Environmentalists make community proud
As the world faces a growing climate crisis, much work is being done right here in Peterborough
I sincerely appreciated the thoughtful column in the Peterborough Examiner by Rosemary Ganley (Listen, learn and lead: Peterborough’s Environmentalists Ready for 2019, Jan. 3).
Peterborough’s environmentalists have been ready and working to improve the natural, social, economic and cultural environment, and preserve the architectural splendour and history of the city and the county of Peterborough for decades. Will 2019 be a breakthrough year or just more of the same?
I am hoping for a breakthrough, but it only can happen if we promote partnerships and work together.
All of Ms. Ganley’s four choices for leaders on environmental issues in the Peterborough community are excellent ones.
Prof. Robert Paehlke taught me at Trent University in the 1970s and he is an amazing, generous man.
He was founding editor of Alternatives magazine, a unique publication that continues today. I remain in contact with Bob, and his energy and commitment to a wide range of community and environmental issues are perhaps even more impressive than described by Ms. Ganley.
I have read Drew Monkman in the Examiner for years and I have many of his remarkable books. He also is a treasure.
Environmental, health and community advocates are a big, talented family in Peterborough. Environmental issues are wicked, complex problems and we need leadership at all levels. Moreover, the new generation of local activists and heroes in their teens, 20s and 30s also needs to be celebrated, engaged and nurtured. They are working on pollinator gardens, protecting green spaces and cleaning up litter and garbage in our forests and on our shorelines.
There are so many people who have worked on environmental issues in Peterborough in the past 50 years that is hard to know where to begin.
There are the civic leaders and the visionaries who pushed to clean up Little Lake in the 1960s as our city’s Centennial project and undertook improved planning. They created the gem called Del Crary Park that we enjoy all summer long through the volunteers that run Peterborough Musicfest.
There are those who have fought the Parkway extension, seeking to preserve the green space in Jackson Park from encroachment.
There are those who built Ecology Park and have supported community gardens for growing food.
The Peterborough Field Naturalists and other similar groups have done excellent educational work for decades and helped to educate residents about the importance of protecting habitat. There are those leaders who supported trails, such as the Rotary Trail, promoting health.
As far as academics at Trent go, there is a long list that could include: Robert Page (history and enviro studies, 1970s and 1980s); John Wadland (Canadian studies, 1970s through the late 2000s); Tom Symons (Canadian studies, history and founding president of Trent), who undertook one of the important studies in Canada’s academic history, “To Know Ourselves” (1976); Robert Carter (philosophy); various professors and their partners who provided considerable energy to the Peterborough NDP in the 1970s through the mid 1990s.; and Peter Adams (geography) and Arctic expert, MP, MPP and parliamentary assistant to then-Liberal Environment Minister Jim Bradley at Queen’s Park between 1987 and 1990. I came into contact with him in those days via my work at Pollution Probe on climate change and waste reduction.
Perc Powles, Michael Berrill, David Lasenby, Christine Matthews and other Trent biology professors were visionary and great teachers — and, more recently, Stephen Bocking, an impressive and thoughtful teacher, as are many other current Trent professors in various departments, etc.
But professors are a special case, and their passion and caring often fuel and improve their teaching work. I have taught environmental law since the late 1980s, so I understand that.
Civic leadership continued in Peterborough for decades. Mayor Sylvia Sutherland and council started the first local roundtable on the environment and economy in Canada in 1988.
Clifford Maynes (also of OPIRG in the 1970s) was a founding member of Peterborough GreenUP when we started that program at the Ontario MOE and the Ministry of Energy in 1991-92. His energy and vision were essential to the early growth of the Green Communities movement in Ontario and Canada.
Paul McKay exposed problems at Ontario Hydro for 20 years (Trent OPIRG and author of Electric Empire). The Peterborough Canoe Museum founders are visionaries. FOCA does excellent work.
There are people who have worked for years as volunteers with no financial support as professionals and teachers, or no generous pensions like those received by Bob Paehlke and Drew Monkman and other teachers and professionals like me.
As you know, there are dozens of local activists as well, such as Michael Bell, Ian Attridge, Sue Sauve, Claire Morawski, Ben Wolfe, Rob Tonus and Christine Jaros, who mix their professional work, artistic endeavours and music, teaching, public education, writing and passions for environmental and social justice and community building.
There are people who have fought to get the contamination of their properties by Outboard Marine Corporation and General Electric, or chronic occupational exposures addressed. Trent and Fleming Students have often assisted.
These working-class people are some of my local heroes. They have lost family members to cancer and other illnesses. Their children have been born with birth defects because of toxic air pollution and groundwater contamination from plants like Outboard Marine.
The health unit and city leaders have ignored them since the early 1980s. Efforts to help them have been spurned. It is reassuring to see that the Examiner has begun to champion their cause in more recent years.