Councillor Langlois makes good on election pledges to create new park facilities
A quiet residential corner in the City of Laval’s l’Orée-des-Bois district, where a park, greenspace, children’s playground and a dog run were sorely lacking for years, has just received a new lease on life thanks in large part to the efforts of the local city councillor.
Located on Cousteau St. just a little to the north of Sainte-Rose Blvd., Parc de la Capitaine-Molly-Kool was named in honor of a Canadian sea captain who was one of the first women in North America to become a registered shipmaster.
While the use of Kool’s name may seem at first like an odd choice for a sector no doubt abounding in local history, it conformed to the nautical theme the City of Laval selected for this neighborhood where the street names also include Magellan, du Phare, Catamaran, Chalutier – and, of course, Cousteau for the famed French oceanographer and naval officer.
Ship’s captain by age 23
According to a CBC News account published when Molly Kool passed away at age 93 in 2009, she received her captain’s “master’s ticket” in April 1939 and was recognized as the first female skipper in North America.
In 1937 at age 21, she had joined Canada’s Merchant Marine School in Saint John, New Brunswick, being the only woman to ever do so, earning a mate’s certificate. “Capt. Kool” was apparently also well known in the United States, where she appeared on an episode of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
A newspaper account published far south along the U.S. east coast of Florida in The Tampa Bay Times stated that “she overcame superstitions about women working at sea and won the respect of her male counterparts as she sailed her father’s 70-foot boat in the dangerous waters of the Bay of Fundy.”
She left New Brunswick after marrying Ray Blaisdell of Bucksport, Maine in 1944. They were together for 20 years before he died. In the 1960s, she married businessman John Carney, who bought her a boat, which he dubbed the Molly Kool.
Known by all as ‘Capt. Molly’
In her final years, Kool lived in an independent retirement community in Maine, where there was a lighthouse and a captain’s wheel in the hallway outside her room and where residents called her “Capt. Molly.” In 2018 the Canadian Coast Guard named an icebreaker after her as CCGS Captain Molly Kool, and in 2019 a sailing ship was named in her honour.
Up to a little more than a year ago, Laval’s Cousteau St. still retained some of its previously rural characteristics, with untamed vacant scrubland on one side, even though the playground was already built in what would end up becoming Parc de la Capitaine-Molly-Kool.
The city also formally established an extensive network of pathways leading around the woods on land it owns behind the playground. It also built an extra-large dog run and a floodwater retention basin on the other side of the street, and improved the roadway along rue Cousteau with new asphalting, sidewalks and urban infrastructure improvements, including a pedestrian crosswalk and protective fencing.
Park development continues
And the development isn’t over yet, according to city councillor for l’Orée-des-Bois Yannick Langlois. The city also plans to build a four-season park chalet for summer and winter use, a covered refrigerated skating rink which could also serve for other sports like basketball, a water games area for children, a soccer practice pitch with natural grass, and four enclosed pickleball courts with night-time lighting.
According to Langlois, the impetus to move forward with this major park development project came nearly a decade ago when the city signed an agreement with the former Commission scolaire de Laval (now the Centre de services scolaire de Laval) for an exchange of land to facilitate the construction of a new school.
Delivering on a promise
“As part of the deal, Mayor Marc Demers had promised the residents he would create a large park,” Langlois said in an interview with The Laval News, referring to the former mayor. “And so, this is the park we are seeing now.” But why did it take ten years to make the park?
Among other things, according to Langlois, were some complications faced by the city over land ownership to acquire the space needed for the future public space. As well, Laval had to satisfy some provincial environmental regulations to make sure the wetlands (on which the park is located) were conserved and protected.
Langlois, who was first elected to Laval city council in 2017 and is now into his third term as councillor for the district, acknowledged that he’d been pledging to push forward the park project since he’s been in municipal politics and that it was about time he delivered. Although the work isn’t yet finished, he estimated the total cost at around $14 million.
