Key to the future: More community involvement

Last week’s column about what might happen to the former Leslie Frost Natural Resources Centre on Highway 35 just south of Dorset sparked some discussion, and some ideas.

Discussion and ideas are keys to finding a suitable future for the centre, left vacant and deteriorating by the Ontario government for a decade and half. The government holds the title to the Frost Centre, but it is owned by the people of Ontario, and it’s time for them to get deeply involved with discussion and ideas.

A friend who lives in another part of the province messaged me with his thoughts and an idea. He recalled that H. R. MacMillan, the former timber cruiser who became a giant in the Canadian forest industry, was born in Stouffville and educated at the Ontario Agriculture College in Guelph.

MacMillan spent his career in forestry research and development and founded H. R. MacMillan Export Company, British Columbia’s first locally-owned lumber export company. It later merged with Bloedel, Stewart and Welsh Ltd. to become MacMillan-Bloedel, which was sold later to Weyerhaeuser Company.

MacMillan probably was the most successful forester in Canadian history and funded many philanthropic endeavours for the public good. Although H. R. died in 1976, his philanthropy legacy might still have money for new projects.

My friend suggested that MacMillan legacy funds, combined with the University of Guelph and perhaps Toronto area school boards might form a coalition to buy the Frost Centre, start university classes and day schools for students, plus being a public setting for studies in forestry and nature in general.

Might work. Might not. But at the very least it’s an idea that might help generate other ideas.

Also, someone I met last weekend for the first time told me how his family had cottage property in the Lake Simcoe area. There was a special tract of forest land near their place that was put up for sale.
Family members and others saw the property as a place that should be preserved in its natural state, and not torn up for a commercial enterprise. They got together, raised money, bought the land and donated it to the Nature Conservancy.

That’s another thought that might spark other ideas.

Two important realizations are emerging from the horrid pandemic choking life from our world, and they can be connected to thoughts about the Frost Centre.

The first is a reminder that we humans are animals just like birds, pigs, bats, and monkeys. We forget how interrelated we are. So interrelated that non-human animals are passing on to us more pathogens that can create deadly infectious diseases.

When a pathogen, basically an infectious agent, jumps from a non-human animal into a human and successfully establishes itself, it is called zoonosis. It is a word that scientists say we can expect to hear more and more.

Covid-19 is a disease resulting from a virus believed to have jumped into a human from a bat, then spread rapidly from human to human.
Uprooting the habitats of non-human animals, plus changes in the world’s climate, are moving non-human animals deeper into our human world. A simple example:

We never had to worry about ticks in Haliburton County. Now changing climate, including milder winters, are bringing ticks carrying diseases such as Lyme farther north. Lyme infections have been climbing.
Some scientists believe these changes will continue, helping to increase zoonosis.

It is critically important that people become better informed about nature to better understand the changes and how to live with them.

The second realization is that governments, which are emptying the public coffers in the fight against COVID-19 are going to become desperate for money. One way of getting it is to sell off precious natural areas to commercial interests, which offer not only money from sales, but coveted tax dollars.

We need our governments to protect our natural areas. We need our governments to promote environmental education and to help provide settings where that can be done.

Most of all we need community discussion and ideas. We can’t continue to exist in a world where all the thinking, discussions and ideas are left to politicians and bureaucrats.

More community involvement must become a key element in our future. Governments cannot do it all.

Frost Centre up for sale again

Each time I pass the Leslie Frost Centre on Highway 35 just south of Dorset I hear ghosts of the past.

They are ghost voices of Second World War veterans, laughing children and university students – all who came to the Centre to learn about forestry, the environment and nature in general.

The centre was built in the 1940s as Ontario’s primary forest ranger training school. It offered forestry training to soldiers returning from the war. The Ontario government closed it in 2004, supposedly to save $1.2 million in annual operating costs.

There were fears it would be sold to private enterprise, but instead was leased to Boshkung Lake cottager Al Aubrey, who proposed it as an educational summer camp, conference centre and location for environmental science seminars.

That effort did not work out and ended in 2010 and the Centre was put for sale.

The Centre’s dozen or so buildings have not been used since and are deteriorating. The government continues to pay to keep lights on, the grass cut and the snow ploughed.

Now there is news that it will try again to sell the Centre. Infrastructure Minister Laurie Scott’s office confirms that the government has been preparing the Centre for an open market sale. That preparation includes working on heritage studies to create a heritage easement as part of the sale.

A heritage easement commits a new owner to maintain the property at a certain preservation standard. The new owners can use the property as they please as long as ensuring its preservation.

What all that might mean for the Frost Centre remains to be seen. Could it be turned into a five-star resort with substantial marina facilities for small yachts while displaying historical photos and other artifacts to meet the easement’s heritage preservation requirements?

We’ll have to see the actual open market listing and the heritage easement to know exactly what the Frost Centre might look like under new owners, and how it would affect cottaging, camping and canoeing in the St. Nora Lake area.

The Frost Centre has 24,000 hectares of natural forest that includes hiking and ski trails. Whether parts of that would be included in the sale is unknown.

The Centre has a complicated history, which may or may not have interfered with the government’s earlier attempts to sell.

One hundred years ago, what was then the Ontario department of lands and forests decided to establish a ranger station on the west shore of St. Nora Lake.

Then in 1944 the Ontario government and the University of Toronto entered into a partnership to create a forestry technical school. The site chosen was the ranger station on St. Nora Lake where teachers and students would have access to the 24,000 hectares of government land and some forest area owned by the university.

The original agreement called for the government to pay the capital costs of construction, while the university would supply the teaching staff.

The purpose of the school was to train department of lands and forests employees, and potential employees, plus U of T forestry program students and forest industry employees from other parts of Canada.

Things changed over the years. The Centre became more of a natural resources centre where people came to learn more about nature and environmental issues. For many school children from the cities, a visit to the Frost Centre was their very first experience with being outdoors in a truly natural setting.

Eighty years ago, when Ontario was considering establishing the forestry school, Leslie Frost, then minister of mines and later premier, talked about the importance of education in conserving a healthy environment.

“The government believes that the best approach to the conservation and administration of our natural resources is to be found in education,” he said.

Let’s hope the folks preparing the new plan to sell the Frost Centre remember and believe in those words.

The best possible use of the Frost Centre remains as natural resource centre, where everyone can learn about nature and the need to behave differently if we are to save our planet.

We don’t need it to become yet another party place.

Before the sale, someone should pick up the beer cans and discarded cigarette packs lining the highway outside the place.

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Love and laughter will return

It’s at this time of year that we celebrate the prominent battles, victories and end of the Second World War in 1945. Last Thursday was the 75^th anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, ending that war against Nazi Germany.

While we celebrate apart this year, we are fighting another world war - the COVID-19 disease that has infected roughly four million people globally, killing close to 300,000. Those figures will be much higher when all is said and done.

Few of us were alive or old enough to remember what war in the 1940s was like. All we have are the recorded history and some personal remembrances from the dwindling number of those who lived it.

However, my feeling is that the fight back then was more unified, more focussed, more determined and less partisan than the Covid war today. Everyone seemed to work together to get through the Second World War; end the fighting and killing and get the world back to normal.

I don’t have that feeling about this pandemic. There are no powerfully uniting cultural symbols for fighting the enemy – no Rosie the Riveter, no soaring Churchillian oratory, no Vera Lynn, the “Forces’ Sweetheart”, singing to comfort the troops.

What we do have is the shocking partisan chaos in the U.S. and in Britain the bravado incompetence of Boris Johnson, who came close to being a dead victim of the coronavirus pandemic.

And, in Canada we have the bland Justin Trudeau on TV daily announcing a new financial handout to groups suffering financially by the pandemic. The financial assistance obviously is needed, but would be nice if accompanied by some stirring thoughts on how we’ll work together to beat this plague.

Something like Winston Churchill’s speech to the British House of Commons after taking over the government from the weak-kneed Neville Chamberlain:

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

So far it has not been our finest hour. Shortages of Personal Protective Equipment for medical personnel and other frontline workers, plus other shortages and unpreparedness that might have been avoided by paying attention to the recommendations made by the SARS Commission 15 years ago.

Then there are the nursing home deaths. The National Institute on Aging said last week that 82 per cent of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths have been in long-term settings. That is not just a national disgrace; it is a sign of corruption in our society.

I’m not saying that Canada’s response to the pandemic has been bad. We’ve done relatively well, but it certainly has not been our finest hour.

Meanwhile, over in Britain the spirit of Vera Lynn is alive and encouraging citizens to carry on the fight. Not only is the spirit alive, so is the lady herself. She is 103 and lives in the East Sussex village of Ditchling, roughly 85 kilometres south of London.

She issued a statement for the 75^th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, noting people will celebrate while being apart because of the Covid pandemic. However, while people would be apart, they should not lose hope.

"I hope that VE Day will remind us all that hope remains even in the most difficult of times and that simple acts of bravery and sacrifice still define our nation as the National Health Service works so hard to care for us.”

"Most of all, I hope today serves as a reminder that however hard things get, we will meet again."

That was a reference to her famous Second World War song, We Will Meet Again, which struck a positive, emotional chord with soldiers, families and sweethearts.

Just as popular was her White Cliffs of Dover song, the 1942 war anthem promising better times to come. Its message is worth repeating in these days of anxiety about whether our world ever will be the same again.

There'll be bluebirds over

The white cliffs of DoverTomorrow, just you wait and seeThere'll be love and laughterAnd peace ever afterTomorrow, when the world is free

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The trees and me

Leaf budding is taking its time because of this spring’s chill. But slowly and surely new leaves are appearing, and soon those long views through a naked forest will be gone.

That’s a bit sad because walking a leafless forest with the snow gone is a fine experience. You see interesting details that are hidden at other times of the year.

From the hilltop far back in this bush I peer through skeletal trees and see the lake below, dancing sparkling blue in the spring breeze.

The humps and hollows of the land are all visible, and I can see almost the full length of the ravine being navigated by a doe and her yearling.  Mom is moving very cautiously, likely because she has picked up a hint of my scent.

Walking here tells me how the woods withstood winter’s ravages. Twigs litter the ground, snapped from trees and tossed about by stiff winter winds. Also, some larger, full branches have been brought down by stronger winds and heavy snows.

You get the feeling that all this is part of a natural culling of the weak to make the overall forest stronger, healthier.

Something similar is happening in our human population during this coronavirus pandemic. The old and the infirm are succumbing in greater numbers, but unlike with trees, the human culling weakens, not strengthens, our population.

There are a lot of older tree folks back here in this forest. Rugged silver birches with shaggy bark look like old men nearing the end of their time, but still hanging on to give shelter to birds and animals.

The most commanding sight in this leafless world are the granite ridges, solid Canadian Shield faces eight to nine metres high. In winter they are obscured by ice and snow. Soon the leaves on the oaks and maples will hide them completely from anyone nearby.

Today they are awe inspiring, dominating this piece of undressed forest but giving no hint of their past. The things they must have seen over thousands of years!

At the base of the rock face I see a splotch of color. It is the pale tan of dried and dead beech leaves that a young beech refused to drop last fall.

There are others not far off and that is a good sign. Beeches are terrific trees and I hope they all grow up to have long and fruitful lives.

Science has yet to figure out why all beeches don’t drop their leaves in autumn. There is no firm evidence of why, but much speculation.

One theory is that holding on to the leaves reduces water loss and provides a small amount of nutrients to the tree during winter and early spring.

Winter leaf retention, called marcescence (mar-ses-sense), is seen mainly on young beeches, or sometimes the very lowest branches of a larger beech. It is also seen sometimes on other species, notably oak and ironwood,

The retained dead leaves are pushed off by new buds that appear at this time of year.

Some people are bird watchers but I am a tree watcher. I find it interesting to follow their transitions through the seasons, standing stoically against extreme elements that often break their limbs, snap their backs or uproot their lives.

They are the one living species on earth whose sole purpose is to benefit other species. They feed and they shelter and give of themselves so others can be well and happy. As we all know, they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, helping to save mankind from its own pollution.

It is important to watch trees and to learn from them. For instance, we are learning more about how trees affect human health.

A 2013 study reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that human deaths from cardiovascular and lower respiratory illnesses increased with the devastation of ash trees attacked by the invasive emerald ash borer.

The study found that the deaths of huge number of ash trees could be linked to an additional 21,000 deaths – an additional 24 deaths per 100,000 people every year. That is a 10-per-cent increase in mortality for those two diseases.

Naked or fully leaved, there is much more among the trees than meets the eye.

Time to fix the RCMP

The prime minister was right on cue. Out in front of the microphone and cameras, promising more gun control in the wake of the Nova Scotia massacres.

He said the government had been on the verge of banning assault-style weapons but was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

It was interesting that he appeared to link the Nova Scotia killings and assault weapons. The RCMP had not said what type of weapon was used in the murderous rampage. In fact, it hadn’t said much at all about the most horrific Canadian mass murder in modern times.

It took the force’s senior management almost a week to give the public any details of the massacres, including a vague reference to the killer having a pistol and long guns.

The RCMP’s failure to properly inform the public throughout this incident is indicative of the dysfunction within the federal police force.

That dysfunction has been obvious for years, yet the force’s senior management and their federal government political bosses have failed to take action or even acknowledge it.

The Nova Scotia mass killings, which included the shooting of RCMP constable Heidi Stevenson, a 48-year-old mother of two, once again reflect the problems within the RCMP and the consequences on its members and the public.

Three years ago, the force was found guilty of failing to provide its officers with proper use-of-force equipment and training. That labour code charge was laid after five officers were gunned down by a madman in Moncton, N.B. in June 2014. Three of the officers died.

That tragedy followed the shooting deaths of four RCMP officers by another madman in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in 2005. There were calls for a judicial inquiry to find answers to safety questions raised by that incident, but they were ignored.

For years now the RCMP has been accused by its own members of bullying, sexual harassment, failure to provide proper training and equipment and of incompetence in the senior ranks. RCMP leadership and governing politicians have said either not much is wrong, or that they are studying the situation.

Urgent action is needed before more officers are driven half-crazy by harassment, or forced to quit because of bullying, or are shot because their bosses are either uncaring or too incompetent to protect them properly.

One ray of hope for change is the Federal Court of Canada certification earlier this year of a $1.1-billion class action lawsuit against the RCMP, alleging harassment and bullying.

The class action was filed by current and former members of the force. The Federal Court’s certification means that the lawsuit can proceed.

That lawsuit should throw considerable light on the turmoil within the RCMP and the reasons for it. Many officers and former officers blame the force’s leadership, which is hidebound to decades-old traditions and practices.

Canadians should not have to wait for a costly class action lawsuit to see some action in fixing the long-standing problems within the RCMP. Global News earlier this year estimated that various lawsuits, human rights complaints and other inquiries into RCMP problems have already cost taxpayers $220 million over the past two decades.

These complaints have been well documented and reported in the media over many years. They are not just whining from malcontents. They are real problems destroying morale and respect and confidence in the police force.

The real shame is that the people hurt most by the force’s dysfunction are the people who are not causing it – the frontline officers who diligently do their risky work as commanded by bosses following leadership patterns totally unsuitable for a modern police force.

The front-line officers are the ones who sometimes can’t do their jobs properly, or quit because they can’t take the toxic working atmosphere or even commit suicide because they have become so depressed.

If I were Justin Trudeau, I would call the entire RCMP leadership into a meeting and ask them to explain why they should not all be fired. I would also refocus my mind to understand that more gun control is a far lesser issue than the dysfunction consuming the RCMP.

The RCMP dysfunction has been evident to both Liberal and Conservative governments. It must be ended to restore Canadians’ pride in what once was a national treasure.

Still standing and grinning

Finding a laugh in these grim days of disease and isolation is as difficult as trying to light a candle in a snowstorm. I mean, even if a comedian thinks of something funny in the current situation, it’s probably inappropriate to say it out loud.

So here I am scrolling through the nightly TV doomsday reports when I stumble into a barrel of laughs. On the CBC, of all places.

The CBC isn’t exactly known as the fun channel, but there they are, guffawing faces on a thirty-minute show called Still Standing.

The laughter is generated by Jonny Harris, a Newfie comedian with a bedhead hairdo and a mischievously goofy look. (He also plays Constable George Crabtree on the television series Murdoch Mysteries).

“The population here is not even a fraction of what it was back in the 60s,” he chirps in an episode from Bell Island, in Newfoundland’s Conception Bay.

“A decline in population . . .  you don’t expect that in a place called Conception Bay, right?”

Then he gives the audience that devilish grin and adds: “Dwindling population, I mean, that might be the case over in Contraception Bay . . . .“

Still Standing is a hybrid comedy/reality show premiered on CBC in the summer of 2015. It has Harris visiting small Canadian towns that have seen better times. He gets to know the people, their struggles and how they are overcoming them, then gathers them together for a stand-up comedy performance that has them laughing at themselves.

In an episode from Schreiber, Ontario last fall he explored the town’s Italian heritage - making Italian sausages and talking about the Filanes Falcons Junior B hockey team, named for the Filane-Figliomeni business family that is involved in everything from restaurants to sports clothing to entertainment.

“I thought there was a bunch of kids on the team named Owen,” Harris says during the stand-up part of the Schreiber show. That was because the coach told him that “early in the season the team was 0 ‘n 4, then later on 0 ‘n 10 and at the end 0 ‘n 28.”

“I think it’s hard for Italian-Canadian kids to play hockey ‘cause your parents keep taking your hockey sticks to prop up tomato plants,” he jokes.

The towns Harris visits are all small, tight-knit communities that you might say have seen better days, although Still Standing highlights how the residents are fighting back and living good lives. They are towns where a main industry has left, businesses have closed and young people have moved to big cities to find work.

Schreiber for instance once was a bustling railway town, a Canadian Pacific Railway divisional point 190 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. Railway jobs declined and a mine that provided significant employment closed.

Joking about the towns and their people before a live audience of residents can be a bit tricky.

“It’s got to be a little bit saucy and cheeky,” Harris has said about the stand-up comedy part of the show in which he singles out individuals, the community’s difficulties and how it has responded to them. “But it also has to be respectful. I’m not there to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”

He has found that folks are “not overly sensitive, and are just up for the laugh.”

He knows the importance of humour to small, struggling towns. He comes from Pouch Cove (pronounced Pooch) a short drive north of St. John’s. It was founded as a fishing and mixed farming community but as fishing declined became more a bedroom community for the Newfoundland capital.

Viewing Still Standing can leave you nostalgic, even sad. It hurts to see so many small towns where prosperity left to live in another place.

But Harris’ light-hearted antics bring out what’s really important about these places: the good-hearted people and how they make the best of lives for themselves, their families and their neighbours.

A bonus of the show are the gorgeous landscapes and histories of seldom-heard about places scattered from one Canadian coast to another. It gives you a deeper sense of our country and its people.

When each show closes, often with Harris pretending to talk with his mom back home, you get a nice warm feeling about being a Canadian.

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Resurrection in the spring forest

After the long winter illness, color is returning to the cheeks of my bush lot.

A red-breasted robin hops through the newly-exposed layer of dead leaves, looking for a grub, or anything else edible.

Then there’s the slow, silent orange flicker of the wings of an early-returning Monarch butterfly. Or, perhaps it is a Viceroy; the untrained eye finds it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Green patches of wet moss cling to the ancient granite outcrops, and the bases of the naked trees, adding more splotches of colour to a dreary landscape.

And peeking out from the rock crevices are the brightest spots of all – red wintergreen berries glistening in rays of sunshine.

These berries, and their surrounding green waxen leaves, truly are a miracle of the woods. They blossomed into fruit last summer and survived beneath the snow and ice throughout the brutal winter cold.

All are signs of spring’s resurrection from the dank forest floor in which trees stand stiffly silent like skeletons. Small but hopeful signals that warmer, more productive times are coming.

Beyond this forest is the chaos of humanity’s coronavirus pandemic. Out there, spring has become a season of things lost – lost lives, lost important events, lost incomes.

Here, the forest is quiet and ordered, demonstrating the consistency of nature left alone to exist as it has for thousands of years.

This consistency is seen in the moose track along my forest trail. Every April, when the snow begins to disappear, a moose ambles this path, migrating from winter to summer quarters.

I have yet to see a track from the bear who occupies this forest. I know it must be up and about after hibernation, but I have not seen it, heard it or smelled it.

That’s probably because we both practice social distancing. We are both cranky on early mornings before breakfast, so neither wants to come anywhere near the other.

What is awesome about the spring forest is its easy transformation from the cold miseries of winter to the buoyancy of summer.

The little wintergreen plant and its red berries illustrate that beautifully. After so many snowbound months, the berries are ready to do what they were born to do.

Plump and bursting with life, the berries soon will shrivel and rot, dropping minuscule seeds to create new life and fulfill their sole purpose - to endure, to survive and to carry out their role in nature’s plan.

The pandemic and its forced isolation have created time to be out here observing the wonders of the awakening forest. All that time once spent doing other things – many of them materialistic things – now is spent thinking and viewing things differently.

It is amazing how our vision widens and becomes more focussed when we stop doing all those “other things.”

What comes into view more clearly is an important lesson of nature: think ahead and be prepared.

Everything that exists in this forest understands that lesson. The squirrel that procrastinates and does not gather and store enough nuts likely will not survive the winter.

It is a stark lesson: Prepare well or be ready to suffer, or even die.  

That was a lesson highlighted by the commission investigating the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak. It emphasized the precautionary principle, which basically is about thinking ahead, preparing and taking action before a situation becomes critical.

There is mounting evidence that if governments, corporations and people in general had paid attention to this principle, the current pandemic would have been less severe.

Another thought prompted by this pandemic, and by a walk in the spring woods, is whether our human activities are drawing us farther away from nature and its many lessons.

We live in a materialistic, money-oriented world. When I look into the forest, I wonder whether we really need to have all those things we think we do. Everything we really need is right here in nature.

Our human world is one we have molded outside of nature. Thinking about how to change it is too deep and too complicated a thought to work through today.

And, it’s likely that the pandemic will end up making some of those changes for us.

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