Guillaume Laflamme, LJI Reporter

The Municipality of Campbell’s Bay has received a $70,000 grant from the Quebec government to revitalize its downtown core in an effort to make the town more resilient to climate change.
The grant is made available through a new program called OASIS, offered by Quebec’s environment ministry. The program is dedicated to supporting greenery projects focused on reducing the impact of heat waves and torrential rains on lived environments.
According to the ministry, these weather phenomena are becoming increasingly frequent as a result of climate change.
Sarah Bertrand, director general for Campbell’s Bay, said the municipality has partnered with an Outaouais environmental association, the Conseil régional de l’environnement et du développement durable de l’Outaouais (CREDDO), to map out what it can do to combat the effects of climate change and reduce the impact of what are known as urban heat islands.
“Through the CREDDO, we will have access to urban planners and professional services to help us determine the problems, analyze the risks and come up with a plan that will tell us how we should go about reducing these heat islands,” Bertrand said.
Myriam Gemme, a climate change adaptation project coordinator with CREDDO, explained that urban heat islands are areas containing dense infrastructure, such as paved roads and brick buildings which are prone to retaining heat from the sun and increasing the ambient temperature.

“When you walk in a city where the streets are very large and you don’t see many trees around, those places are even hotter than other spaces like forests,” Gemme said.
“We work essentially in greening projects, so tree planting in urban areas, and also adaptation to floods. Some zones in the Outaouais are more likely to have floods. So we also work with those communities to help them prepare and adapt for the future.”
Bertrand said Campbell’s Bay had hoped to collaborate with other municipalities on the project to capitalize on the maximum of $2 million in funding available for the first phase of the project, but was the only municipality in the region to apply for it.
The OASIS program operates over three phases of funding. The municipality will use this first phase of money to analyze how heat and heavy rainfall affect the town’s village core, and develop adaptation plans.
According to documents provided to THE EQUITY by the Municipality of Campbell’s Bay, the official objectives for the project are to combat heat islands and the effects of heavy precipitation in the Campbell’s Bay village core, improve residents’ quality of life, and revitalize the village core to increase its attractiveness.