The Battle of Burl’s Creek

al fairs, farmers’ markets and Highland games (no bagpipes, mind). It was never meant to host auditorily polluting monster rock concerts.

A new owner of Burl’s Creek bought about 400 more acres of prime farmland, land supposedly protected against concerts not only by the provincial policy statement, but by county and township official plans. Nevertheless, the owner joined entrepreneurial forces with Republic Live, a soupto-nuts multi-day events business, whose concerts attract upward of 80,000 fans.

Republic Live has already spent $10 million on internal roads, amphitheatres and camping resources. Its WayHome and Boots and Hearts concerts will bookend the August long weekend, with eight more mega-events planned for 2016.

Oro-Medontites won’t be the only ones to suffer the logistical nightmare created by these concerts. Anyone using an already-crowded Highway 11 to get anywhere north of Barrie, which is to say many thousands of cottage people in the Greater Toronto Area, will feel the impact.

Indeed, a July 13 draft report from Cole Engineering that analyzed the proposed “traffic plan” predicts significant traffic backups on highways 11 and 400, and local roads, dismissing the promoter’s assumption of “residual capacity” on Highway 11 as “illusory.”

Permission for the shows was originally granted by OroMedonte’s council through a temporary-use bylaw without statutory public consultation. The news therefore came as a shock to the population well after the project was under way, sparking an activist coalition of farmers and residents — including my sister and brother-in-law, who have a cottage there — who are determined to stop what everyone admits is the illegal occupation of the 400 acres. Republic Live is indifferent to possible penalties (what’s a $50,000 fine to a juggernaut that anticipates gates of $10 million-$15 million per concert?).

The project contravenes every farmland and growth plan policy for which Ontario has received global accolades. Added to the council’s purposeful lack of transparency, the situation is deeply troubling. For residents to seek an injunction against these illegal concerts would require that they — impossibly — put up $10 million (the amount Republic Live could lose). Circumstances are privileging the scofflaw and hamstring- ing the law-abiding. In this travesty of civic process, the onus for stopping the illegal activity appears to rest solely on the protest groups — “Save Oro” and “West Oro Ratepayers’ Association” (WORA) — to extract information the council has refused to share and, at a cost of $50,000-plus, consult a lawyer, sound engineer, agrologist and other experts to assess the impact of the mega-concerts, as well as the positive claims made for the project.

One rationale for the concerts is alleged economic benefits to Oro-Medonte. But economist Peter Tomlinson, who lectures at the University of Toronto, has categorically rejected any such notion.

The issue has roiled the township. There are people who live far enough away from the site that the allnight partying won’t be heard in their homes, or who believe the promoter’s unfounded prophecies of economic spinoff, or who are unfazed by the disappearance — daily — of 350 acres of Ontario farmland.

How strange to see Neil Young supporting a huge corporate

music festival that will destroy pristine farmland