An Airport, A Park, & Whistling into the Wind

 

The once-and-not-future federal government made an important announcement on Monday about lands purchased more than 50 years ago in Southern Ontario. A number of farms and other acreage was bought up, mostly expropriated, for an international airport on the other side of the Greater Toronto Area to take pressure off Pearson and alleviate the dreaded gridlock of the 401 corridor. 

This expropriation was significant, totalling approximately 18,600 acres (7,500 hectares) and almost immediately some barns and houses were demolished. I was in my late teens at the time and this Pickering plan meant that farms owned by members of the congregation my father served in Brooklin had their farms or farmland purchased, although some of them leased the land back from the feds pending the start of construction. This all ground to a halt in 1975 when an agreement with the province couldn't be reached for servicing the area. 

There was resistance before the expropriation and it continued through the decades. There would be announcements about reviving the plan and then it would go away. There were a bunch of studies about feasibility, one as recently as 2023. Is there anything governments do better than hire consultants to study issues at great cost to taxpayers. 

During the early 2000s, when I served a congregation in Lakeridge Presbytery of the United Church where some of those airport lands were located, the committee I chaired invited a spokesperson from Lands Over Landings to speak to our coalition of UCC churches about the ongoing issues and we petitioned the federal government to protect what was and is a pristine watershed including prime farmland. I can't recall receiving a reply because, hey, that's the way in often goes with attempts at resistance.We weren't expecting a "road to Damascus" (or Pickering) moment on the part of the involved governments but we wanted to make a statement of some kind. 

I couldn't be happier that this land has been officially transferred to Parks Canada and will become part of  Rouge National Urban Park, now about a decade old. I pray that the agreement will be ironclad, given the possibility of an imminent change in government. 

I've joked that the unofficial motto of the United Church could be "the importance of being earnest" yet I've participated in protest and support marches, written letters regarding various concerns of the day, and even made a presentation to an Ontario roundtable looking at the use of Crown Lands in the province. I've done so while in ministry in several provinces and now as a "civilian" Christian. At times it has seemed as though I've been whistling into the wind, but I will continue to try to carry a tune, God being my helper. 

Hikers walk through a forest in Toronto's Rouge National Urban Park in June 2021. The Rouge, Canada's first national urban park, was created in 2015. (Giordano Ciampini/The Canadian Press)