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UNESCO warns that the planned addition to the Château Laurier could damage the “viewscape” and the overall value of the Rideau Canal, which is a World Heritage site.

It wants the project held until it is re-assessed.

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The addition, along with a plan to build apartments beside the Cataraqui River in Kingston, “could have a significantly negative impact on the Outstanding Universal Value of the property (i.e. the canal) and should not proceed until their full impacts have been assessed,” UNESCO says.

The warning comes in a letter to the Canadian delegation to UNESCO, from Mechtild Rössler, director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre.

UNESCO is basing its request on a technical evaluation by another international body, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

UNESCO calls the canal “the best preserved example of a slackwater canal in North America demonstrating the use of European slackwater technology in North America on a large scale. It is the only canal dating from the great canal-building era of the early 19th-century that remains operational along its original line with most of its original structures intact.”