For over 100 years, the Tamaracouta Lake Scout Park has taught young people to respect and protect nature—until financial difficulties forced Scouts Canada to put the property up for sale in 2021. Fearing that an unknown new buyer might drain the park’s wetlands and cut down its trees, destroying its rich ecological and cultural heritage, local residents rallied to ensure the land was acquired by a conservation-minded individual.
In collaboration with the Green Coalition, the Legacy Fund financed legal research to ensure the sale was finalized with a buyer who would guarantee the long-term preservation of this important space for youth nature education. We also helped establish a non-profit organization in January 2021: Les Partenaires du Lac Tamaracouta et de ses environs, which then joined forces with the Association du Lac Tamaracouta to advocate for the ongoing preservation of the land.
In the summer of 2025, this difficult struggle culminated in an inspiring success. The Tamaracouta Lake Scout Park was sold—not to a cottage-building company, but to a developer who agreed to sell 82 % of the land to Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) and the local municipality of Mille-Îles.
NCC acquired 122 hectares of this historic site dedicated to conservation. The municipality acquired 177 hectares (under a conservation easement held by NCC), dedicated to outdoor education. Just over one hectare is set to become a tourist attraction managed by the entrepreneur who originally purchased the land. Éco-corridors Laurentiens is joining all stakeholders to assist in preparing a long-term master plan for the area.
This is a huge victory for environmental protection, for nature education, and for those exceptional citizens who fought for over six years to preserve the incredible Tamaracouta Lake Scout Camp.
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