired by the city. One design she saw showed trails cutting through private property.
“I was shocked,” Essen said. “It was trespassing.”
Essen told the court she felt the way the Angell Woods file was handled during her time on council was “unethical” and that the rights of the landowners were not being considered.
When Belisle asked Essen if she would describe the interim bylaw as disguised expropriation, she said “not disguised expropriation — expropriation point final.”
In the final weeks leading up to the 2013 election, the former administration did present an SPP to the public, but opposition to the plan was fierce. During the last council meeting before the election in October 2013, council dropped the SPP. No one who testified during last week’s session could offer an explanation for the last-minute rejection.
Belisle repeatedly pushed Bourelle to explain why, years after his election, there was still no SPP.
Beaconsfield’s lawyer, MarcAndré LeChasseur, interjected to argue that Bourelle came to office with limited political experience and needed time to familiarize himself with the workings of a municipal government.
“It was a crash course in politics,” LeChasseur said.
Bourelle testified that the SPP was not created in the first two years of his mandate because he knew that the Montreal agglomeration council was in the process of revising its land use and development plan and that it was prudent to wait until that was done because all the municipalities would be compelled to come up with urban plans that aligned with the islandwide vision.
When the revised land use and development plan was adopted in January 2015, Angell Woods was designated a nature park, with only a narrow strip at the south end identified as a possible location for residential development.
“Did you not realize that the regulated (portion) included the entire Yale Properties land?” Belisle asked Bourelle.
Bourelle repeated that what he’d always wanted was to see the ecologically sensitive areas protected.
In 2015, the City of Montreal took over the Angell Woods file. The idea was to buy out the private landowners — a move that was well beyond Beaconsfield’s financial means.
Seda Holdings owner Diana Shahmoon has said she doesn’t want to develop her land, but she does want to sell it at a fair price.
Belisle said Yale Properties is prepared to conserve 40 per cent of its property as green space — higher than the required 10 per cent — and build on 40 per cent of the property. The remaining 20 per cent of its land would be used for roads.
Court proceedings are expected to last 11 days.