The golf course was once the essential Crown jewel of an agreement to safeguard green space in the Kanata North community.

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One sunny day in late autumn, I went in search of a pathway that wasn’t there. And that started me thinking about commitments unfulfilled and the fate awaiting the Kanata golf course.

That missing pathway had been promised many years ago in the wake of a furious controversy over the razing by developers of a network of wilderness trails north of Kanata’s picturesque Beaver Pond area. Residents lost that battle, and more than a decade later, with Canadian Shield splendour now groomed into conformity, new homes are finally taking over a treeless landscape.

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But where is the promised nature trail that would lead from the Beaver Pond through the development to the untouched beauty of the still-sacrosanct Trillium Woods? That commitment was made many years ago during an information session at which developers and city officials sought to soothe public anger. I........

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