‘My dream is that logic will prevail’
I am being asked by Strathcona County to “imagine” what my home will look like in 40 to 50 years. Oddly enough, I had visions of this beautiful rural community, where my parents started farming 65 years ago, being much the same as it always has — rural, peaceful, and producing crops on rare, black chernozemic soil. Class 1 soil — the best in the world. Apparently I was wrong. The glossy bulletin about the new city that will someday rise here describes historic Bremner House, just down the road from my home, and the many woodlots and wetlands of the area. Green spaces, walking trails, toboggan hills — these are touted among the things that will make the new Bremner a place where people will want to live. I enjoy those things now; that’s why I live here. Why is the county telling me about my home as though I need a refresher course?
At the Imagine Bremner launch, I listened as one speaker after another, well-intentioned folks, explained their “imaginings” for my home — the housing, the shopping, community centers, and transit — all planned for a place that should never have been considered for urbanization because of its rare soil.
How has the fate of my home been placed in the hands of strangers? Why is the county planning to take out of production — for all time — 16 sections of the finest soil in the world?
I have been asking that question for seven years since Bremner was first short listed as an urban growth node. I have never received a satisfactory answer. It is now a certainty that urban development will happen here.
According to the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada, 94 per cent of Canada’s lands are unsuitable for farming. Of the small percentage of land that will support agriculture, only 0.5 per cent is designated as Class 1 and that tiny percentage of viable farmland is shrinking at an alarming rate.
Statistics Canada reports that between 1971 and 2001, more than 14,000 square kilometres of our best agricultural land had been permanently lost to urban uses.
And Strathcona County is planning to cover over another 9,600 acres of it.
There was another choice for the urban growth node: Colchester, where the soil is Classes 3, 4 and 5 and where the county administration recommended development should take place. And even though the Colchester area was ranked No. 1 in terms of having the least financial impact on the county, Bremner became the priority area for future urban growth. Why?
I will not attend a “visioning workshop.” How can I be one of the architects of this area’s destruction?
The county’s mayor has asked Strathcona residents to “share their dreams” for Bremner.
My dream is that logic and common sense will prevail; that collectively we will stop and say, “We will protect our homes and the invaluable, irreplaceable treasure they sit on — prime farmland. We will bequeath this treasure to future generations, so they too can feed themselves.”
Lois Lois Gordon, Gordon, Sherwood Sherwood Park Park