The Future of the Facilities
The negative impact of the closures can be to a great extent offset if the radar station facilities are properly used after the closures. Each site has been offered by the federal government through Public Works Canada (PWC) to the other federal departments, to the provincial governments, and if there is no reversion clause, to municipalities and regional governments and finally to the private sector via public tender. Local communities have been formed at each location to help in search for a suitable alternative use of the facilities. Although matters tend to change rather often, the latest developments as of the beginning of March were as follows:
CFS Gypsumville
The province owns the land and the federal government owns the buildings. So an agreement was reached with the province; they can take the site as is on the East side of the highway and they get 160 acres of a sewage lagoon from DND. They will also get the West side (the Operations site), but with the buildings demolished leaving the runway strip intact. It seems that the province will flip all of the facilities to the Interlake Reserves Tribal Council Inc. for use as a rehabilitation centre to serve Indian offenders when the sentence is under 2 years. They also want to use the facilities to establish the Interlake Native Technical Institute to train their people in human resources or work activity such as boat or house building and furniture manufacturing. Both projects are supported by the province and would provide services which are badly needed by the local Indians. The whole project may be operational by this fall.
This article was obtained from the National Archives of Canada. Unfortunately, there is no way of identifying the source since we were only provided with the appropriate detail pertaining to this station. The article appears to have been written in the summer of 1988.