How much will we lose in order to grow?
The Pickering wetland at the centre of a battle over conservation in Ontario is a blur of marsh grasses when seen speeding along its north side on either Highway 401 or by GO Train.
Bayly Street runs along the south side of the property. Pull into the Pickering Markets located there, a cavernous collection of antique and flea market vendors, where the ditch running between it and the street is thick with tall grasses, as if nature created a linear marsh.
Nature doesn’t make ditch-shaped marshes, of course, and this entire area between the 401 and Lake Ontario was once largely wetland, but now is a patchwork of industrial and commercial sites with bits of wetlands left over. They are connected to the Duffins Marsh nearby, all part of the vast Duffins Creek watershed that stretches north through Pickering into the Oak Ridges Moraine.
The property in question is bounded by Squires Beach Road on the east and a rail corridor on the west, and contains a small, sinuous farmer’s field with remnants of harvested soybean and corn crops scattered on the ground. Thick, damp expanses of cattails and fluffy-topped pampas grass surround it.
Curiously, on a visit last weekend there were a number of recently created paths driven deep into the tall grass only to dead end, created by a tractor or other vehicle. Tramping about this kind of landscape, with its future a looming question, feels a bit like Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes character in the film “Chinatown,” poking around reservoirs outside of Los Angeles. There, water meant money because it opened desert land for development.
In Pickering, the opposite is true, as filling in this wetland is the creation of money. In the distance, rising over the wetland, the Durham Live project is under construction, an entertainment complex that will include a casino.
On Oct. 30, the Minister of Municipal Affairs issued a minister’s zoning order (MZO) that overrides local zoning and planning process, skips public consultation and has no possibility of appeal in order to fast-track the development of a warehouse and film studio project called Project Lonestar that hopes to capitalize on the Durham Live project.
The city of Pickering supports the MZO while the town of Ajax, whose border is next to the casino project, objects. So do nearly 100 groups who signed a letter this week objecting to using an MZO to override “policy protections for Provincially Significant Wetlands,” one the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority says has the “potential presence of endangered and threatened species.” The conservation authority has requested more clarity and due process.
Chief Kelly LaRocca of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation issued a letter on Nov. 11, also objecting to the development, stating, in part, “To develop the Pickering
wetland amounts to anything but restoring harmony to the land, or harmony to the relationship with the local Indigenous community” and that “destroying this land and water source is sending a message to First Nations.”
Across the street, inside the Pickering Market, one of the antique vendors was selling a vintage 45 rpm recording of the great 1967 song “A Place to Stand,” commissioned by John Robarts’ Progressive Conservative government for the Ontario pavilion at Expo ’67. Its famous lyrics include the lines, “With hopes as high / As the tallest tree / Give us a land of lakes / And a land of snow / And we will build Ontario / A place to stand, a place to grow, a place to grow Ontario-o-o-oo-o.”
Drive south of Bayly along Squires Beach Road and catch glimpses of the sentiment expressed in that song: patches of existing wetland in between industrial sites followed by a series of unpaved roads that skirt the edge of Duffins Marsh down to the beach at the Pickering-Ajax border. It’s an Ontario we seem to have wanted to preserve, once.
This MZO is part of other attempts to override local planning, but also ties in with the Ford government’s continued push to diminish the role conservation authorities have in Ontario. Most recently, buried in the omnibus budget bill that came out earlier this month, further limits were proposed.
Conservation authorities touch our lives in many ways. They keep Ontario livable, literally, and apart from things like wildlife habitat and flood mitigation — something existing wetlands facilitate — they give us places for recreation too.
Think about natural areas near you that you value and it’s likely they’re managed by a conservation authority.
A casino next to a massive parking garage and noisy superhighway will certainly attract some people, but this past COVID summer demonstrated severe overcrowding of natural areas across Ontario.
True to “A Place to Stand,” people in Ontario are attracted to and value natural landscapes, but how much are we willing to lose in order to grow?