...They plan to turn the area into a new Lakes District, like the one Turner paints in England. Nathan Vanderklippe of the Globe and Mail says it might be "a recreational haven complete with campgrounds, boating, fishing – even swimming." Who knows, maybe a new generation of artists like Turner or Canada's Group of Seven might be painting the scene a few decades from now. After all, the Lakes District in England wasn't always so beautiful and bucolic; when Daniel Defoe visited in 1724 he described it as "the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself." And look what happened there in 200 years.
Alternatively, the new Alberta Lakes District might turn out to be " a landscape of ponds sullied by toxins and oil, a malingering presence left by an industrial experiment gone wrong."
http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/alberta-tar-sands-be-turned-new-lakes-district.html