The Harrington Lake estate is both the name of the official country retreat of the Prime Minister of Canada and of the land which surrounds it. It is located near Meech Lake where the Meech Lake Accord was negotiated in 1987 several kilometers northeast of Ottawa, in an area known as Gatineau Park, amidst the Gatineau Hills in Quebec. The estate is not open to the public, but the Mackenzie King Estate, the retreat of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King at Kingsmere, is a tourist attraction a few kilometers further south in the park.
The lake itself and the area around it are also referred to as Lac Mousseau. The name Harrington is thought to be a misspelling of Hetherington, the name of a family which settled in this area. The French name Mousseau comes from another early settler to the area, Louis Mousseau.
History
The lake and the property had been acquired by the Queen in Right of Canada in the 1950s, in order to build up preserves of natural areas around the capital. In 1959, supporters of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker suggested that he needed a quiet place to go fishing, not too far from Ottawa, and, later that year, Harrington Lake was chosen as the site for an official country residence for the Prime Minister. During the first prime ministership of Pierre Trudeau, his then-wife, Margaret, added a vegetable garden, which, according to Kim Campbell's autobiography Time and Chance, still provides the house with fresh produce.
Campbell was also the only Prime Minister to have spent her entire term in office residing at Harrington Lake. Initially, Campbell took up residence at Harrington Lake so that her predecessor, Brian Mulroney, could continue to reside at 24 Sussex Drive until renovations on his new private residence in Montreal were completed. Once Mulroney vacated 24 Sussex, Campbell had not finished moving to that address before her party was defeated in the 1993 election, and the Governor General dismissed her as Prime Minister.
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