magazine / ja07
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July/August 2007 issue |
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REVERBERATIONS
Model of unsustainability
Having lived in Markham and York Region since the mid-1970s, I
was intrigued by your article on urban sprawl ("Stages
of sprawl," May/June 2007) as it affects this area. When we moved
here, we were assured by the municipality and local politicians
that the green space between Scarborough and Markham would never
be built on and would, instead, be maintained as a buffer. During
that period, the local government was genuinely interested in preserving
the village’s rich heritage — the meadows, forests,
Rouge River valleys and Mennonite pioneer farms.
Since then, developers and the Ontario Municipal Board have turned
the town into the urban wasteland Peter Sibbald has so skilfully
captured in his black and white photos. The actual colours are
not much different — shades of mud-brown dust and grey. The
former green space is completely devastated and developed — turned
into house farms and block malls.
This town has sold its soul. However, as a token gesture to history,
Markham allows historical farmhouses to be bought by individuals
and, at their cost, moved to a more convenient place — a
house museum! Stripped of their farm environment, these pitiful
refurbished shells sit forlorn and lost in a Disneyland-style park,
nicely out of the way of demolition and development.
The very parkland and "Huge Nature Reserve" the builders
advertise are totally destroyed with their latest land-development
techniques. Earthmovers strip thick, fertile topsoil off the entire
development, right down to sterile subsoil clay and shale. After
the houses are planted and the streets paved over, a very thin
layer of topsoil and clay is replaced.
What happens to the rest of the mountains of topsoil? As Sibbald
shows, the developers work a deal with local topsoil companies
who then sell the original topsoil back to the new home buyers
at exorbitant prices!
A recent article in The Toronto Star by a Toronto arborist pointed
out that the grass sod and broomstick trees put in by municipalities
and homeowners will never mature on this thin layer but will most
likely die of drought and summer heat. There is, of course, no
deep reservoir of moist topsoil to sustain them.
This town had a golden opportunity to create a model of sustainability
and environmental and heritage protection while accommodating well-designed
urban and suburban spaces in the middle of a river valley.
To Markham’s politicians, bureaucrats and developers, I
say this: Over the past two centuries, Markham’s children
and grandchildren were proud of what their predecessors had built
and accomplished. You, however, will be despised by your descendants
for what you have forever destroyed.
Ernst Hogerwaard
Markham, Ont.
Peter Sibbald’s photos are testimony to the risks of ignoring
history. Two thousand years from now camel caravans may be stumbling
into the CN Tower because planners neglected to read of Persia’s
ancient sprawl.
G. James Thomson
Guelph, Ont.
Curious belugas
I think there may have been a misunderstanding in "The inside
story"on whale-watching in Churchill, Man. ("Watching
the watchers," March/April 2007). Travel corridors for tour
boats would not make sense unless you could convince the 3,000-plus
beluga whales that summer here to keep clear of those areas. Although
younger whales may approach boats more often than adults, all belugas
will approach boats. It is in their nature. They are intelligent
and inquisitive, approaching and interacting with almost everything
in their environment. I have seen them surrounding and swimming with
bowhead whales, polar bears, kayaks, divers, snorkellers and channel
markers. Their size — three to six metres in length — doesn’t
make them clumsy. They move quickly and gracefully to avoid danger.
The boat Heather Penner is standing on in the photo with the story
is the Sea North II, custom-designed for whale-watching in Churchill.
It is a jet boat with a draft of just 53 centimetres fully loaded,
and it has no propellers or other exposed moving parts that can
hurt a whale. No whales have ever been harmed by this boat.
Churchill’s tour operators enjoy a good relationship with
Penner and other researchers from Brandon University as well as
Fisheries and Oceans Canada. We are working together to ensure these
animals return to a safe environment each summer. I started in this
business more than 30 years ago because I wanted to be with these
amazing animals, and this hasn’t changed.
Mike Macri
Sea North Tours Ltd.
Churchill, Man.
Left on shore
I have quite a different opinion than Allan Casey of Silver Donald
Cameron’s book Sailing Away From Winter ("You cruise,
you lose," March/April
2007). On the first reading, I thoroughly
enjoyed Cameron’s vivid descriptions, fascinating adventures
and elegant style. On immediately rereading, as I seldom do with
new books, I also enjoyed his thoughtful comments about human (and
dog) life and love and growing older.
I think Casey missed the boat.
Jean Gower
Kingston, Ont.
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Re-estimating the DEW Line vehicle dumps
I, too, read your article on the cleanup of the DEW Line ("Undoing
the DEW Line," March/April 2007) and also found it interesting,
as I was a part of that project for 25 years.
With reference to George Gill's letter published in the May/June 2007
issue, I cannot disagree that George" flew along the DEW Line
sites in the early 1960s" because I do not know him, but it
must have been a whirlwind flight because his knowledge of the circumstances
of the Line are more imagination that fact.
There were three types of sites from 1957 to 1963, Main (6), Auxiliary
(24) and Intermediate (27) {quantities are approximate} when the Intermediate
sites were abolished.
The vehicular compliment of each approximated Main 30, Auxiliary 10,
Intermediate 6, for a total of 582. Considering that wheeled vehicles
were exchanged every 5 years and tracked vehicles every 10 years,
the maximum vehicular turnover between 1957 and 1989 when the DEW
Line was closed could not have been more than 3,492. Nowhere near
the "hundreds to thousands" that George imagines were discarded.
As an example, during the cleanup of Barter Island Alaska in 1980,
we retrieved some 75 vehicles from the seaside dump and Barter Island
had been in existence for 25 years.
George's imagined belief of the USAF reasoning behind abandoning vehicles
illustrates his complete lack of knowledge of the subject.
William H Skinner
Peace River, Alta.
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* Letters may be edited for length, accuracy and liability.
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