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.