Local Heroes: Ten Extraordinary People

It’s people who make a community. And our second annual celebration of local heroes is a salute to ten extraordinary people who define our community at its best.

By Jeff Rollings

Some of them, like Jade Scognamillo, are just starting out, their early achievement a rich promise for the future.

Others, like Doc Gillies, represent an exemplary lifetime of community service. Some, like Larry Kurtz, dream large and share those dreams on the public stage.

And others, like Jane Helie and Tammy Clark, quietly pursue a daily act of humanity.

All of them make these hills a better place to live.

Tell us if you have a story about a local hero.
Comment in the box at the bottom of this article.

Heather Broadbent: Captive on the Carousel of Time

For thirty-five years, Caledon’s respected heritage expert Heather Broadbent has been speaking up on behalf of our past. Though officially retired since 2000, she continues to champion the cause of cultural and natural heritage protection as vigorously as ever.

Heather immigrated to Canada from Britain forty years ago, although she has deeper Canadian roots. “The first generation to emigrate here was my great-grandfather,” she says. He settled in the Humber River watershed, near what is now Etobicoke, and her grandfather was born soon after. However, after only six years the family went back to Britain, and remained there until Heather returned two generations later.

To say Heather’s knowledge of the region’s natural and cultural history is encyclopedic is to sell it short. She claims she comes by it naturally: “Everyone in the family was interested in history. Knowing my grandfather was here inspired me to learn not just about the pioneer history, but also native history.”

Heather began putting that accumulated wisdom to use in 1974 as something of a self-appointed Caledon heritage czar, raising the issue at hearings for land development proposals and other municipal functions. In 1981, she obtained a vocational licence to conduct archeological assessments.

To find our more about heritage conservation, visit:

Ontario Heritage Trust
Directory of Municipal Heritage Committees (formerly LACACs or Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committees)
Town of Mono Heritage Committee
Purple Hills Arts and Heritage Society
Caledon Municipal Heritage Committee
Heritage Orangeville

Heather stuck with her volunteer heritage cause for eleven years. And in 1985, when the town established the first paid position for a heritage resources officer, Heather was the natural choice for the job. She remained in the role for the next fifteen years.

During that time, her influence grew far beyond Caledon. Arguing that regard for heritage should be enshrined in legislation beyond the confines of the Heritage Act, she participated in updating the provincial Planning Act in 1985 to reflect heritage considerations. “We ended up with something stronger because of that,” she recalls. Today, heritage clauses appear in a wide array of provincial policies, including the Aggregate Resources Act.

Heather also served for six years on the Ontario Heritage Foundation, and a further six as vice-chair of the Conservation Review Board, which hears appeals to the Heritage Act. On home turf, she was instrumental in establishing what is now called Heritage Caledon and other heritage advisory committees throughout Peel. She was also a major player in the development of the Peel Heritage Complex.

It’s a mistake to think that Heather is all about artifacts in a museum, however. She is just as passionate about natural heritage, and has served with a long list of groups aiming to protect and restore the Humber River – everything from efforts to have it designated as a Canadian Heritage River (it was) to conducting historic bridge inventories. “My grandfather lived in the Humber watershed, and I’ve lived here the whole time,” she says, to explain why the river holds such a prominent place in her heart.

“Retirement is exhausting,” says this heritage diva of her hectic life. “Just before I retired I was on seventeen committees. Afterwards I got it down to six. Now it’s back up to eight or nine. I’ve been very lucky. My interest became my life.”
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Doc Gillies: The Fixer

His nickname tells his story. Legendary community champion Doc Gillies’ real name is John. Although even his wife Nancy calls him Doc, he’s not a doctor. He’s the Fixer. Doc’s mister-fix-it skills first came to light in the 1950s. He was working as a sales manager for an ailing Ford dealership in his hometown of Galt. Doc successfully turned the business around. The company took notice, and put him on the road doing the same for other dealerships, bringing him to Orangeville in 1959. Nancy liked the town. They stayed, and Doc became the new owner of Broadway Ford.

In the mid-1970s Doc sold the dealership to his employees and began planning an early retirement: “I was forty-two and I thought ‘That’s it. I’m done.’” He had a forty-two-foot sailboat built, took his five kids out of school, and for the next two years the family toured the Mediterranean, and then crossed the Atlantic.

“Fewer than a hundred boats a year were making trans-Atlantic crossings at the time,” Doc recalls. Why such an extreme family adventure? “It was so I could get to know my kids. I was always working. It occurred to me that I had been an absent father.”

On his return to Orangeville in 1983, Doc served as the town’s economic development officer until 1988 – for which he was paid one dollar a year. “They gave me an office, but I don’t think I ever actually got the dollar.” After that, he began partnering with others on residential development projects that now include more than 450 homes in Orangeville. He also built and still owns three Orangeville malls.

Although Doc’s contributions to the development of Orangeville’s physical landscape are significant, they pale beside his record of community service.

To get involved or donate:

Rotary Club of Orangeville
Rotary Club of Orangeville Highlands
The Door (Highlands Youth for Christ)
Headwaters Health Care Foundation
Building Dreams Together (Theatre Orangeville / Community Living Dufferin)
Friends of Island Lake
Family Transition Place

A long-time supporter of youth, he was a major player in the construction of Rotary Park and later its skateboard park, and he worked behind the scenes to help establish The Door youth centre. A strong advocate of the value of education, he helped with the fundraising efforts for the reconstruction of the Orangeville Public Library and the acquisition of the Humber College site.

In health care, he has served as chair of the Headwaters Health Care Foundation, and is one of the hospital’s senators. He was an unpaid general contractor for the Highlands Medical Clinic, and remains instrumental in ongoing medical clinic planning.

As if all that weren’t enough, he also donated land to the Town of Orangeville for a planned tourism centre, and is a forty-nine year member of the Orangeville Rotary Club.

In 2008, he was named a provincial Senior of the Year.

Along with David and Huda Scott, Doc and Nancy are currently honorary fundraising chairs for Building Dreams Together, a partnership between Community Living Dufferin and Theatre Orangeville to construct a new work and rehearsal facility. Doc also serves with Friends of Island Lake, Headwaters Communities in Action, and Family Transition Place.

These days, Doc focuses on fixing the future. “I’m endeavouring to build leaders,” he says. “We need people to take hold and sometimes it’s better to come along with an older horse.”

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Jade Scognamillo: Our Lady of the Lakes

You need to be careful when you meet 15- year-old marathon swimming marvel and champion fundraiser Jade Scognamillo. You might want to adopt her.

It’s not that this conqueror of both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario needs saving. It’s that her sense of community, commitment, courage and poise raise the bar on “inspiring.” If anyone has ever picked a dream and then utterly dedicated themselves to achieving it, it’s Jade.

Her passions for both swimming and charity began when she was still a youngster in Kent, England. Her mom, Jane, nearly drowned as a child, and vowed her own children would swim, so Jade started lessons at age five. Perhaps more remarkable, she was just eight when her habit of raising funds for charity took hold: “My mom and dad were having a big anniversary party,” she says. “My aunt was ill with cancer, and I wanted to help, so I held a raffle at the party and raised a hundred pounds.” At age nine, she began competitive swimming.

In 2004, the family travelled to Ontario on an exploratory visit, considering emigration. Jade says, “One of the big reasons I was ‘for’ moving to Canada was because I learned about the people who swam Lake Ontario.” The family did move here in 2005, settling on eighteen acres in northeast Caledon. Jade enrolled at Country Day School and began training with the Vaughan Aquatic Club, based in Aurora, under the direction of coach Nancy Black.

The next step must have been nerve-wracking for her family. Imagine your 13-year-old seriously declaring that she plans to swim Lake Ontario, soon. And as a warm-up, she’ll first swim Lake Erie. Oh, and by the way, the whole thing will be a huge charity fundraiser for Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto, which needs infant incubators.

Mom Jane, dad Tony, younger brothers Paul and Connor must have set their worries aside though, because in July 2008, at age 14, Jade became not only the youngest, but, at five hours and forty minutes, also the fastest swimmer to cross Lake Erie. More stunning, she beat the old record by more than two hours, afterward claiming she did it “with energy to spare.”

That energy would be needed if Jade was to at tempt the t radit ional route across Lake Ontario, established in 1954 by Marilyn Bell. At fifty-two kilometres, the crossing from Niagaraon- the-Lake to Toronto is more than thirty kilometres longer than the Erie route.

As a landed immigrant, Jade’s powerhouse Lake Erie swim went in the record books under Britain – her only disappointment from the experience. Weeks before the Lake Ontario swim, however, the situation was rectified when Jade received a unique grant of Canadian citizenship in a ceremony presided over by local MP David Tilson.

On July 24 this year, after thousands of hours of training, after all the anticipation, the big day had arrived. But with supporters gathered at the water’s edge, boats at the ready, Jade underwent a further test of her mettle when the swim had to be called off at the last minute due to thunderstorm warnings. Rescheduled for July 31, the swim was again delayed by bad weather, though this time only by a few hours. Finally, at 9:33 p.m., in the dark, Jade stepped into the water.

A few windy, wavy hours in, experiencing illness and facing a long night ahead, Jade had her first doubts. What helped keep her going? “My coach had this great idea,” she says. “Before the swim she gave me cue cards and got me to write things on them that inspired me or that I liked. Random things – Sick Kids, the money I’m raising, even chocolate. Then she stuck them to the side of the kayak where I could see them. I also had the names of all the people who had doubted me – you remember them, you know.” The technique didn’t stop there – she even had Sick Kids logos painted on her fingernails.

Battling on through the night, did she ever want to quit? “Well,” she says, a certain wisdom in her tone, “wanting to get out and doing it are very different things. I kept telling my coach that during the swim. I was having dull pains – more annoying than anything else. She kept asking if I wanted to get out and I’d say, ‘No. I just want to tell someone!’”

Eventually the long night ended, the task at hand brighter if no less punishing. “Lake Erie was warmer and not as wavy,” she says. “Most of Lake Ontario was about sixty degrees, though in some places it went down into the fifties.”

As Toronto slowly grew on the horizon, Jade’s grit and determination competed with her exhaustion and pain. In the last kilometre, after so many hours in the water, one more gruelling challenge awaited: “The waves grew to five or six feet in the last part,” she says. Nevertheless, when she finally touched the wall at Marilyn Bell Park, a crowd cheering her on, she had become the youngest person ever to swim Lake Ontario. “Everyone thought I didn’t look very happy to be finished,” she recalls, “but actually my face was frozen and I couldn’t show any emotion.”

Donate to Jade Swim4Life here. (Donations over $20 are eligible for a tax receipt.)

Although the record for the fastest crossing of Lake Ontario is a little over fifteen hours, Jade’s goal had been to complete the swim in under twenty. In order to avoid strong currents at the mouth of the Humber River, she ended up swimming sixty kilometres instead of fifty-two – “It felt like I was swimming to Hamilton before going to Toronto” – but despite that she made it in nineteen hours, fifty-nine minutes and forty-nine seconds, that is, with eleven seconds to spare.

Jade has exceeded her original target of raising $35,000 for Sick Kids, and is now aiming at $70,000. So far she has brought in a little over $50,000, but donations will be accepted until the end of the year.

You might expect Jade to be relaxing these days, her goal achieved, but taking it easy doesn’t seem to be in her. She continues to train seven times a week, spending about twelve hours in the water and several more hours on what she calls “land training.” On one hand, she’s pondering university – “I’m into sciences and math” – but on the other, she’s sizing up the Olympics.

There’s little doubt we’ll hear more from charming Jade Scognamillo, but will she swim another lake? “Not necessarily,” she says, and there’s something telling in her explanation: “A lot of athletes are pushed by their parents, but this came from me. There’s no way you can do it without being one hundred per cent committed. A lot of it is physical, but most of it is mental.

Without that, I wouldn’t be able to get across.” Without a hint of been-there-done-that, she says, “I came out of the lake a different person.”
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Rob Ciccotelli: Runaway Stage Coach

In September, 2010, Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Caledon East will be officially designated a school of the arts. For Rob Ciccotelli, a dramatic arts and photography teacher and a driving force behind the initiative, the event can be marked up as one more successful performance.

The sheer volume of this man’s creative endeavours is astonishing. Beyond his full-time work in education, he’s also a playwright, artistic director of a theatre company, a theatrical producer and director, a professional photographer, and member of a slew of arts boards and committees. This husband and father of three has also worked in film, and in the summer he teaches photography for a private school. Whew.

Rob’s frenetic pace has been fruitful, though. Over his fifteen years teaching at Robert F. Hall, the school’s drama program has become one of the most respected in the province – garnering an impressive catalogue of awards and commendations at provincial and international school drama festivals. Theatre Orangeville youth programs have been a rich source of students, but they also come from across the region.

Applications for Pathways to the Arts will be available in late January, 2010,
for submission by mid-February.
Contact Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School at 905-584-1670 for more information.
Or visit http://www.dpcdsb.org/RFHAL/.

Rob’s equally successful plays, including contemporary takeoffs of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet (renamed, Romeo and Juliet Hook Up, but with a classical all-male cast), have been performed on stages across southern Ontario, including Theatre Orangeville, Rose Theatre in Brampton, Stratford and the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto. Many of the members of Theatre Anon, his theatre company, are former students.

Of the arts school designation, which has been five years in the making, Rob says, “We’ve had an enhanced drama program for four years, so it’s not new to the drama department, but it is for everyone else.” The program establishes two streams at the school. Those who sign up for “Pathways to the Arts” will take six to eight credits over four years, from fields of study including drama, visual arts, music, media and dance.

Although Pathways to the Arts is an obvious fit for students who are serious about theatrical or film careers, Rob notes, perhaps surprisingly, “Likely 95 per cent of our students aren’t interested in performing as a career.” However, learning to stand up in front of an audience has other benefits: “I wouldn’t say it turns introverts into extroverts, but it brings out what may be hidden in people.” He adds that several of his former students, including some who have become lawyers, have told him how valuable they find that skill in later life.

Only in his mid-forties, much lies ahead for this guru of performance. He’s currently writing a treatment of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, set amid the big hair and shoulder pads of the 1980s. “It’ll have to include Billy Idol’s song ‘White Wedding,’” he says with a laugh. Production is scheduled for 2010.

“I do what I love to do,” Rob says of his hectic life. “It’s a lot of fun for me. My kids think it’s a scam that I get to make a living at it.”
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Larry Kurtz: Boogie-Woogie Man

The founder of Orangeville’s highly successful Blues and Jazz Festival, Larry Kurtz is also a craftsman, musician, singer and songwriter; a man of many and varied passions. Somehow, he’s good at all of them.

At his day job, Larry is proprietor of Kurtz Millworks in Orangeville, producing Victorian architectural mouldings, gingerbread, doors and cabinetry. Anyone who owns an old house and has tried to match the trim might want to nominate him as a hero just for that.

Larry says he launched the business in 1990 because he had “grown restless” with work as a renovator. “I was always into old houses, and wanted a shop.” It was while he was working on refurbishing the Dufferin County Courthouse in Orangeville that the light went on: “I thought ‘I know. I could replicate hundred-year-old woodwork.’”

With that in mind, he set up a display for one weekend at the Orangeville Mall and “got enough work for the whole summer. I’ve never run out of work since.”

Reproduction Victorian woodwork was hard to come by at the time, and he says, “There were no mentors, no training programs. You just had to figure it out on your own.” These days he’s still doing that, employing new materials and cutting-edge technology that allows him to replicate historic designs more efficiently and cheaply.

Though it seems almost out of character for the quiet craftsman, Larry’s musical showmanship comes with the same “let’s just figure it out” attitude. A childhood member of the church choir at the Salvation Army in Brampton, he was singing a cappella in front of the congregation at age ten. In high school he sang in a band, and at fifteen began learning how to play the harmonica.

However, music soon took a back seat to more practical concerns. Married the first time at age twenty, a homeowner by twenty-one, Larry didn’t return to the harmonica until he was in his mid-thirties. “We started playing out in the shop once in a while, just for fun. Suddenly, we had a band.” Trouble and Strife was born. They’ve come a long way since. Their latest, self-promoted and self-titled blues CD is receiving airplay on 175 radio stations in forty countries. The band is hoping to record a new album this winter.

We can thank Larry’s wife Norma for switching on the light for his next obsession. “My wife said, ‘It’s crazy that we keep driving all this way to these blues festivals,’ and I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be good to have one here?’”

Visit the Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival
web site.

Starting small, Larry promoted a blues show in Orangeville. “There was a line-up to get in,” he says and, with that demand in mind, his vision for the Orangeville Blues and Jazz festival took shape. “I just decided this was something I wanted to accomplish in life,” he says. And accomplish it he did. Rapidly growing since its first edition in 2003, the free festival now takes over downtown Orangeville on the first weekend in June, drawing over 21,000 people and a wide range of big name performers.

If you’ve ever had trouble picking a dream to follow, you might take a cue from Larry’s answer to the question, why the blues?

“I didn’t choose the blues, the blues chose me. It’s the only thing that comes easy. It was the same with the harmonica, it just seemed natural. If you love something and keep plugging away, you’ll attract the right energy.”
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Jane Helie & Tammy Clark: Kind-Hearted Cat Herders

By Michele Green

Five days a week, every week, Jane Helie drives to Hillsburgh, a white-knuckled half-hour trip during inclement winter weather. Upon her arrival, the occupants scatter, stealing back tentatively as she performs her duties in a tiny, unheated cabin. Occasionally Buddy rubs against her leg in a gesture of cautious affection. Jane expects nothing more.

For nearly a decade, Jane and Tammy Clark, who takes over on weekends, have cared for a feral cat community. It all started in 2000 when Tammy noticed a cluster of feral cats in a nearby empty lot while she was having her car repaired. She and Jane returned several times to feed them. Realizing this was a tricky situation, Jane said to Tammy, “Now that we’ve started this, we can’t just walk away.”

Cats are sexually mature at six months of age, often producing litters of seven or eight kittens. Do the math: a feral cat community is an unbridled population explosion. The problem often begins when an outdoor house cat does not return home to have her litter or when farm cats wander off to procreate.

“We decided to start a ‘trap, neuter, release’ program,” Jane says.

Marilyn Case, who worked in Hillsburgh, joined their cause, notifying them when a cat was trapped and dropping it off at the local veterinarian. Under Jane’s watchful eye, each female recuperated for five days at her home before returning to the community.

Anyone wishing to assist one day a week, donate toward the cost (approx. $200/month) of food, or provide old lawnchair cushions, please contact Jane at jjkhpets@xplornet.com.

To adopt a pet or to donate, visit:

Upper Credit Humane Society
Orangeville OSPCA Branch

“Early on, a few people complained about the cats. Some were grumbling that they should be killed,” Jane says. “So we attended an Erin Township meeting where Tammy explained about the trap, neuter, release program that would allow the community to survive and let mother nature run its course.” Ear tattoos identify the cats and the population has remained steady at approximately thirty.

A dilapidated van donated by a nearby garage owner became the first sleeping and feeding quarters. Five years ago, Jane received permission to construct an insulated shed on the property. With lumber and a door donated from Toronto, they built the shed, assisted by a local senior. Comfy cat bunk beds with blankets and quilts line the walls and a cupboard houses supplies. The cats are fed daily with de-worming medications and vitamins added as required.

During the seven years it took to complete the catch, neuter and release program, litters continued to be born. Over fifty kittens were trapped and spayed or neutered. Marilyn took on the responsibility of domesticating the kittens before putting them up for adoption.

The trio paid thousands of dollars in vet bills for spaying and neutering as well as fees for medicine and to euthanize those too ill to save. Not to mention the ongoing cost of food. Since Marilyn moved out of the area, Jane and Tammy soldier on alone.

“I sold my motorcycle to pay one very large vet bill,” Jane says. “But I just loved that cat.”

Jane has always been an animal person. She currently has eight cats and dogs of her own – a couple with special needs. Recently she began volunteering at the Upper Credit Humane Society, serving a term on the board of directors.

The feral cats are aging and one day the community will die out. The end will come quietly with no medals or certificates to recognize this long labour of love, time and expense.

“We did this because it was the only humane thing to do,” Jane says.

UPDATE (Dec. 15, 2009): Please note, while Jane and Tammy are grateful for assistance, they cannot accept any more cats into their care. Their goal is to neuter and care for the existing cats until the population dies out naturally. If you are interested in the care of feral cats, Jane recommends www.alleycat.org.

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Ken Jewett: The Old Man and the Tree

The maple leaf may be synonymous with all things Canadian, but actually finding a true native maple to plant can be a daunting challenge. Ken Jewett, founder of Maple Leaves Forever, is out to change that.

Ken was given his father’s hobby farm at age twentyone, and it was there that his passion for planting trees began. (Ironically, he was working in sales for Abitibi paper at the time.) At age forty he started Marsan Foods, a manufacturer of frozen prepared meals. The company blossomed, and has been featured as one of the fifty best-managed family businesses in Canada.

It was after he retired that Ken returned to his interest in maple trees. “The original motivation for Maple Leaves Forever,” he says, “was an Ontario government program in the 1800s that subsidized farmers for taking maples and other hardwoods from their woodlots and planting them along the roadsides.” The program resulted in the tree-lined roadways so common to the landscape of these hills.

But those trees are starting to disappear. Maples can live for up to 400 years, but pollution, salt and construction take a toll on roadside trees. As well, Ken explains that some experts feel the tree’s natural preference is to grow in a crowded, shady forest – and their longevity is reduced when they are strung out in a line. Regardless of the cause, Ken says, “Here we are in the early 2000s, and all those maples from the 1800s are starting to die.” Most are not being replaced.

A true Canadian maple is one of ten species native to different parts of the country, such as big leaf maples in British Columbia, sugar maples in Ontario, and red maples in Quebec. Instead of these, garden centres typically sell a variety of cultivars and hybrids, or trees of unknown genetic origin, shipped in from the United States where warmer temperatures make them cheaper to produce.

At Maple Leaves Forever, a registered national charity, Ken and his two staff work with seed collectors and nurseries to provide a certified supply of “seed zone identified” native seed, mostly for sugar, red and silver maples. Trees planted in the same climatic zone as their parent trees are thought to be hardier.

The organization also acquires native seedlings, saplings and calipre stock from its network of certified nurseries. It then makes the trees available to landowners, municipalities, conservation authorities and community groups for half the nursery selling price, with Maple Leaves Forever funding the balance of the cost.

Visit the Maple Leaves Forever web site at
www.mapleleavesforever.com

In 2008, 8,500 maples were planted through the program. Restoration on rural roadsides, laneways and hedgerows in southern Ontario has been the major focus so far, though Ken says that one day he would like to see the operation extend across the country.

“You’ve got to have a dream,” says this champion of our arboreal identity. “It doesn’t have to be in business, or making money, but it needs to be something where, in order to get there, you’ve got to be committed.”

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Karen Hutchinson & Jennifer Clark: Supperhero and her Sidekick, Soup Girl

This dynamic duo of aproned crusaders battles to build a local food system.

Karen Hutchinson has been executive director of Caledon Countryside Alliance since 2003. Although she has worked on many rural causes in that time, she says she is most proud of what CCA has accomplished when it comes to local food.

The organization’s Eat Local Caledon initiative, spearheaded by staffer Jennifer Clark, has exploded since its inception in 2007. Through the program, Caledon was home to Ontario’s first Eat Local week in 2007, and that grew into Eat Local months in 2008 and 2009. Karen and Jennifer have promoted Eat Local dinners at Caledon restaurants, hosted four “trade connections” meetings, and produced the 2008 and 2009 Field to Table Directory, linking producers and buyers. They launched the Inglewood Farmers’ Market last year, and partnered with others to launch the Caledon Farmers’ Market in Bolton this year. Along the way, they have also organized an ongoing series of workshops, cooking classes, and special events.

Those events include the “Caledon Crunch,” during which thousands of elementary students across the town all bite into a Caledon-grown apple at the same time.

With much of the Peel Plain in south Caledon consumed by development, and all the other woes in agriculture, you might expect the outlook for local farming to be grim. But Karen, a fourth-generation Caledon farmer, doesn’t see it that way: “I think Caledon is the perfect spot for agriculture,” she says. Citing factors such as climate change, peak oil and the contaminated food scandals in China, she says, “People are much more concerned about where their food is coming from. There’s a real evolution. They’re starting to appreciate their relationship with the farmer.”

For more information:

Eat Local Caledon
Local Farmers and Producers in the Caledon area (PDF download)
Inglewood Farmers Market (map)
Grown in Peel (another list of farmers / producers)
List of local farmers markets
Local Food Plus (certifies sustainable producers)

Will Caledon farmland be swallowed up by development? “I’m betting the farm there’s another option,” Karen says. “There are enough factors changing in the Peel Plain right now that I think it could become the last, best food-producing region in the province.”

Later, she adds “When you look at our farmland and countryside – including the 27,000 acres in Caledon’s ‘white belt’ [farmland excluded from Greenbelt protection] – start to imagine the potential of local food. Instead of more houses, imagine building the foundation of a new green economy, a local and sustainable food system with family farms, orchards, market gardens, vineyards, farm market stores, bakeries, dairies, butchers and local businesses. Let’s start thinking seriously about the legacy we’re going to leave for future generations. Farmland doesn’t have to be land waiting to be developed; there is a higher and better use.”

Jennifer, who also runs a catering business called “Soup Girl” that features local food, is just as passionate about the cause and, like Karen, she practises what she preaches. She says “The drive is to get people excited about fresh, healthy local food. It’s easy to cook, and a nice way to spend time. Then you make them understand the environmental benefits.” Jennifer has recently been promoting a program called Take a Bite Out of Climate Change. It provides eight guidelines for reducing food miles and greenhouse gas emissions, and includes a local food pledge. Details can be found on the Eat Local Caledon website. Over the next year, she will also be conducting training programs for farmers interested in local marketing. “We want to attract more people into farming, so that there is local Caledon food.”

Holy good idea, Soup Girl!