Winter is both too long and too short for the ardent gardener. It is too short because the summer garden has consumed us, we have neglected our books, our music, our friends, and now winter offers the chance to recapture them.

Helleborus x hybridus.

Like the garden itself, we need a restorative time. And we need a space to contemplate, to reflect on what went well, what needs rethinking, how we can pursue what Francis Bacon called the “greater perfection,” while remembering that gardening is the ideal form of artistic expression for the irresponsible; we can always blame Nature.

Certainly there are tasks that could use attention – cutting back the Carolina beech hedge, knocking the heavy snow from the tops of the cedar hedges so they don’t split open, cutting out a dead limb or one that has simply had the misfortune to extend itself in the wrong direction.

But winter is too long because what we really want is to be back in the garden, chilled and wind-burned, pulling aside the mulch to see if there is any sign of a plant we know cannot possibly be winter-hardy, sniffing with pleasure the dubious odours of the reviving landscape, clearing away the mysterious, uninvited winter debris, edging the beds, peering for the first snowdrop and the first crocus, putting out the garden furniture, like an art dealer getting her gallery in order for the next exhibition.

We are fortunate at Lilactree Farm that the many hedges and fences provide a structure whose geometry is only softly diminished by drifting snow. Many of the trees have bark of great interest (the peeling, cinnamon bark of the Chinese paperbark maple, Acer griseum; the green and white striped bark of the native moosewood, Acer pensylvanicum; the bright red stems of the Japanese maple, Acer tschonoskii).

Others have fascinating shapes, like the towering zelkova at the entrance to the Barnyard Garden, or the gaunt Kentucky coffee tree in the New Field. We rejoice at all this – “You should have an open garden day in February,” said a well-wrapped friend – but we are waiting for spring.

The conventional concept of spring in southern Ontario is that it perishes almost as soon as it arrives. It is true we do not normally enjoy the long, slow spring of the temperate climates of northern Europe. To extend our spring, we need to reach backwards into the cooler weeks of April and early May, we need to embrace those chilly days and nights as gardening moments to be savoured, not merely endured, even if our expectations are sometimes thwarted.

“Is the spring not an evil time, that excites us with lying voices?” asks a character in The Family Reunion, as the snow flurries return. When we announce an open garden day in late April, we often hear the comment, “But what will there be to see?” The answer is: a great deal.

A Garden Diary entry for March 20, 2011 announces the beginning of the floral deluge that will make April one of the most thrilling months in the garden year:

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Cyclamen coum, one of three cyclamen species hardy in the garden with some winter protection.

Many snowdrops already visible have been joined by the first golden winter aconites … My eye was suddenly caught by a substantial patch of rosy-pink flowers (of) Cyclamen coum … had shrugged off its mulch … I sprawled out, torpedoed my way under some shrubs and counted the flowers – there  were at least 70 – and I could see nearby siblings urgently pushing through their cover. Many Leucojum vernum in the Acid Bed and the North Jungle.

•••••

By the first week in April, the snowdrops, including a miniscule sampling of the more than 500 named forms, aconites, snowflakes (the writer Elizabeth Lawrence’s name for Leucojum vernum) had been joined by the few crocuses that were left to us by chipmunks and squirrels, the first dwarf iris and the early, mat-forming Scilla mischtschenkoana, with a dark stripe on each of its pale blue tepals.

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Iris ‘Katherine Hodgkin’ is an easy, old favourite.

April 8: Chionodoxa (Glory-of-the-snow) now flowering freely on the Roadside Rock Garden, while two days later, good stands of Iris ‘Katherine Hodgkin’ shot up and opened by the Steps and in the North Jungle, with more to come in the Anniversary Garden. There, two clumps of Iris reticulata have begun along with the odd Iris histrioides and half a dozen Bulbocodium vernum … Many crocuses now, snowdrops looking ethereal in the South Jungle.

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April 11: Snowdrops and aconites close to their best … the brown-grey snubs of bloodroot beginning to push through, many peony shoots visible, puschkinias everywhere, the great blue wave [of scilla and chionodoxa] preparing its own minor horticultural tsunami, cyclamen continue, Saxifraga elisabethae in flower in the Rock Garden, many dwarf tulips up, pink chionodoxa … a magical moment.

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Many of the days and even more of the nights are cold at this time of year, frost battering down the emerging Crown Imperials, but the garden imposes demands that cannot be ignored.

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Removed burlap and guards from trees in the South and North Jungles, cut out old hellebore foliage, spread gravel on the Back Porch path … clipped the yews, removed the dead Nest Spruce, moved Cyclamen alpinum from the Rock Garden to the Trough … planted a Catalpa speciosa to replace the old Manitoba maple that finally collapsed … The Nursery Garden looked very sparkling after everything had been clipped and raked … sowed seed [in pots indoors] of Tithonia rotundifolia, Salvia coccinea, Quamoclit coccinea … my back has, naturally enough, not improved.

•••••

A pale pink form of bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis.

Before April is out, scilla and Glory-of-the-snow will carpet much of the garden. The rose-flowered spring daphne, Daphne mezereum, lines the east side of the driveway, while the Daphne Bank – not, as a friend suggested, a Noël Coward heroine – is at its best, the flowers of the white form of the spring daphne filling the air with fragrance. Bloodroot, single, double, pale pink appear, along with the first species tulips, while Narcissus minor sets the pace for all the daffodils to follow.

As May arrives, anemones, dog’s tooth violets and rarely-seen trilliums catch the eye. A week later, tulips dominate the Maple and White beds. The spring ephemerals – jeffersonias, primulas, pasqueflowers, fritillaries, alpine plants – race into life. The first herbaceous clematis, tiny jewels of colour, astonish visitors unfamiliar with them. Towards the end of the month blue, pink and white flowers of the vigorous Clematis alpina and Clematis macropetala will flood fences, trees and shrubs.

In the early days of May, deciduous trees and shrubs are leafless, but the hedges of cedar and alpine currant, and sometimes simply of unmown grass, guide our eyes along a peony- and daphne-lined path to a blue bench, to a beckoning obelisk, to one of the two dramatic Hart Massey sculptures seen from under the branches of an allée of ‘Profusion’ crabapples, to a small figure (to make the path look longer) cut into a “window” in a hedge, and on to the borrowed landscape of the surrounding countryside.

From the Nursery Garden, through Malus sargentii, to the Blue Snake in the Oak Grove.

From a wooden bench in the Nursery Garden we can gaze through an open door to a pedestal and into the Oak Grove where Ray Spiers’ Blue Snake neatly divides the space and draws the eye to the blue bench. From the obelisk at the top of the New Field Path we encounter a vista that does not exist at the heart of the garden, but must be sought – the view from the very eastern edge of the Niagara Escarpment over the ungreened fields, over discreet rooftops and slender silos and much-patched barns.

Behind us, cut into the grass, is a maze. It is a copy of the one at Hampton Court, linking one of the gardeners to an English childhood, and serving as a miniature metaphor for the garden as a whole.

By the middle of the month, many trees are beginning to leaf out and flower, though the timing is dependent on temperature as well as light. Magnolias are prominent, especially the yellow-flowered forms, but increasingly the garden is dominated by crabapples, scattered around the garden but also in formal rows. Among the latest to flower are the Toringo Crab, Malus sieboldii, lining the New Field path, and those in the ‘Profusion’ Allée.

A path descends from the Massey sculpture, runs under the overhanging flower-filled branches and leads on, if the timing is helpful, to a single row of the white-flowered Malus sargentii. It is a sumptuous moment before summer’s heat rolls in.

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Lilactree Farm Garden in Mulmur will be open from 10am to 4pm on the following Sundays in 2012: April 22, May 6, 20, 27, June 17,  September 16, and at other times by arrangement. For directions and information, email lilactreefarm@gmail.com.

It turns out Lin’s apprehensions reflect those of many who have since become great fans of Canoe North Adventures, the company the Hockley Valley couple started once Lin “got the northern bug.”

The group cheers after running the formidable Cache Creek Canyon, Mountain River.

With the sort of deft persuasion that has become his trademark, Al convinced his wife to paddle the Yukon’s South MacMillan River. Though she agreed, Lin was terrified by the prospect. She didn’t believe the flatwater paddling she’d done was sufficient training.

“As I prepared to head north, the expedition rested on my mind like a black cloud. I imagined myself always behind the group, struggling to keep up and being asked to face things I was not sure I wanted to face: brutal portages, big bugs, and surly whitewater. Physical exertion to this level was not in my vocabulary! What kept me going was my trust in Al.”

I could relate. Last August, I had a week to ponder my decision to accept CNA’s offer of a trip down the Northwest Territories’ Mountain River. At the time, my familiarity with Canada’s northern rivers was limited to the famed Nahanni. The Mountain was the Nahanni’s little-known, but more challenging cousin. There would be at least some “surly” whitewater, as well as six tricky canyons.

Lin recalls that when she finally made it onto the South MacMillan, it was as if “a lifetime of responsibility fell off my shoulders. I could see my 16- self with all the feelings of youth, when life was simple, innocent and full of joyful freedom. I was hooked!”

That was 21 years ago. Over that time the couple has become well known locally for their Farmhouse Pottery studio on Hockley Road, where Al’s clay designs often feature northern motifs. But since then, this paddling duo has also logged a combined 40,000 kilometres on Canada’s northern rivers. In recent years, their son Taylor has become an integral part of the company too, including working as a lead guide with Al. In total, they’ve led 90 expeditions on 21 rivers in the NWT, Yukon and Nunavut, making their track record hard to match in canoeing circles.

With so much time in the bow (Lin) and stern (Al), you might think they would be winding down their operation, which runs from May until September each year, but nothing could be farther from the truth. CNA’s business took a big leap forward in July last year with the official opening of their brand new outfitting centre in Norman Wells, a small town in the NWT’s Sahtu region, not far from the Arctic Circle. Prince Andrew, a school friend of Al’s, cut the ribbon and spoke eloquently about Canada’s north.

North-Wright’s president, Warren Wright, grew up in Dundalk, Ontario.

With funding from the territorial government and an informal alliance with North-Wright Airways, Al andLin are helping put the Sahtu region on Canada’s tourism map. (Coincidently, North-Wright’s president, Warren Wright, grew up in Dundalk, Ontario.) They aren’t the only people from Headwaters involved in the campaign to balance out the NWT’s focus on resource extraction. Over the last three years, some nine people from Headwaters, including Al and his son Taylor, travelled to the land of the midnight sun to help build CNA’s outfitting centre, and the hangar, dock and aviation museum next door.

Laurie McGaw and her contractor husband Ross Phillips are among the most involved. Laurie, who lived near Shelburne for years, is an eminent Canadian portrait artist. With Lin’s recommendation, Laurie was commissioned to paint two murals that depicted the region’s aviation heroes for North-Wright Airways’ new facilities. Laurie was so enamoured with her experience that she plans to return to paint portraits of some of the Sahtu’s Dene elders. Ross, who helped North-Wright convert an old Alaska Highway building into the aviation museum, will do the finishing carpentry on the new home of Warren Wright’s son. The couple has caught Al and Lin’s northern bug,although, as Ross emphasizes, “not enough to want to live up there year round!”

Defined by the Mackenzie River, Canada’s longest, the Sahtu region encompasses Great Bear Lake as well as a range of the Mackenzie Mountains that rises up from the river to the Yukon border. It is the source for several paddling rivers, among them the Mountain, Keele and Natla. These rivers flow for hundreds of kilometres, gaining speed and girth as they tumble out of the mountain peaks and flow into the Mackenzie. With names that are unfamiliar to all but a few ardent paddlers, a handful of geographers and a growing number of mineral prospectors, these waterways are largely untracked. They receive a small fraction of the paddlers who navigate the Nahanni.

Although Lin and Al lead expeditions on a dozen or so different northern rivers, a number of which empty into the Arctic Ocean, it’s the Sahtu Region that is their passion when they are away from the Hockley Valley. Inhabited mostly by four different Dene people, the small town of Norman Wells (pop. 800) is their base, as well as a home to Imperial Oil since the company discovered oil there in 1919.

Oil remains a focus in Norman Wells, especially now that the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline is once again being considered, but it’s gold that has helicopters f lying up and down the Sahtu’s deep valleys and over its sharp peaks. And it’s minerals that threaten the Sahtu’s pristine wilderness.

The group cheers after running the formidable Cache Creek Canyon, Mountain River.

As I made my way down the 340-kilometre Mountain River over 11 days, we came across ptarmigan, sandhill cranes, eagles and dozens of magnificent woodland caribou, their antlers so enormous they made my neck hurt. Though we never spied any, I could imagine that grizzlies and black bears watched our progress. We picked blueberries, identified soapberries and cranberries, made Labrador tea, and hiked high up into mountains.

Karl Schiefer, who spent 35 years as an environmental consultant, has accompanied CNA on five northern rivers. Karl recognizes that people who travel these rivers will also see what I spied in the lower reaches of the Mountain River. Here, sheer cliffs composed entirely of fine silt limit the river’s gracious curves. The only “structure” holding these banks together is permafrost. Even though the air temperature was cool, they were melting.  Streams, in some cases rivers, of mud carved deep channels and flowed unimpeded into the river, filling it with sediment and eroding the shoreline. Karl confirmed my fear that a warming climate was speeding up this process. I wondered what effect it was having on the river and its resident wildlife.

Recognizing the need for tourism to balance out mining interests in the Sahtu, Karl is enthusiastic in his description of CNA’s expeditions: “I’ve been on lots of organized trips and Idon’t think you can give them too high a mark … Anyone who goes on one of Al and Lin’s trips will come away with a different view of wilderness.”

What sets CNA’s expeditions apart isn’t only the couple’s canoeing experience, it is also the care with which they craft each trip. When I answered their last-minute call for a journalist, Al was most interested in the fact that he knew me and felt I’d get along with the group he had already lined up. My writing credentials and limited paddling resumé took a back seat. The couple has made a career of getting the personal chemistry right for each trip. I came away from the Mountain River with some new, likely life long friends.

Summer 2011 at the Canoe North Adventures Outfitting Centre in Norman Wells, nwt. back row left to right : Ron Jasiuk, Donald Grant, Al Pace, Warren Wright, Harry Feinig. centre row : Susan Casson, Shar Robertson, Laurie Smith, Matt Casson, Taylor Pace, Peter Scott. front row : Jim Robertson, Lin Ward, Laurie McGaw, Bethany Lee, Cedar Jasiuk, Ann Voyame

Getting the right people often puts Al’s gift of persuasion to the test. Take Cathy Macdonald who weekends near Mansfield, as an example. A trip to Florence or Paris was her idea of the perfect 50th birthday. Problem was, her husband Jamie, who doesn’t like cities much, ran into Al some months before Cathy’s big day. It wasn’t hard for Al to convince Jamie that Cathy’s 50th would be better spent on a CNA canoeing adventure. But it took some conniving to talk the birthday girl into it. “I didn’t know why Jamie wanted me to go visit Al,” Cathy explained. But the meeting worked. Al convinced Cathy to give the north a shot despite what she thought was her too little paddling experience.

Getting people to believe they can handle a big-water northern river is one of Al and Lin’s greatest challenges. Another is getting them to understand that the trips CNA operates are pretty comfortable. The food is great, the tents are roomy, the biffy generally has a great view, and happy hour is always entertaining.

Even though she’d agreed to paddle the Keele River, Cathy said, “I couldn’t sleep for a week before that trip.” As she looked back on that 2006 expedition, Cathy says it was the beginning of her more adventuresome holidays (she’s since paddled the Mountain River). “I proved to myself that even though I was 50, I was not about to be turned out to pasture.”

I had a similar experience on the Mountain River. I was so unnerved by what I’d signed up to do, I spent the better part of an afternoon a few days before I was to leave watching how to-paddle-whitewater videos. When I finally climbed into the bow of the canoe high up in the Mackenzie Mountains, I was filled with trepidation. But as we cascaded down that powerful river at a pace that seemed fitting for a downhill skier, I learned some of the tricks of the trade. By the end, I had developed a reasonable bow-draw stroke. It required me to brace my knees against the boat and lean my body far out of the canoe so that I could stab my short, fat whitewater paddle into the roaring river to gain the traction I needed to pull the canoe around and avoid “kissing” a looming sheer cliff face in one or another of the Mountain River’s canyons.

A female moose and her calf wade in the river shallows.

But as much as I loved the exhilaration of days spent flying down 100- and 200-metre-long white water ramps, it was my first sighting of caribou that will stay with me forever. It will be Al’s sheer joy at leading our group safely down the trickiest of the northern rivers. He took charge of our trip with the light touch of a benevolent dictator. His leadership went unchallenged as he sought out the best routes down immense rapids, through sheer-cliffed canyons, and among as many as five or six river braids. With his eagle eyes, he always spotted wildlife first, pointing them out with the glee of a young child.

John Wheelwright, who lives near Palgrave, has paddled three rivers with Al (two of them with his wife Isabel). He said, “I feel that anyone who enjoys the outdoors should make a real effort to visit Canada’s north by canoe. There is really no other way to enjoy the majesty of the northern rivers.”

It is also a tremendous way to push your limits as Lin and Cathy and I had done along with, no doubt, dozens of the 136 other Headwaters residents who have followed Lin and Al to the north. Like me, they took heart in CNA’s safety record: although there has been an occasional capsize over the years, none has resulted in injury or evacuation.

Thanks to Al, Lin and my stern paddler Taylor Pace, whose skills match those of his parents, wild excitement crowded out any fear I had during my trip down the river. More over, I vowed that one day I would return again to paddle Canada’s north, one of the world’s great wilderness landscapes. It can’t be for my 50th birthday and it won’t be as a young bride, but I can’t think of any adventure that would be as exhilaratingly romantic as undertaking this trip with my life partner. Guess I’ve caught the northern bug too.

Cory first began documenting the Canadian wilderness in earnest in 2001 around Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. That project, called Coast to Canvas (see In The Hills, Summer 2003) resulted in a touring exhibition of 30 oil paintings. In 2006, he travelled still farther afield to the eastern Arctic, documenting his painting adventures in a film called Into the Arctic.

Mount Thor, 9' x 5'

Three years ago, Cory undertook his most ambitious project of all, venturing far into the western and high Arctic. Over three months, he travelled to a dozen locations, primarily on Ellesmere and Baffin islands, places so remote few people have ever visited them. “I can’t deny the thrill of knowing that I may be the first person ever to paint this view,” Cory says. “It feeds my inner passion for exploration and marries it to the canvas.”

Into the Arctic II, the 85-minute documentary that traces his amazing trip to these seldom-visited places, premiered on the big screen in Bolton last October. Since then, it’s been shown in seven Ontario cities, including Ottawa, as well as Iqaluit. It will play in New Zealand this spring and other international showings are in the works. CBC’s Documentary Channel gave both his Arctic films back-to-back prime-time airing in December.

As executive producer, director, cinematographer and narrator of Into the Arctic II, Cory has created a riveting film that is part Survivorman, part travelogue and part History Channel, all the while featuring his stunning oil paintings.

To get to Mount Thor, Sam Ford Fjord, Wilberforce Falls, Coronation Glacier and other iconic, but seldom-visited Canadian sites he travelled by float plane, boat and hiking boots with the help of Inuit guides. At one point, he and his brother Carl lugged hundred-pound packs stuffed with food, camping gear, paints, canvases and easel, as well as camera equipment.

To paint icebergs, he and his guide moved in closer than caution would dictate as these extraordinary formations calved off house-sized chunks of ice that could have swamped their small motor launch. To capture Wilberforce Falls on the Hood River from a lofty vantage point, he perched himself on the edge of a canyon and tied his easel to nearby trees as he battled gusty winds and hellish legions of mosquitoes. And the filming of his encounter with a trio of Arctic wolves is worthy of National Geographic.

With its up-close-and-personal depictions of monumental landscapes, Into the Arctic II can’t help but make you simultaneously very proud to be Canadian and concerned for the preservation of the northern wilderness. Exactly as Cory hoped it would do.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, Cory spent some of his formative years near North Bay. “My brother and I would get in a dinghy, go down the river and return after dark,” he recalls. By the time his family settled in Caledon, his spirit of adventure and love for nature were ingrained. This graduate of Humberview Secondary School in Bolton (which his daughter now attends) and Sheridan College is an avid canoeist and clearly doesn’t let physical exertion come between him and the subject of his paintings.

To a lesser extent, it doesn’t come between his family and nature either. His wife, Janet, and two daughters, Sydney and Andie, joined him on his earlier ventures on Lake Superior and in the Western Arctic, but the threat of polar bears, the need to cross treacherous glacial rivers, and the sheer remoteness of his 2009 travels meant that he left his family behind for this expedition. Instead, he was accompanied by four different people, usually one at a time. Their job was to help film the adventure, carry gear, keep Cory company and help ward off unwelcome predators, such as the polar bears that several times came within shooting distance of their camps.

In the documentary, he explains what drives him to pursue these artistic adventures. “Through them, I hope others are inspired by these distant lands and that they further an appetite to care for them more.” That passionate goal was no doubt one of the factors that encouraged Parks Canada, and more than two dozen other sponsors, to support his undertaking.

Cory’s goal is to create 50 paintings from the trip. Although he is about two-thirds of the way there (with many of the paintings already sold), he discovered that “when painting this grand landscape in the field, my canvases were just too small.” Hence the barn renovation at his home on The Gore Road. With several very large canvases now planned and underway, each requiring months of work, he expects it may take another two years to execute the whole project.

His depiction of Wilberforce Falls, for example, is 7½ feet by 5½ feet. (The Canadian government considered giving the painting to Kate and Will as a wedding gift.) His painting of Mount Thor is 9 feet by 5½ feet. And the centrepiece of the collection, Great Glacier, at Coronation Fjord, is 15 feet by 5½ feet.

Sundown at Wilberforce, 45" x 19"

Still in his early 40s, Cory hopes that one of his Arctic paintings may someday hang on Parliament Hill, a reminder to Canadians and their legislators of the need to preserve our rich northern landscape. And if any artist can add his voice to awareness about the threats associated with mining and climate change, Cory is the man. Not only does he have the creative talent and adventurous spirit to explore the wilderness, he promotes his art in ways that are innovative, highly professional, entertaining and surprisingly rare in an industry that often complains it is underappreciated.

“Am I capturing the spirit of the land and in some way preserving it?” Cory wonders. “That’s for others to decide. All I know,” he says, “is that I’m giving it my all.”

Frogs can do wondrous things. Some can essentially freeze solid, then, in an astonishing resurrection, thaw out, stretch their sinuous legs and hop away. Cryogenic scientists struggle to unravel their mysterious secrets.

Some can scale sheer glass surfaces like amphibian spider-men. One species can willfully change its colour to match its surroundings. Some frogs can poison their adversaries and some tadpoles can change their shape and colour to stymie predators.

Ten species of frogs and toads share our landscape, a rich assemblage of hopping amphibians for such a northerly clime. And the good news is, given the threats to many of their kind around the world, most of our frogs are doing very well.

Leopard & wood frogs. Illustrations by Ruth Ann Pearce

Six varieties are common. Because our lightly populated landscape still contains ample fields, woodlands and wetlands, these species can be found throughout Headwaters. They are the spring peeper, grey tree frog, American toad, northern leopard frog, green frog and wood frog.

Four other species are more spottily distributed. The mink frog, a species more common in the Canadian Shield, reaches its southern limit in the hills, probably extending no further south than the village of Alton. The bullfrog, the bruiser of the frog clan in North America, is found only sporadically here. The chorus frog, a wee sprite that could perch comfortably on a bullfrog’s nose, is also more rare, as is the pickerel frog, a close cousin to the more numerous leopard frog.

Though all our frogs and toads depend on wetlands for breeding, each species has particular preferences. Some, like the American toad and the grey tree frog, are bold opportunists, breeding just about anywhere – ponds, lakes, swamps, roadside ditches, garden pools – even pool liners. Amphibian dousers, they seem to possess an almost magical ability to find these water sources. This allows them to shift their breeding sites from year to year, taking advantage of temporary pools that come and go on the landscape.

However, the breeding site selection of these amphibians is not entirely random. Toads, for example, discriminately test the waters, so to speak, for telltale evidence of the presence of wood frog tadpoles. Those omnivorous creatures consume whatever they can get their rasping mouthparts on, including toad tadpoles. Remarkably, if a mother toad detects the presence of wood frog tadpoles, she turns her warty back on the pond and hops away.

Unlike toads and tree frogs, wood frogs are very choosy about where they breed. They look for ponds that will dry up in the summer heat. Spring peepers and chorus frogs also prefer these temporary “vernal” pools.

This raises the question why so many amphibians – spotted and Jefferson salamanders also lay their eggs in vernal pools – entrust their precious larvae to ponds that could dry early and kill them. The short answer is fish, or rather the absence of fish, in the vernal pools. Avoiding amphibian-hungry fish trumps the spectre of early drying.

The Niagara Escarpment, beaded with innumerable such pools, is one reason we have so many frogs. Another is the presence of extensive woodlands. Some of our frogs are utterly tree-dependent. These include the aptly named wood frog and grey tree frog. Remove trees, and the shelter, food, humidity and shade these frogs need are gone.

Other predators that make a frog’s life perilous include giant water bugs, herons and raccoons. Of course, as masters of evolutionary adaptation, frogs are not entirely at the mercy of these predators. Some, like leopard and pickerel frogs, avoid pursuers with erratic, powerful jumps. Tiny, cryptically coloured frogs, such as spring peepers and chorus frogs, opt for concealment.

Several frogs, including pickerel frogs, emit toxic skin secretions that leave a bad taste in a predator’s mouth. Large glands behind the eyes of toads contain bufotoxin, a witch’s brew of chemicals that can cause seizures and convulsions in mammalian predators. Bullfrog tadpoles are believed to be toxic as well, a quality that allows them to swim unmolested with the fish.

Alas, no defence is absolute. Snakes feed on toxic toads and pickerel frogs with impunity. I once watched a garter snake open its mouth impossibly wide to swallow a large toad. The big gulp took about 20 minutes.

Another remarkable defence that one of our frogs has evolved is the ability to change colour. The grey tree frog’s scientific moniker is Hyla versicolor. The species name is most apt, for this chameleon-like frog can colour shift through a range of greys, greens and browns to match its surroundings.

Grey tree frog tadpoles also have a colour change capability, stimulated by chemical traces of predacious dragonfly larvae in the water. If the larvae are present, the tadpole tails will turn bright red. The theory is that the intensity of this colour diverts attention from the heads of the tadpoles to their expendable tails.

Even more remarkable is how our tree frogs survive the winter. Grey tree frogs, along with spring peepers and wood frogs, hibernate on land – not under a foot or so of insulating soil like the American toad – but simply by tucking themselves under a blanket of leaves on the forest floor. When the mercury falls, they become frogsicles!

Well not exactly – though that might be your impression if you held one in your hand. These frogs have the ability to transfer much of the water in their cells into the spaces surrounding those cells. It is in these extra-cellular cavities that freezing occurs. At the same time, water remaining in the cells is flushed with syrupy glucose or glycerol, natural antifreezes that protect the vital cell structures. This amazing survival toolkit allows wood frogs to live further north than any other amphibian, even beyond the Arctic Circle.

Hibernating in the leaf litter, these frogs are energized sooner by the warmth of the springtime sun than their pond-hibernating kin. This means, for wood frogs and spring peepers at least, an early start to their breeding activity, sometimes before the end of March. In the vernal ponds, where many of these frogs breed, this early start is crucial as their tadpoles race to transform before the ponds evaporate.

Although frogs are eaten by many other animals, they are effective predators themselves. They usually ambush their prey, waiting sphinx-like until insects, spiders and other invertebrates wander within striking distance. Bullfrogs eagerly devour anything they can fit in their cavernous mouths including mice, small snakes and other frogs.

Movement triggers feeding. A juicy bug clinging to a cattail leaf in front of a frog’s snout will be ignored as long as it is sensible enough not to move. A flick of its wings, however, or a waggle of its antennae will immediately arouse the frog’s interest.

In a water-filled ditch along Highpoint Sideroad in Caledon one summer, I had a rare opportunity to watch frogs actively feeding. A bloated beaver carcass bobbed in the water with three green frogs aboard. The carcass had become an amphibian buffet, with plump bluebottles and carrion beetles on the menu.

Be kind and tender to the Frog, And do not call him names,
As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’ Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’
Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong, ’Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair; At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way, They are extremely rare).
The Frog, by Hilaire Belloc

Froggy fears

Despite the mind-boggling repertoire of survival adaptations that frogs possess, many species are ill-equipped to deal with the environmental changes we have wrought.

Of the more than 5,500 frog species in existence, hundreds are now on the casualty list of endangered and threatened wildlife. A great extinction event is unfolding because of our management of the planet. When the dust settles after this apocalypse, it is likely many species of frogs will be gone forever.

Although our local frogs appear to be doing well, they are not immune to the varied threats causing frog populations to decline elsewhere.

American toad. Illustrations by Ruth Ann Pearce

Bob Johnson, curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Toronto Zoo, says, “Loss of habitat in Ontario and globally explains about 75 per cent of amphibian declines.” This is no great surprise. Eliminating the mosaic of wetlands, fields and forests that frogs depend on pulls the ecosystem rug out from under their webbed feet.

Habitat loss is not the only threat facing frogs. Johnson sites pollution and the recent emergence of diseases. One is chytrid fungus, a pathogen that has ravaged frog populations in widely disparate parts of the world. It is spreading tsunami-like down the spine of Central America, sweeping away frog species such as the exquisite golden toads of Costa Rica. Poignantly, Johnson was probably one of the last people to see a breeding pair of these frogs. “For me,” he says “extinction is personal and extends to the extinction of experience itself – the opportunity for me to share an experience with you, my daughter or your readers.”

The wholesale disappearance of a species is not necessary for Johnson’s “extinction of experience” to occur. It can happen as well when a frog becomes locally extinct and we lose the opportunity to experience the joy and fascination of hearing and observing it in our own communities.

The water-permeable skin of frogs makes them especially susceptible to water-borne pollutants. Frogs lacking limbs or with extra limbs have been found in disturbing numbers at some sites in Canada and the United States. The causes of such deformities are not fully understood, but it is widely accepted that run-off from pesticides and fertilizers is among the factors.

Unlike pesticides, fertilizers do not affect frogs directly. Instead, they are thought to be the “push” that gets the deformity ball rolling. Fertilizers encourage the growth of algae in ponds, spurring a population explosion of algae-grazing snails. It’s not the snails that harm the frogs, but a parasite they harbour. The parasites leave the snails to complete their development in the bodies of tadpoles, where they can impair limb development.

Concern about frog populations inspired the creation of FrogWatch-Canada, a national frog monitoring program co-ordinated in Ontario by the Toronto Zoo. Headed by Bob Johnson, FrogWatch Ontario invites the public to submit information on where and when they have heard frogs calling.

Thousands of records have been contributed to FrogWatch Ontario since its inauguration in 1998. “These data can be used to look at long-term trends in populations, or shifts in calling and activity dates based on weather changes,” says Johnson. But as important is the role FrogWatch plays in engaging people with nature: “People can speak up for the creatures that cannot speak for themselves.”

Here in the hills we have a wonderful opportunity to speak up for frogs and act on their behalf. We can ensure that our hills, unlike so many places in the world, remain frog friendly. Obviously we need to preserve the wetlands and woodlands they depend upon. But we can also go a step further and attempt to grow frog populations by enhancing and creating frog habitat.

Landowners are crucial to such an initiative. “Reducing chemical use on lawns or near water bodies is an easy first step,” says Johnson. “Leaving grassy areas unmowed is also easy. This provides not only shelter from the sun, but areas where frogs can forage for the invertebrates that will also thrive there.”

Allowing natural corridors to develop between ponds and woodlots to permit safe movement between them is another good idea. Such linkages can also be brought about simply by not cutting the grass.

Where there are no ponds, they can be built, though resist the urge to stock them with fish if frog habitat is the goal. Digging temporary pools is an option as well. Locating such pools near woodlands offers additional breeding opportunities for frog and salamander species dependent on vernal pools.

Why should we bother to ensure that frogs continue to thrive in Headwaters? Well, to begin with, consider the role they play in the food web. Most frogs end up in the bellies of other animals. That is why frogs lay hundreds or even thousands of eggs. They convert the abundant energy found in wetlands into, in Bob Johnson’s words, “a form that is readily digestible (i.e., juicy frogs and tadpoles).” A spring bereft of frog voices would indicate not only an absence of frogs, but a dearth of other creatures that depend on them.

The crucial role frogs play in maintaining healthy biodiversity should be enough reason to protect them. But there are other compelling reasons as well. Frogs are a splendidly slimy, animated introduction to the natural world for children. The thrill of the chase, the splashing, the opportunity to get muddy, and finally a wriggling, writhing frog in hand is, in the vernacular of the young, “Really cool!”

My grade six class has the opportunity every spring to catch frogs at Finlayson Field Centre at Caledon Lake. Most of these urban kids have never seen a live frog before and they jump at the chance to find one. The guidance of caring adults is necessary, of course. Children need to understand that after suffering the indignity of capture, the frogs should be handled gently and quickly returned to their watery realm.

If frogs can open the eyes of children to the wonders of nature, they can also touch our souls. Bob Johnson again: “Frogs and other wildlife enrich the lives of many of us, just as art and music do. Just as art can provide meaning and inspiration and insight into the power of creation, so too can frogs.”

Young Hound by Marc Lavoie, early to mid-20th century, painted wood, 24" high. Photo by Pete Paterson.

Just how ingrained is that relationship? According to a recent American study on childhood language development, “cat” and “dog,” along with “mummy,” “daddy” and “milk,” are among the 25 most common words a child first utters. And as all adoring parents know, before they’re three, most children can name every animal on Old MacDonald’s farm (and what they “say”), along with a host of other wild animals, many of them from far-off lands. Although they may never have seen the real creatures, they have met them through the art in their picture books.

Throughout the ages, humans have elevated animals as gods or vilified them as demons. Animals have been our playmates, our workmates, our slaves, the companion at our feet, the food on our table. In our contemporary world, they are increasingly valued as our fellow creatures on a small and fragile planet.

It is that last relationship that is the inspiration behind Beauty in the Beast, a truly extraordinary exhibition of animals in art and objects that runs from April through the end of the year at Dufferin County Museum & Archives.

Museum curator Wayne Townsend had been ruminating on the significance of the broad-based outcry against the proposed mega quarry in Melancthon. To him, it revealed just how intensely attached the community remains to the fields, woods, rivers and animals that define this region’s social and natural heritage. About the same time, he ran into a private collector who had previously shown portions of her vast collection of animal-inspired art in the museum’s exhibitions. She told Wayne she had been thinking it was time to move her entire collection into the public domain. And a show was born.

Along with fine art, Beauty in the Beast includes an extensive collection of historic and contemporary folk art pieces. Photo by Pete Paterson.

It took more than four weeks of flat-out effort to move, catalogue and install the collection of some 1,500 works. Acquired over a lifetime by a woman with both a passionate love of animals and an educated artistic sensibility, the works range from tiny ivories to large bronze sculptures, from highly formal portraits by British masters to engagingly whimsical Cape Breton folk art, from sophisticated dinnerware ornamented with animals to weather vanes and children’s rocking horses. Although they come from around the world, the majority of the works are Canadian (beavers are well represented), including several Ontario artists.

In this exhibition’s peaceable kingdom, horses and cows share companionable space with rabbits and foxes, dogs rub shoulders with cats, a plump hippopotamus does not feel out of place next to a sleek deer. A moose rides a motorbike and a beaver takes a walk on a leash.

Animals, domestic and wild, have always been an integral part of the daily life and culture of Dufferin, says Wayne. “They are at the very heart of the quality of life we so treasure.” And in the changing cultural makeup of the community, he adds, the human relationship with animals creates a common bond.

The Collection by Heather Cooper, 2005, oil on canvas, 8" x 10" Toronto artist Heather Cooper is a prolific painter whose work often features mythical overtones. She is perhaps best known for her fancifully detailed posters for the Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Winter Fair, as well as designer of the Roots beaver logo. Photo by Pete Paterson.

The donor of the collection (who wishes to remain anonymous) had considered other locales for the show, but settled on DCMA as the “perfect place,” in part because, “it’s in the country. Animals belong here.”

For the official opening of Beauty in the Beast on the afternoon of April 1, visitors are invited to bring their pets.

Linda McLaren:
A life with animals

This summer, Beauty in the Beast will include a show by Linda McLaren, whose Headwaters Sketchbook was a regular feature in this magazine for 15 years.

An Amaranth farmer, artist, naturalist and avid reader, Linda brought to the Sketchbook not only her delightful and detailed pen-and-ink illustrations of local flora and fauna, but her careful research notes and, inevitably, a literary reference that captured the essence of her wild subjects. Linda retired her column in 2011, but the original art from the Sketchbook will form part of the show, along with her drawings and watercolours of domestic and wild animals.

As on only child raised on a farm, Linda says she gravitated naturally to the companionship of the natural world. As an artist, she has frequently led sketching workshops in the fields and woods near her home, and she has further honed her keen observation of the nature as a frequent and hardy volunteer during the annual migratory bird banding and census at Long Point on Lake Erie.

Linda is currently president of the Upper Credit Field Naturalists. Along with her show, she will present a talk at the museum (where she has volunteered since 1995), called “Other Nations: A Life spent in the Company of Animals.” The title was inspired by author Henry Beston who observed that “animals are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations.”

The show of Linda McLaren’s art runs from June 24 to August 26.
Her presentation is at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 8.

Back in the mid-’90s, I had a crazy idea. I wanted to learn about local politics, so I applied to be a citizen member of Dufferin County’s Community Development Committee.

One of the committee’s primary responsibilities was to oversee Dufferin’s proposal for a new landfill. It was in the final stages of approval after millions of dollars of study and years of enraged debate. A naive keener, I read through a foot or two of reports, then marched off to my first meeting – and into a hornet’s nest.

Despite its pending approval, the new landfill continued to face fierce opposition, and this bunch played rough. At that first meeting, I learned how the audience would boo vigorously if you said something they didn’t like. At the second, I learned how to make a county councillor froth at the mouth, and how to land myself on the front page of the local paper. After the third, it was ugly phone calls to my home – between the f-bombs was something about how my face might be about to meet a fist.

So it went for my two-year tenure. The politicians were at each other’s throats. The public opposition groups were at everyone’s throats. County staff ducked, bobbed and weaved like seals in mating season.

Some 15 years later, the Community Development Committee is still debating garbage, and what to do with that 200-acre landfill site the county owns out in the northeast corner of East Luther-Grand Valley. It’s a miracle there hasn’t been a lynching.

I must admit it’s also near-miraculous how the discussion has evolved. The once certain-seeming landfill eventually received environmental assessment approval and a Draft Provisional Certificate of Approval, but by then its opponents had sufficiently infiltrated local politics. The proposal was quashed, and the new dump was never built. In its place are plans for an industrial subdivision of sorts, the occupants of which will be mostly engaged in the generation of energy from waste. It’s called Dufferin Eco-Energy Park, or DEEP.

Is DEEP a sensible, pioneering investment, or a nimby-maniacal, anything-but-the-dump reaction, destined to be a hugely expensive white elephant?

As envisioned, DEEP will tackle the ever-growing mountain of garbage Dufferin residents produce from a number of different angles. Perhaps the most ambitious component of DEEP, and the anchor for everything else, is an energy-from-waste, or EfW, facility that will employ a technique called plasma gasification. The plant will process what remains after recyclable and compostable materials are removed from the waste stream, by vaporizing it at temperatures roughly as hot as the sun.

Dufferin Eco-Energy Park, or DEEP to be located on a 200-acre site in the northeast corner of East Luther-Grand Valley.

Assuming it all works, almost none of the by-products will go unused. Combustible gases produced in the process will fuel a turbine to generate electricity, which in turn will be sold to the grid. Waste heat from the process will provide a cheap source of heat for a greenhouse operation or other businesses located on site, and if it is deemed suitable, the hard, glass-like slag residual would be used in road and construction projects.

The facility won’t be the only EfW plant handling garbage produced in Headwaters. The Region of Peel opened a conventional incinerator in Brampton in 1992, and it currently processes about 175,000 tonnes a year, including waste from Caledon. Owned by Algonquin Power Systems, the plant is operated under a long-term waste supply agreement with the region.

In a similar arrangement, Dufferin County has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with a Calgary company called Alter NRG, through its Ontario spinoff called Navitus Plasma Inc., to develop its facility.

A feasibility study assessed the possibility of building a plant with a 25,000 tonne per year capacity – enough to handle just Dufferin’s waste – but found the volume too small to be economically viable. A 70,000 tonne per year capacity did look like it would work, and even though it meant importing significant volumes of trash, Dufferin County council agreed to proceed. In the company’s most recent submissions, the volume has been increased again, to 89,000 tonnes a year. Navitus CEO George Todd says this second increase was also a matter of economics.

Supporters claim the plasma approach is clean, makes use of a large renewable energy resource, and promotes sustainability. But critics aren’t so sure. In their view, there aren’t yet enough data to support such claims.

So let’s take a look at some of the evidence for and against.

On the bright side

It has to go somewhere

According to Peter Hargreave, director of policy and strategy for the Ontario Waste Management Association, the province generates about 12.5 million tonnes of garbage each year, or roughly one tonne per person. About 4 million tonnes are exported to Michigan and New York, most of it from the industrial/commercial/institutional sector.

However, our American neighbours are growing increasingly testy about us using their backyard as a dump, and there are strong indications that the border will eventually be closed to Canadian waste altogether, or become prohibitively expensive.

Without the U.S., Ontario’s annual maximum permitted fill rate is not sufficient for the waste requiring disposal. What’s worse, even though some new capacity has been approved in the last few years – mostly by expanding existing sites – space is running out fast. As a result, EfW facilities are expected to become more common.

In 2009, after recycling and composting, Dufferin County was generating about 15,000 tonnes a year requiring disposal. Most of that was shipped to the U.S.

What you get: No landfill

Dufferin’s approved-but-never-opened landfill site becomes more valuable by the day, to both the private and public sector. As Allen Taylor, mayor of East Garafraxa and chair of the county’s Community Development Committee, says, “People will be walking in here with a blank cheque and saying how many million do you want?” The City of Toronto did just that when it bought a licensed landfill near London, Ontario several years ago.

Building an alternative form of waste disposal on Dufferin’s site would preclude a landfill from happening there.

Points for trying

When Dufferin decided to trash its landfill plans in 2000, it committed to finding an alternative way to handle garbage. An exhaustive review of the available options was undertaken, and finally, in the fall of 2008, it issued a Request for Proposals to design, finance, build, own and operate a thermal treatment waste processing facility. Alter NRG’s plasma gasification proposal was accepted in 2009.

In short, the county took its time, considered the alternatives, and plasma gasification is where it ended up.

There is some track record for plasma gasification

According to Allen Taylor, “There’s a lot of untried technology out there. They’ll say ‘Oh yeah, we can do it for ya,’ but you just try and find a demonstration plant that shows they can.” Alter NRG backed up their technology with two reference plants in commercial operation in Japan. A contingent of six committee members visited them last fall, and came away impressed.

The residual isn’t too nasty

Though estimates vary, somewhere between 5 and 20 per cent of the waste fed into the gasifier will come out the bottom, transformed into a glass-like residual. Tests to date in the U.S. and Japan indicate this slag is an inert material that may be suitable as aggregate in road building and concrete.

Though it’s a somewhat different material, Peel Region has been testing ash produced at its incinerator in road and parking lot asphalt with positive results. Brampton Brick has also been experimenting with using it in brick making.

However, the Ministry of the Environment will need to be convinced Dufferin’s slag is inert, and the Ministry of Transportation would require lengthy testing before it could be used on provincial roads. But Trevor Lewis, Dufferin’s director of public works, points out the county builds and maintains quite a few roads of its own: “We’re also a buyer of those products. I would propose that we do some test strips using the slag to see how it works, and if things work out, here’s a way to get rid of it.”

In any event, Allen Taylor insists, “The deal we have with Navitus is that the residual is their problem, not ours.

At the end of the day, that residual is part of what Navitus contracts to deal with.”

Limited taxpayer investment

A White Paper produced by the Town of Mono’s Sustainability Advisory Committee makes a convincing argument that, based on the experience at other gasification and incineration plants, the cost of the EfW facility could easily be double or even triple the roughly $70 million estimated in the Navitus feasibility study.

However, Dufferin officials point out that for county taxpayers the capital cost of the facility is somewhat irrelevant. “We’ve said from day one that it’s a design, finance, build, own and operate by Alter NRG/Navitus,” says Allen Taylor. “Dufferin County has never committed itself to a dollar toward the building or operation of this facility. Nobody has even suggested to us that we co-sign a loan.”

So where is the money coming from? Says Taylor, “These folks are out dealing with pension funds and other investment institutions trying to sell them a piece of the action for a guaranteed return on their money.”

Still, the original Memorandum of Understanding in 2009 called for an acceptable financing structure to be in place by the end of that year. Taylor says the delay is related to the slow progress on provincial environmental approvals and power rate negotiations. Investors aren’t likely to commit without those assurances, which are now not targetted to be in hand until the end of this year or early next.

It’s cheaper than recycling

Sadly, as Allen Taylor notes, “Composting and recycling are the most expensive ways you can deal with waste. If people understood the real cost of recycling, they’d be amazed on a per-tonne basis.”

Recent county studies peg the cost of recycling at $209 per tonne. Turning source-separated organics into compost costs $115 per tonne, plus the cost of collection. The target rate for tipping fees at the EfW plant is $100 per tonne.

Relief from sheer exhaustion

Dufferin began trying to address its waste problem nearly three decades ago – longer than the projected 20-year lifespan of the EfW plant. It could go on considering alternatives forever. If the issue is ever to be resolved, at some point concrete decisions have to be made.

But then again

Consume, consume, consume

Zero Waste philosophy promotes the rethinking of product life cycles so all components can be reused. Possibly the worst strike against the EfW plant is that it perpetuates the endless cycle of pulling resources from the earth, spending vast amounts of energy processing them in factories and shipping them around the globe, where they end up lost – buried in a landfill, burned or “thermally treated.”

While generating electricity recovers some of that energy investment, it’s only a small fraction. However, the technology does appear to be improving. Peel’s conventional incinerator delivers about 6 MW to the grid. Dufferin’s plasma gasifier is predicted to net out at about the same, from only about half the volume of waste.

How many Rs do you see?

We’re all familiar with the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. Proponents of gasification would have us believe there’s a fourth R: recovery, and that creating energy from waste does just that. However, the fly in the ointment is that this fourth R works against the other three. Once you’ve built the facility, it has to run pretty much at capacity to be financially viable. As a result there’s an obvious disincentive to reduce the volume of material available to feed the monster.

Alter NRG and the county have agreed to “high grade” the waste feedstock to boost the BTU content, using things such as scrap tires, carpet remnants and unrecyclable plastics. This will not help such efforts as the Ontario Tire Stewardship’s initiatives to develop markets for recycled rubber products, or other recycling research programs, such as Peel’s partnership with a private company to recycle carpet.

The province has tried to address this problem by insisting on high waste diversion rates before it will issue a certificate of approval for new EfW facilities. The Region of Durham, for example, had to commit to at least 70 per cent diversion before they could go ahead with the new conventional incinerator currently under construction there.

Similar levels are predicted for Dufferin, but there’s a long way to go to meet that target: the diversion rate currently stands at 36.5 per cent. It remains to be seen if other municipalities would also have to meet those targets before their waste could be shipped to Dufferin.

More expensive tipping fees

The typical tipping rate municipalities pay for landfill is $75 per tonne. The target rate for the DEEP EfW is $100 per tonne, and it’s possible that by the time final design is complete this will increase. Trevor Lewis says, “The feedback we got from the local municipalities was that they didn’t mind paying a premium for something that was going to be more environmentally friendly, which we feel this technology is.”

But how much of a premium is that likely to be? The Mono committee’s White Paper argued that the company’s financial projections failed to include several capital costs, including such critical components as wastewater treatment and disposal. Ed Kroeker, an environmental engineer and chief author of the White Paper, says, “So what if maybe up front these guys pay for everything? We’re still going to pay for it. This isn’t a charitable donation from Alter NRG to Dufferin County. It’s the old saying ‘You can pay me now or pay me later.’ Once the music starts the piper has to be paid.”

So much for “Dispose of your waste in your own backyard.”

In the 1990s, a central mantra of waste disposal was “dispose of your waste in your own backyard.” In other words, to avoid the environmental and financial costs of shipping waste hundreds of miles, municipalities should deal with their own waste within their own borders. At the time, with that very principle in mind, Dufferin’s neighbour, Simcoe County, passed a bylaw declaring all its waste must be disposed of within Simcoe.

Even in 20 years, Dufferin’s garbage will only account for 15 to 20 per cent of the volume proposed for the DEEP EfW facility (less if 70 per cent diversion is mandated as predicted), with the balance imported from other municipalities.

Trevor Lewis agrees that Dufferin will account for only a “very small percentage,” but he says that’s because “we can’t find the technology to treat just the small quantity that we have on our own.” Allen Taylor qualifies that by adding, “Within the price range we’re willing to pay. You could build a facility to handle just Dufferin County. We just can’t afford to pay what it would cost to do that. It’s a matter of economies of scale.”

Which raises another question: Why not locate the EfW plant where there’s a bigger population, and export Dufferin’s waste there, instead of the other way around?

Lewis responds, “Somebody has to do it. We’ve got the land, we’re looking for alternatives, let’s try something rather than just twiddling our thumbs.” And in Taylor’s view, Dufferin’s small size and comparative lack of bureaucracy make the project more achievable. “Sometimes you can do something on a small scale that you couldn’t do on a big scale.”

Trevor Lewis also sees Dufferin’s plant as the first step in a grander scheme. “What I like to suggest is we get the thing running and we’re doing a great job, then bring the City of Toronto up to show them what they can do. The place for this type of thing is actually industrial subdivisions in Toronto. Then they’re not hauling the garbage as far, the grid’s right there, and how much of that energy could they use right on the site?”

Simcoe County, meanwhile, failed in its efforts to open a new landfill at its infamous Site 41, and has recently rescinded its local disposal bylaw. Although Navitus, not Dufferin, is responsible for sourcing contracts, county officials have teamed up with the company and made presentations to Simcoe, aimed at securing some 47,000 tonnes of its waste to feed the DEEP plant.

Which way to the toxins?

While landfill raised concerns about what was seeping into our ground and water, gasification raises concerns about what is seeping into our air.

The European Commission’s Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Reference Document on the Best Available Technologies for Waste Incineration (2006) found that air emissions from conventional gasification installations are the same as from old-fashioned incinerators. Among the nasties: particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, dioxins, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, mercury, carbon dioxide and furans. Even tiny amounts of some of these substances, such as mercury, are harmful to human health and the environment. Dioxin, reported as the most carcinogenic known substance, has no safe level of exposure.

However, the industry argues that because plasma gasification heats the waste to much higher temperatures than conventional gasification or incinerators, most of the toxins are destroyed. Those that remain, as in the conventional process, pass through a series of pollution control devices that capture and concentrate them for disposal as hazardous waste. As a result, Alter NRG, and the rest of the industry, forecast emissions to be less than from a natural-gas-fired plant generating the same amount of electricity. Proponents further argue gasification is not incineration, and because there is no combustion, no combustion gases are released.

If they’re right, it’s a compelling argument in favour of plasma technology. However, regulators have yet to be convinced. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to define it as a form of incineration. And in its regulations for “thermal treatment facilities,” the Ontario Ministry of the Environment makes no distinction between incinerators and conventional or plasma gasification.

The environment ministry would set maximums and monitor emission levels from the plant. However, its monitoring guidelines are based on a principle called “maximum achievable control technology,” meaning allowable emission levels reflect what is technologically feasible, rather than what is proven safe for the environment. And even these may be behind the times. With upgrades, the 20-year-old Peel EfW incinerator, for example, boasts emissions levels “well below” MOE standards. In addition, as the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives points out, the standards only regulate a handful of the potentially thousands of pollutants that could be present in municipal solid waste, and they don’t consider the possible cumulative effects of exposure to multiple chemicals at the same time.

Finally, there are reports of explosions at EfW plants. Even if the chances are remote, should a catastrophic failure take place, an undetermined release of toxins could occur.

Will the darn thing work?

There are numerous examples around the globe of EfW facilities malfunctioning, undergoing lengthy or permanent shutdowns, or failing to produce the volume of electricity originally claimed. Plasma gasification has been around for two decades, but primarily in industry-specific applications. Its track record for dealing with the complex stew that makes up municipal solid waste remains very limited.

Navitus and county representatives point to the two operating plants in Japan as proof the company has the technical knowledge and operating experience to ensure that Dufferin’s facility will work. Those plants opened in 2003 and employ the same Westinghouse plasma technology.

But considering Alter NRG, Navitus’s parent company, didn’t exist until 2006 when it bought the rights to the Westinghouse technology, its claims of experience seem somewhat exaggerated. The Japanese operations are independently owned, with Alter NRG providing technical support and torch parts. In fact, the only plant Alter NRG owns and operates itself is a pilot facility in Madison, Pennsylvania, used for short, small volume test runs.

No matter, insist county representatives. The contract is to design, finance, build, own and operate. Dufferin will just be a customer that sends its waste there and pays a tipping fee, like any other municipality. And if the plant is temporarily shut down, Navitus will be responsible for finding an alternative place for the garbage to go.

In a worst-case scenario, if the operation were to completely fail or go bankrupt, Trevor Lewis says Dufferin’s liability is limited: “It’ll be on our land, so we’ll have to deal with it from that perspective. Do we want to go in there and run it, or try to figure out what could be fixed? Or is it just a matter of they walked away, we’ve got a new building, we’ve got some equipment inside, we have a garage sale.”

Perhaps, but as the entire DEEP project is envisioned, other businesses at the site will rely on the heat output from the EfW plant. If it goes down, the whole development could be in jeopardy. Dufferin would also be back at square one as far as dealing with its garbage, but the townships’ landfills will have all been closed.

Whether you think energy from waste initiatives are mean or green, chances are you will be seeing more and more of them in Ontario over the coming years. Already, the city of Ottawa has given its approval for a plasma gasification plant to proceed, a similar proposal is moving forward in Meaford, and Waterloo and other Ontario communities are considering the possibility. Proposals are also popping up across the United States, including the world’s largest plasma gasification unit, set to process more than 3,000 tonnes a day, under construction in St. Lucie, Florida.

Opposition in Dufferin has been very clear landfill is not an option. So something has to take its place. Like many municipalities throughout North America, Dufferin has turned to gasification as an alternative.

Is plasma gasification the waste-slaying, energy-generating pot at the end of the rainbow? Or is there still an alternative out there that would save headaches, perhaps even money, in the long run? With the huge pressure to resolve the global waste problem, the industry is evolving quickly, and it’s quite possible that over the next few years a better solution will come along. But after nearly three decades of anguished deliberations, and more than three years and few hundred thousand dollars into the current plan, Dufferin is running out of time.

Sometimes you’ve just got to pick the lesser evil. The trick is to know which one that is.

Plasma gasification

Dufferin’s chosen supplier for the EfW facility is a Calgary-based company called Alter NRG, which plans to employ a technique known as plasma gasification. Alter NRG has since formed an Ontario company called Navitus Plasma Inc., which hopes to develop and operate several similar facilities across the province.

While traditional incineration is, simply put, burning garbage in a big fire, gasification is the process of applying either oxygen-starved heat (greater than 7oo°C) or intense pressure to any material, causing it to separate into its basic molecular components. This produces a gas called syngas, which can be used to fuel engines that generate electricity.

There’s nothing new about gasification, which has been in use around the world since the 1800s. Plasma gasification, however, is more recent. This approach operates at much higher temperatures than conventional gasification. Torches inject plasma gas at over 5,ooo°C into the bottom of a chamber to maintain a +1,3oo°C environment. Waste is fed into the chamber and as it breaks down, most of it becomes syngas, exiting through the top where it undergoes a cleaning process, ensuring purity levels sufficient for use as fuel. Metals can be separated and recovered, and the remaining material melts into a slag at the bottom.

The chief advantages of plasma over traditional gasification and incineration are said to be reduced toxic emissions, and the ability to better handle a more varied feedstock.

Renewable power?

The Navitus feasibility study identifies electrical power generation as a significant income stream for the plant, forecasting a gross output of 9.3 MW before power used in the process is subtracted, and approximately 6 MW net available for sale to the grid.

The study anticipates receiving 12 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) via a Power Purchase Agreement from the Ontario Power Authority. So far, however, the province has only offered eight cents. This is because EfW facilities are not considered a renewable energy source, so the price offered is similar to other non-renewable forms of energy generation, such as natural gas. The conventional incinerator currently under construction to serve York-Durham will also receive eight cents.

The province is in the process of reviewing its Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program, which pays substantial premiums for renewable energy. Solar projects, for example, receive anywhere between 44.3 and 80.2 cents per kWh, with wind turbines at 13.5. Even systems recovering landfill gas receive between 10 and 11 cents per kWh.

Dufferin officials and others have been lobbying the province to include EfW facilities in the FIT program, though it’s still unclear if that will happen. Regardless, Navitus CEO George Todd says he is optimistic the rate will end up “somewhere in the middle” between 8 and 12 cents.

If no increase is achieved, tipping fees will likely need to be increased to make up the shortfall.

The Dufferin Eco-Energy Park Concept:
Not Just Waste Disposal

Alternative Energy Creators / Users

who: Undetermined

details: Lots of approximately 2.4 hectares each, located in the northerly portion of the site, are intended for other alternative energy producers, or businesses whose processes can benefit from the source of cheap heat produced at the nearby gasification plant.

status: Though Trevor Lewis has spoken with about five different companies that have expressed some form of interest, it’s a matter of “chicken and egg,” he says. “Once we have some sod-turning and it’s more than just talk, there will be concrete interest.” Allen Taylor, chair of the Community Development Committee, adds, “People will be lining up to bring their processes there, and we’ll be able to pick and choose what we want on the site.”

Composting

who: Joint venture between Dufferin County and York Region

details: While the EfW facility will be owned and operated by a private company, the composting facility will be publicly owned by Dufferin County and York Region, but privately designed and built. Dufferin will pay development costs leading up to the site. York, with a population of a little over a million, compared to Dufferin’s 55,000, will pay for on-site development and operate the facility.

status: Dufferin County went through a procurement process and selected a preferred vendor, who then announced it was going into receivership. York Region took over and issued a second Request for Proposals in June 2010. Due to York’s stringent non-disclosure policies, few other details are available until a report comes forward to council.

Energy Transfer Corridor

There is a tendency to think of electricity as the only form of energy produced at the site, but the gasification plant will also produce substantial volumes of waste heat. As an energy source, the problem with heat is it can’t be transported very far. A westerly corridor will deliver heat to other businesses located at the DEEP site. Conceivably, it could also be used at neighbouring properties.

Energy from Waste

who: Alter NRG Corp., Navitus Plasma Inc., Bridgepoint Group, Morrison Hershfield (consultant)

details: The privately owned and operated plasma arc gasification plant will be built on land rented from Dufferin County, with an expected life of 20 years. It will process up to 89,000 tonnes of waste per year delivered by six to eight large trucks a day, and will not be open to the public for waste drop-off.

status: Ministry of the Environment approval and financing in place by late 2012/early 2013. At that point, Dufferin should be ready to sign a Definitive Agreement, officially binding the municipality to the project.

Education

Trevor Lewis envisions the DEEP complex as an educational opportunity for school children and the general public. “I don’t want them to just be black boxes in a field. It should be done so that you can come and take a look at it and see what we’re doing.”

Road Realignment

Before DEEP can go ahead, the Ministry of Transportation has requested that the Amaranth-East Luther-Grand Valley Town Line and Melancthon 8 Line SW be realigned to form a four-way intersection. Dufferin County will pay for the work.

Hydrogen Energy Pilot Plant

who: Undetermined

details: Electrolysis, gasification and anaerobic digestion can all be used to create hydrogen, which can be stored and used to fuel electrical generators.

status: Hydrogen energy was the original catalyst for resurrecting activity at the DEEP site, when a private company expressed interest in establishing a fuelling station for hydrogen powered taxis. The concept was widely presented in early discussions about DEEP, and it was thought it might also offer a means of storing energy generated by the wind farms in north Dufferin for use during periods of peak demand. Engineering students at the University of Waterloo conducted a pre-feasibility analysis; however, the economics proved to be a challenge. Trevor Lewis reports that currently, “Hydrogen is on hiatus.”

Anaerobic Digestion

who: Undetermined

details: A process in which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen, producing a biogas that can be used as a source of renewable energy.

status: Initially, a company named Bullrush Clean Energy came forward as a partner to develop this technology, but it has not been involved for a couple of years. More recently, Canada Composting has expressed an interest. Negotiations are ongoing.

Greenhouse Operation

who: Undetermined

details: With “Eat Local” and the “Hundred-Mile Diet” movements growing across the province, DEEP is located within a hundred miles of millions of people in the Greater Toronto Area, creating a huge, potentially lucrative market. Typically, heating is a major cost in greenhouse operations, but in this case, waste heat from the EfW facility could be used, and is expected to cost about 80 per cent of usual market rates. The savings could offer a significant competitive edge. Horticulture could also benefit from the nearby source of carbon dioxide. Next to the greenhouses, an experimental crop area would be available to receive plant stock during the growing season.

status: Though conceptual discussions have taken place with a few greenhouse operators, no firm commitments have been made.

Maps by Jeff Rollings based upon DEEP documentation.

Our collective inexperience with roundabouts was best captured in the 1985 film European Vacation, starring Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold. After landing in England, Clark and his family rent a car to drive to their hotel. Along the way, they are caught in the Lambeth Bridge roundabout in downtown London. Unable to merge to exit, Clark drives around the circle for hours, each time happily proclaiming, “Look kids, Big Ben! Parliament!” Eventually day turns to night and his wife and kids fall asleep, leaving a confounded Clark to decipher the roundabout on his own.

But that joke may soon grow old on this continent, as more and more roundabouts replace traffic signals and stop signs at our intersections.

As the calendar flipped from 1999 to 2000, there were only about a hundred roundabouts across North America, but the past decade has seen a slow but steady transportation transformation.

Engineers have turned to roundabouts to help solve growing traffic congestion and air quality concerns. In Canada, roundabouts now number in the hundreds.

The Region of Peel joined that movement last November when it officially unveiled its first roundabout at the intersection of Dixie Road and Olde Base Line in Caledon. Since then, according to Joe Avsec, manager of traffic engineering, drivers have expressed “a lot of positive feedback.”

And more are already in the works. The intersection of Mayfield Road and Pillsworth Drive is getting one, and roundabouts are set to become an integral part of the new, estimated $50-million Bolton arterial bypass project on King Street at Coleraine Drive and Highway 50.

Love them or loathe them, roundabouts are here to stay.

“All the new intersections we are building will go through a screening process to determine the suitability of a roundabout,” Avsec said. Planners use 15 criteria to determine if a new intersection – or an existing one in need of an upgrade – will support a roundabout. Among those criteria are car and truck traffic volumes, collision history and pedestrian use.

The plan for the region’s first roundabout goes back to 2006 when staff decided to correct the “jog” in the offset intersection. Construction began in 2010 and the entire project cost about $2.3 million, including the $400,000 roundabout, as well as the realignment and reconstruction of Dixie Road from south of Boston Mills Road to Olde Base Line.

Peel's first roundabout at Dixie Road and Olde Baseline Road.

It would have cost about $250,000 to construct a conventional four-way intersection at the site, with another $150,000 anticipated for installing traffic lights in a few years, so planners expect the roundabout will save the region money in the long run. They note the savings in hydro and maintaining traffic signals represents savings of approximately $6,000 per year.

Joe Avsec cites three advantages in choosing roundabouts over traffic lights: they reduce the environmental footprint of driving, help move traffic more efficiently, and increase motorist safety.

A 2005 study conducted in Arlington, Virginia, found that by eliminating the stop-and-go movements at traffic lights and stop signs, roundabouts could reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 29 per cent and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 per cent. Another study suggested roundabouts could reduce intersection fuel consumption by about 30 per cent.

Also, because the entrance to a roundabout is curved (referred to as deflection), drivers instinctively slow down while entering. “Motorists will reduce to an internal operating speed of 30 or 35 kilometres per hour,” said Sean Ballaro, supervisor of traffic operations.

The Ministry of Transportation found there are fewer collisions at roundabouts, and the seriousness of collisions is greatly reduced because there are fewer “conflict points” – areas where two cars can potentially collide.

“When you build a roundabout, in essence what you get are rear-enders and side-swipes, which are not the types of collisions that typically kill people,” said Ballaro.

From Vancouver to Halifax, roundabouts have sprung up across the nation. In neighboring Halton Region, the first roundabout opened in late 2010, and Waterloo Region has been building them since 2004.

Peel has been relatively late to introduce roundabouts, and there is growing evidence that slow and thoughtful implementation is prudent.

Waterloo has been one of the most aggressive jurisdictions in the country to adopt the roundabout. Since 2004, when Waterloo built its first four, their numbers have quadrupled to 16, and there are at least 30 more in the planning stage. But the municipality has come under fire in recent years for rolling them out too quickly and in poorly chosen locations.

In the past two years alone, the number of collisions in Waterloo’s roundabouts has risen nearly 54 per cent – from 85 in 2009 to 131 in 2010 – an indication that the learning curve has been steeper than anticipated.

Although the majority of the Waterloo collisions were of the fender-bender and side-swipe variety with no serious injuries – precisely the types of collisions traffic engineers expected – the fact remains that collisions at roundabouts continue to rise despite their presence in the region for nearly a decade.

In response, Waterloo tripled their roundabout education budget to $150,000 in 2011, introducing a program called “Practice Makes Perfect.” It included various print and radio ads, as well as a series of television spots featuring the Ontario Hockey League’s Kitchener Rangers.

“I challenge anyone to find a more comprehensive education plan than what we have,” said Bob Henderson, Waterloo’s manager of transportation engineering.

In Peel, the approach to education is so far more muted. Staff conducted what they call a “grassroots educational campaign” that consisted of distributing brochures and other materials to residents at a cost of about $4,500.

“We found generally that any issues anyone had were just fear of the unknown,” said Imre Tot, the region’s technical analyst of traffic operations. “[The public] didn’t really understand how roundabouts would work, but they’re excited about it, and the message we got was that it’s about time.”

Road signs associated with roundabouts, from left to right : Roundabout ahead, begin to slow. Prepare to merge, yield to vehicles in the roundabout. Proceed in the direction indicated. Be aware of which exit you will be taking.

The early results in Peel have been encouraging. There has been only one reported collision at the intersection so far, and that was while it was under construction. “It is a more rural location and it is a one-lane roundabout, which was what we were looking for to kick off,” said Avsec.

According to a traffic analysis at Dixie and Olde Base Line, only a little more than 3,000 vehicles moved through the intersection in total over three daily peak times, and about 96 per cent of all traffic was cars. The intersection also had a sparse collision history – only 12 were reported between 2006 and 2010, less than 0.2 per cent of the 6,102 collisions that occurred in the entire region in 2010 alone.

Still, if Waterloo is an example, the number of fender-benders is almost certain to rise once roundabouts begin to appear at intersections with higher traffic volumes.

Staff recognize the challenges ahead, and admit this roundabout is a test to see how they might potentially roll out across the rest of the region. Still, they are optimistic that given a little time and experience, the public will adjust without too many problems.

“Like I tell my mother, they are no different than road signs. It’s just a standard yield situation,” said Tot. “Just drive slowly, proceed with caution, and the roundabout will help you get through it.”

What do you think about Roundabouts?

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How to use a Roundabout

Check out this interactive, animated demonstration on using a roundabout:

Time and again, through the fictional Walt, Dan Needles pinpointed exactly our own experience as eager rural neophytes fumbling to absorb the wit and wisdom of our farmer neighbours. The letters were both a hilarious account of Walt’s feckless experiments in farming and a poignant tribute to a way of life that was slowly disappearing.

Fortunately, Dan’s career as a bureaucrat didn’t work out. And in the ’80s, he seized the opportunity to turn his original columns into a one-man play. Since then, Letter from Wingfield Farm has been followed by six more Wingfield plays, and Persephone Township and the town of Larkspur, based on Mono and Shelburne, have become iconic rural Canadian communities. The latest in the series, Wingfield: Lost & Found, opens in Orangeville at the end of this month. And a novelization of all seven plays, Wingfield’s World, was released last fall.

But it isn’t just Wingfield that has kept Dan busy. He has written other plays and novels, and in 2003 he won the Leacock Medal for Humour for his book With Axe and Flask, the History of Persephone Township from Pre-Cambrian Times to the Present. For 15 years he was also the back-page columnist for Harrowsmith Country Life. But Harrowsmith’s sad demise last year was our gain. With this issue, we are very pleased to welcome Dan’s gentle and philosophical humour as a regular column in our pages.

Dan grew up in Rosemont and still has family in Mono, including his mother Dorothy Jane Needles, and sister, Laura Ryan, mayor of Mono. But deeply frustrated by encroaching urbanization, Dan and his wife Heath moved a few miles north to raise their children on a farm in Nottawasaga. Still, we continue to claim him as a native son of these hills and regard his presence in this magazine as a happy homecoming.

Welcome back, Dan.

I am an amateur but enthusiastic naturalist in eastern Ontario. Through the years, I must admit to largely ignoring the trees as I move about among them looking for something of interest. So often our focus at the distance blinds us to what is right in front of us.

“Meetings with Remarkable Trees” (autumn 2011) had a fine selection of photos, and the smaller inserts were a great way to get to know the trees up close. We have an old and expiring tree on our property, which I do talk to from time to time. Don Scallen’s article made me feel that talking to a tree is maybe not as crazy as the rest of my family think it is. I’m guessing he too talks to a tree from time to time. It will be our little secret.

The article reminds me of the Ents (ancient trees) in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. They had a lot of slow-moving wisdom and power, and were great characters in the books. Yes, there is something slow and special about trees, especially big old trees like the ones the article focused on.

Thank you, Don Scallen, for your fine article and for a wonderful reminder to appreciate the trees.

Brian Naulls, Grafton

Energy use question

In your spring 2011 issue’s “Countryside Digest,” you said that Canada is the highest per capita user of energy – 96,000 kWh per person. (You see, we read and re-read your magazine, especially in winter!)

We bought our farm with an oil heater installed in the home, but added a heat pump to improve the environment and save on home heating costs, so we use more electricity than we once did. But the total energy consumption – oil combustion plus electricity – is much reduced.

I must therefore ask whether your figure for energy use per capita included energy generated by carbon-fuel combustion, or if it was limited to electrical energy alone. If the latter, it isn’t quite fair to Canadians with heat pumps.

It is also not fair – and yours is not the only publication that indulges in this – to compare Canadian energy consumption with that of nations with more benign climates. It costs more energy to survive in the North.

Charles Hooker, Orangeville

Editor’s reply: The figure for energy use used in the CPPA Monitor, from which the item was excerpted includes energy from carbon-fuel combustion. Yes, it takes more energy to “survive” in the north.

Tracey and long-time friend.

Spirit of Christmas

I absolutely adored your winter issue cover by Shelagh Armstrong and the accompanying short story “Spirit of Christmas” by John Denison. As a one-horse owner of 35 years (he’s a Morgan, what can I say, he’s as tough as nails!), the cover transported me back to a time when I was a horsestruck young girl still in love with Christmas. The night hues and colours, and the simple majesty of the horses evoked in me the magic of the holidays when I would spend many a Christmas Eve with my beloved friend. Thank you to the artist and author for this gift.

Tracey Holmgren, Mono
Surviving in the north

Tempting Providence

It is so nice to see the struggles of Newfoundland brought to life, and how difficult life was on the island. Being of the younger generation from Newfoundland, I have experienced hard times, but not to the extent of the earlier years. I sit and listen to the older generation talk and tell stories about how it used to be, and often wonder how in God’s name they even survived. I guess it just makes us the proud people we are today!

Peter Yetman, Brampton

Massey Chapel window

Stained glass window by Rosemary Kilbourn.

Thank you for the prominent inclusion of the window in the letter from Paul Aird (winter 2011). There is, however, a problem in his attributing the window to me. It is not an uncommon mistake in a medium where the design and execution can be done by different people.

In this case there is a plaque that states, “The stained glass is dedicated to the memory of Alice and Vincent Massey … The design symbolizing the Masseys’ love of Canadian nature was created and given to Hart House by Will Ogilvie who also painted the mural in the chapel. The stained glass work was done by Rosemary Kilbourn in the studio of Yvonne Williams.”

Will Ogilvie, who at that time was also living “in the hills,” gave the full-size drawing of the window to me, to choose the glass and paint it with the iron oxide and gum medium which is fired into the glass. This gives the lines of the drawing the tone and movement over the surface, which simply carry out and re-emphasize the original design.

My own work in glass looked quite different, and I include a picture of a small window done at about the same time. It illustrates some lines from T.S. Eliot: “When the tongues of flame are infolded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one.”

Will Ogilvie is well known for his wonderful and unique watercolours of Georgian Bay, among other things, and the window includes some of the birds, flowers, frogs and insects that he encountered there.

Again, you have a very interesting collection of articles in a beautiful format. We are very fortunate to have this way of connecting with neighbours who would otherwise be unknown to many of us.

Rosemary Kilbourn, Caledon

Green Gravel

“Green Gravel” by Tim Shuff (autumn 2011) is a cogent and clearly written article on the issues that surround aggregate extraction in Ontario. It offers some hope for reducing the current high level of conflict between proponents and communities. The SERA principles he describes include “the environmental and water impacts and site stewardship,” but they fail to address the disproportionate impact of super-sized aggregate developments.

Highland Farms is applying to mine a colossal 2,400 acres in Melancthon. It beggars belief that the net effects of larger and larger industrial developments do not have a profound social and environmental impact on the community.

In the Town of Caledon, from Kennedy Road in Caledon Village to the town border at Winston Churchill Blvd, there is corridor of 3,800 acres of licensed quarries and pits, with another 200 acres of proposed pits seeking licences, as well as 600 acres of properties amassed by gravel operators for which licences have not yet been applied. Taken together, the collective mass of operating mines in this part of Caledon is potentially 4,600 acres.

In 2007, a study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council reported that Caledon contained the “largest series of gravel pits in North America.” When is the cumulative impact of progressively larger industrial developments too much? This needs to be addressed before we continue adding acreage to mega sites like this.

Our community organization, REDC, People for Responsible Escarpment Development Caledon, is preparing to challenge one of the newest licence applications for a property which abuts existing operations, the McComick Pit on Heart Lake Rd, a 75-foot-below-the-water-table proposition.

In recent geological maps of our area, our conservation authority no longer bothers to distinguish between the few modest natural lakes and the numerous acres of pit lakes which result when the aquifer is permanently breached during mining operations. Nowadays, all are “lakes.” The irony of the Forks of the Credit Provincial Park dividing a wasteland of mines stripped of biodiversity is not lost on those of us who live here. Nor that our region in the Niagara Escarpment is recognized by UNESCO as a World Biosphere Reserve, a precious world resource equal to the Serengeti, but obviously not as valuable as gravel.

Size and cumulative impact need to be addressed if the SERA Green Certification audit process is to be truly constructive.

Christine Shain, President, REDC
People for Responsible Escarpment Development Caledon Inc.

Editor’s note: At the request of Councillor Richard Paterak, the Town of Caledon has prepared a map showing the Greenbelt Plan, Oak Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment planning areas, as well as aggregate resource and aggregate reserve lands in the municipality. Paterak notes that the 4,800 acres referenced in this letter represent to gross acreage owned by aggregate companies; however, not all the acreage is licensed.

Online In The Hills

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