HomeMy WebLinkAbout2601PICKERING WEATHER
MORE SNOW
THIS SUMMER
Established Mar. 1972
People
or Planes
Citizen protest is a frustrating, expensive business. Months of costly
research and reasonable arguments by "People or Planes" have been
brushed aside and twisted by slick Public Relations and obedient civil
servants at tremendous cost to the taxpayer.
The reasoned, technical arguments against the decision to build a
second airport have been presented many times in many ways. Our
Government has not listened. It is time to present the real story, the
political story, behind their decision.
That is what this pictorial editorial is all about.
It takes money to fight government "facts" built on political
necessities. With a narrow hearing, based on a bad decision, made for
Political reasons, POP must have money to end, forever, this political
airport. .
Charles M. Godfrey
Chairman
THIS IS A STORY
OF A POLITICAL
DECISION THAT
r RESULTED IN
A RUTHLESS
LANDGRAS !
IT ALL BEGAN
AT MALTON
AIRPORT IN
r96�
LOOK AT THIS e
MONTREAL I S
GETTING A
SECOND AIRPOR
METRO TORONTO'S
POLITICIANS WANTED
A SUPER AIRPORT
TOO !
EXPERTS BEGAN THE EXPANSION PLANNING, BUT..
or WE DONT WANT TOO MUC44 WOW
MORE AIRPORT! NOISE WE CANT
FIGHT
TH AT � d
PUBLIC
MEETIN
PUBLIC OUTCRY AND THE FEAR OF LOSING VOTES
FORCED POLITICIANS TO REJECT THAT PLAN
CIRCULATION
PAID 20,000
Volume 3 No. 1
February 1974
THEY STARTED PUTTING PRESSURE ON OTTAWA
AND 1^0, PIERRE SET UP AN EXPENSIVE STUDY To -
COOL THINGS OFF FOR HIS TORONTO M.P. S ./
T HERE ARE THE SITES THAT
OUR STUDY SHOWS ARE
TECHNICALLY SUITABE
L
TOP SECRET K I
1. Orangeville......
2. Guelph...........
3. Lake S ..........
4. Lake Simcoe......
NOTE! NOT ONE EXPERT OR STUDY SAID
WE NEEDED A SECOND AIRPORT!
"MALTON should beC—tr,4X(
� MEAN '
expanded to meet
the needs of the SPENT45
TORONTO region overION FOR
the time frame THING1970 - 2000.-
.Report
Ministry of Transport,
August, 1970...
IN 1970 A TOTAL OF 59 SITES WERE STUDIED... PSST!FOR REASONS KNOWN ONLY TO OTTAWA
PICKERING WAS NOT ONE... IT WASN'T AND QUEEN'S PARK EVEN THE 'FOUR SUITABLE
EVEN CONSIDERED ! SITES WERE REJECTED !
TRUDEAU-DAVIS
LAND
GRAB!,
THEY STARTED PUTTING PRESSURE ON OTTAWA
AND 1^0, PIERRE SET UP AN EXPENSIVE STUDY To -
COOL THINGS OFF FOR HIS TORONTO M.P. S ./
T HERE ARE THE SITES THAT
OUR STUDY SHOWS ARE
TECHNICALLY SUITABE
L
TOP SECRET K I
1. Orangeville......
2. Guelph...........
3. Lake S ..........
4. Lake Simcoe......
NOTE! NOT ONE EXPERT OR STUDY SAID
WE NEEDED A SECOND AIRPORT!
"MALTON should beC—tr,4X(
� MEAN '
expanded to meet
the needs of the SPENT45
TORONTO region overION FOR
the time frame THING1970 - 2000.-
.Report
Ministry of Transport,
August, 1970...
IN 1970 A TOTAL OF 59 SITES WERE STUDIED... PSST!FOR REASONS KNOWN ONLY TO OTTAWA
PICKERING WAS NOT ONE... IT WASN'T AND QUEEN'S PARK EVEN THE 'FOUR SUITABLE
EVEN CONSIDERED ! SITES WERE REJECTED !
'SHE PRESSURE. FROM THE M.P. S CONTINUF-D UNTIL . . . .
MYtAP.S IN TORONTO NEED
AN AIRPORT To CATCH VOTES,
DON FIND A REASON
„ FOR BUILDING
OmE !
AYE, SIR! I'LL DRUM UP
SOMETHING OR MY
NAM E'S NOT
JAMIESON � I"LL. ✓
9
CONTACT MAEOUGH
Quote from Toronto Air-
port Systema Analysis,
February, 1971:
"HENCE DEDUCE NEED FOR MAJOR AIRPORT."
I
SO IT CAME TO PASS THAT TRUDEAU GAVE DON JAMIESON ORDERS TO PROCEED
WHEN BILI. DAVIS AND HIS HENCHMEN WERE
TOLD OF THIS REMARKABLE 'TURN CW EVERTS,
THEIR JOY WAS UNCONFINED !
INOW A POLITICAL.
AIRPORT I S TAK I N IS
43,000 ACRES OF
FARMLAND, AND
THREATENING WHOLE
VILLAGES IN AN IN-
CREDIBLE "ALICE IN
WONDERLAND 'I EVENT
MARCHAND, M'BOY, NERE'S
THE HAT TFFAT MAKES YOU
BOSS or- PICKERING
AIRPORT .. .
Q 7,
SON./ THE HAT
IS MY STYLE,
BUT WHERE'S
PICKERING ?
JEAN 11II41IRCHAND TAKES OVER FROM JAMIESON
HOW CAN AN INQUIRY FOR AN AIRPORT, THAT NOBODY BUT POLITICIANS
AND DEVtLOPERS WANT OR NEED, EVER MAKE SENSE TO ANYBODY ?
Why in the 2 years since the announcement has
the Federal Government not been able to prove a
need for a second Airport?
Why did the Provincial Government not
question the need of a decision which they helped
initiate?
Why has the Federal Government been
reluctant to provide an unrestricted Public
Inquiry into the Airport and the Provincial
Government refuse to have an Inquiry into the
Cedarwood Project?
Why were people in Meadowvale told to
complain about noise from Malton Airport
(Distance 10 Miles) while the people in Stouff-
ville and Markham were told that they will not be
affected by noise from Pickering Airport
(Distance 1 Mile)?
Why did the Government hire 3 Public
Relation Firms in order to sell the airport?
Why will the New Toronto Zoo be unaffected by
noise while Zoos, in other countries, near air-
ports are affected? -
Why, when the Government claims Malton is
surrounded by too many people, is Ontario
planning a city of 200,000 within the noise zone of
the Pickering A/P?
POP is faced with heavy legal costs for
the coming Inquiry. If we are to save this
prime farmland for agriculture and
recreation we must have money.
Join POP today!
Membership — S5.00.
Contributions of larger amounts are very
much needed and, if you can afford more,
that would be beautiful!
r•----------------------�
PEOPLE OR PLANES COMMITTEE
j BOX 159, CLAREMONT, ONTARIO. j
I I
I I enclose my cheque for S 1
jto support P.O.P.
NAME
I I
j STREET j
I I
I I
I TOWN/CITY I
L----------------------- I
I No Airport
airport no
PEOPLE ON PLANES COMMITTEE
P/
UpAgainstOttawa
Looking back, it was an omen that
shouldn't have been dismissed as a mere
aberration. I wrote my first-ever letter of
protest to the Prime Minister about an
airport proposed for a site near my home
— and received a form -letter reply from
a correspondence secretary explaining
why Canada had decided to extend dip-
lomatic recognition to the Vatican.
But I ignored the portent, because all
Canada was riding a great euphoric wave
called participatory democracy, and we
were convinced that our voices would be
heard and would count, somehow.
In the 1960s, l think many people had
a feeling that the bureaucracies of
government and business were becom-
ing so big that the voice of the average
person was being correspondingly
muted. It seemed more and more likely
that citizens across the country could
find themselves fighting City Hall, or
some impersonal government depart-
How People Power died of its own naivety
BY BARRY CONN HUGHES
ment, or a computer — and losing.
Then in 1968 Pierre Trudeau came
along. He was an unconventional man in
the terribly conventional world of Cana-
dian politics; yet he became Prime
Minister. He seemed to be living proof
that you could beat the system, and his
remarks about "participatory
democracy" and "a just society" cer-
tainly implied that citizens could have an
effective say in how the system was to
affect them.
Citizens' groups flourished. In Rich-
mond, B.C., residents got their backs up
and began to resist government pressure
to sell their homes for an expansion of
Vancouver International Airport. Ordi-
nary citizens in other cities began form-
ing environmental protection groups.
Ratepayers' associations sprang up,
dedicated to the idea that citizen par-
ticipation is essential to the planning of
public projects.
A massive "Stop Spadina" movement
in Toronto opposed the building of the
6'5 -mile Spadina Expressway that would
have ripped right into the city, and in
1971 Ontario Premier William Davis was
indeed moved to stop it. Said Winnipeg
Mayor Stephen Juba: "What Premier
Davis did in Toronto provided a terrific
example for the entire nation. He had
the guts to say 'hold it,' and showed the
rest of us it can be done."
Faith was replaced with certain
knowledge. You could not only fight
City Hall; it was entirely possible that
you could win.
Yet by February, in this Year of Our
Disillusionment 1975, Metropolitan
Toronto had decided to proceed with a
mini-Spadina, and the federal govern-
ment had announced it would go ahead
with a mini -airport at Pickering, east of
the city. In both cases, citizens' groups
expressed their convictions that once
begun, these projects would expand with
a fearsome inevitability. Where have all
the Flowers gone, Mr. Prime Minister?
There's been some backlash, to be
sure, for citizens' groups are, at the very
least, a bother for established authority.
Early this March, Privy Council Presi-
dent Mitchell Sharp implied that if the
government decides that building a
Mackenzie Valley pipeline is an urgent
matter, it might approve the scheme
before Mr. Justice Thomas Berger's in-
quiry on its social and environmental
impact is completed.
But it wasn't backlash that hamstrung
the effectiveness of citizen involvement.
What happened was that the "participa-
tion" citizens thought they were
engaged in was an illusion. Participatory
democracy as they perceived it simply is
not operative and never was.
The fight of the People Or Planes
organization against the Pickering air-
port provides a textbook case for any -
citizens who think they will be able to
participate — in any meaningful way
apart from the ballot box — in develop-
ments that will affect their lives.
(I make no claim to dispassion here,
though our own home was not affected
by the airport expropriations. We live in
Pickering, I've been a POP member for
more than three years and continue to
support it. 1 can only say that you will
never know what it's like to fight City
Hall until you've tried.)
People Or Planes was created March 2,
1972, the day Donald Jamieson, then
Minister of Transport, announced that a
new international airport for Metro
Toronto would be located on some
18,000 acres to be expropriated in the
Pickering Township area just northeast.
Malton, the existing airport to the north-
west, would not be expanded — its near-
by residents were already disturbed
about noise. At the same time, Ontario
Treasurer Darcy McKeough unveiled
provincial plans for Cedarwood, some-
times called North Pickering, a city of
250,000 to be built just south of the new
airport site on 25,000 acres that would be
expropriated if they couldn't be bought.
These decisions had been made without
our involvement and we were taken by
surprise. Our federal and provincial
representatives, and even the reeve of
Pickering, didn't know about the airport
location until that day.
Still, if any group snould have been
able to beat City Hall, it was the move-
ment that grew out of that first angry
meeting of about 100 Pickering residents
at the century -old Melody Farm on the
proposed airport site. Within three
weeks, People Or Planes had become a
well -organized and smoothly function-
ing pressure group.
We were all caught up in it. Business -
suited commuters who worked in the
city and farmers just back from doing
the chores formed close friendships in a
common cause. Respectable matrons
found themselves waving placards.
Quiet folk who'd never protested about
anything wrote strong letters to the edi-
tor. Ordinary people who could never
relate to wild-eyed hippies who wrecked
computers, could rise up to fight for or-
dinary things like home, family, com-
munity and the good earth. We were
determined to participate in decisions
that affected those things.
POP's parliament was a steering com-
mittee that met weekly and included
area captains from all the towns and
hamlets in the region, plus committee
heads responsible for publicity,
agricultural and technical arguments, ar-
tistic and design efforts for sighs and
buttons, fund-raising, senior citizens'
and youth groups, legal matters, and a
diplomatic committee that pursued our
case more privately with the politicians.
Fortunately, we found that the grow-
ing membership included experts in
nearly every field we needed, and this
broad base was to prove POP's strength.
A partial list of members' occupations
includes: farmer, lawyer, factory worker,
aeronautical engineer, bank clerk, mu-
nicipal councilor, businessman, artist,
carpenter, naturalist, printer, manage-
ment consultant, housewife, juvenile
court judge, student, teacher, secretary,
greenhouse operator — and journalist.
POP armed itself with expertise,
enthusiasm, and above all persistence.
Today, more than mree years after that
first announcement, POP's publicity
committee meets most mornings, the
POP office is open daily at the old Cedar
Grove School, and the steering commit-
tee still meets every week.
This tenacity was fuelled only partly
by the gut reaction of those who didn't
want their homes and farms taken from
them. Many POP supporters like our-
selves lived outside the immediate area,
in Toronto and elsewhere, and were con-
cerned about the general degradation of
the environment and the apparent in-
sensitivity of governments. We decided
the line had to be drawn somewhere —
and that somewhere was Pickering.
Money was a constant problem. While
POP members were chipping in with
their bowling night money and bake sale
receipts, the federal government was
using massive amounts of our tax dollars
to sell us on the airport we didn't want.
For instance, just one of POP's many
briefs, releases and position papers sug-
gested that gulls might interfere with
aircraft operations in the area. The Min-
istry of Transport then commissioned a
bird study. It refuted the claim—and cost
$253,000.
Despite the massive government at-
tempts to justify its decision after the
fact, some residents just couldn't believe
that the airport/city complex could go
through. It clearly violated the prov-
ince's Toronto -Centred Region Nan,
which was designed to stop Toronto's
urban sprawl by stimulating growth
centres farther away. How could they
possibly stop the sprawl by placing an
airport and a whole new city hard by
Metro's border, in an area the Toronto
Plan had designated as an agricultural
and recreational greenbelt?
People who buy homes near an exist-
ing airport like Malton presumably know
what they're getting into, but people
who moved out to the peaceful
countryside around Pickering had made
a conscious decision to get away from
the city's noise and bustle. One of them
was Dr. Charles Godfrey, a specialist in
rehabilitative medicine who'd also been
farming a property in Pickering for ten
years, and then built a home on it. Ar-
ticulate, energetic, and obviously angry
at the shattering of his own dream, Dr.
Godfrey was quickly elected chairman of
the People Or Planes organization.
He warned us against complacency,
and he was right. But mistrusting estab-
lished institutions came hard for the
POP movement, rooted as it was in con-
servatism rather than radicalism. Out
natural inclination was to place our faith
in our elected members and in the legis-
latures in which we had placed them.
As it turned out, the airport proposal
was never aired in a full debate in the
House of Commons, and the Cedarwood
city project was similarly neglected in
the Ontario legislature. Two successive
Pickering Township councils, in 1972
and 1974, voted against the airport for all
the good it did.
The federal member for Ontario Rid-
ing was liberal Norm Cafik, who at first
opposed the airport. He is an ambitious
man, and it soon became evident that he
was not going to place his career in
jeopardy by opposing the Liberal party
line. His position, if it could be called
that; became: an airport if necessary, but
continued
not necessarily an airport
Cafik's artful mugwumpery com-
pletely turned off POP supporters; and
Cafik himself later tried to get out of the
whole business by running for the
leadership of the provincial Liberals. He
lost, however, and remains the unenvi-
able man in the middle.
Meanwhile, POP had turned to the
public for sympathy and support.
Literally hundreds of bodies across
Canada have the power to expropriate
private property. We had to get it across
to people that it wasn't just a matter of a
few hundred homes being taken in
Pickering — it could happen to anybody
anywhere in the country, with no more
justification. In nine months, POP pro-
duced an incredible number of rallies,
festivals, demonstrations and public
relations activities. POP organized letter -
writing campaigns, and its speakers
fanned out across southern Ontario.
Members produced a short film, a color
slide show and even a book (People or
Planes, by Hector Massey and Charles
Godfrey, Copp Clark).
Ten conservation areas surround the
site, and to remind Torontonians of this
attractive recreation spot so close to the
city, POP threw a two-day Spring
Festival in May of 1972, with hayrides,
square dancing, apple cider, nature
walks, weaving and sheep -shearing
demonstrations, horseshoe pitching and
the inevitable bake sale. We raised more
than $7,000 at this function alone, and
POP garnered more signatures for an
anti -airport petition that eventually
reached about 10,000 names.
All this helped to keep the pot boiling,
but did not give the residents an official
forum in which to register their objec-
tions. Both federal and provincial ex-
propriation legislation provides for
public hearings. But they're not man-
datory in Ontario, and the province
decided to avoid a lot of trouble and skip
it, thus foiling any serious hearing of ob-
jections to Cedarwood.
So POP strategists rested their hopes
on the airport hearing required by the
federal statutes. To our dismay, we
found that, under statute, the hearing
officer was charged only with hearing
the objections and reporting them. POP
would have no opportunity to cross-
examine the Ministry of Transport plan-
ners. And the federal government was
under no obligation to do anything more
than "receive" the report.
We were being handed a stacked deck
— but it was the only game in town and
we had to play.
The hearing began Nov. 23, 1972.
Hearing officer 1.W. Swackhamer stated
at the outset that there was "no issue to
be determined by me and no recom-
mendations required of me."
POP engaged lawyer J.J. Robinette,
who'd fought the Spadina Expressway
before the Ontario Municipal Board, to
appear at the expropriation hearing and
to argue for a full public inquiry. He was
backed by 2,200 objectors represented
by People Or Planes.
The Swackhamer Report released Jan.
30, 1973 recorded the objections
faithfully, including those of L.D.
Almack, the management consultant
and professional engineer who headed
the POP technical committee. The thrust
of his argument was that a second
Toronto airport was not needed because
present technology could accommodate
increased passenger demand at Mallon,
just as technology could reduce noise
disturbance there. He produced statistics
to challenge the government planners'
assumptions of air traffic growth, which
had projected 60 million passengers in
the Toronto area by the year 2000.
Traffic forecasting, as historian
Donald Creighton once said, is akin to
astrology, and you had to wonder about
a iMmistry of Transport horoscope that
had self -multiplying figures in an ever -
rising curve. It sounded as if they were
predicting cancer, not growth.
It was a political decision anyway, said
Almack, because while the planners had
at first calculated that fitting another
runway into existing space at Malton
Airport could let it cope with much more
traffic, this course was rejected when the
government decided that local opposi-
tion to noise made that "politically un-
saleable."
Swackhamer did make one recom-
mendation. He said the set tariff of fees
payable to witnesses for their prepara-
tion and research was "totally inade-
quate for the services performed by
some of the persons who appeared." He
recommended greatly increased pay-
ments. This would have added nearly
$10,000 to POP's coffers to continue the
fight, but it was never paid.
When the government tabled the
Swackhamer report in January, 1973,
along with it was a "response" by the
Ministry of Transport attacking the ob-
jections it recorded. At the same time
the new minister, Jean Marchand, an-
nounced that the government had
decided to go ahead and confirm the ex-
propriations. Before construction began,
however, Marchand promised that an
independent group would conduct an
open public discussion on the whole
issue.
The order in council for this came
through nine months later, the inquiry
itself did not get under way for more
than a year. POP kept itself busy in the
interim. One obvious stratagem had
been to rebuff the Liberals' man on the
scene at the polls during the 1972 elec-
tion. But the ballot box has its limita-
tions. While 25,822 people voted against
Norm Cafik and only 16,328 voted for
him, the POP vote split between the two
opposition parties and Cafik eked out a
four -vote win.
Still, anti -airport support was growing,
especially in Toronto even though
nobody there was faced with expropria-
tion. A rally on April 23, 1973 at the St.
Lawrence Centre in the heart of the city
packed the hall And less than a week
later, a poll for the Toronto Star showed
56 per cent of Metro Toronto residents
against the airport and only 26 per cent
in favor.
We were going to win! The Prime
Minister himself had said in a speech on
March 23, 1972: "if we can be con-
vinced that the majority of the people
living in this area don't want an airport, I
can guarantee we will stop the pro-
cedures soon, but it might be hard to get
that majority." We were assured that the
democratic process would work.
All we had to do was to keep up the
pressure. Publish another newspaper,
hold another bake sale, recruit more
members, write more letters. Represen-
tatives spoke to audiences at places rang-
ing from a steelworkers' hall to a
Unitarian church, questioning the need
for a second airport, pointing out
developments in aircraft noise reduction
that would ease any problems at Malton,
and in alternate forms of transit like
short takeoff and landing planes and
high-speed trains. Even if a new airport
were needed, they argued, scrub land at
Camp Borden to the north of Toronto
would be a far better option than taking
18,000 acres of prime farmland out of
circulation.
We kept up the protest, though adver-
tising, publishing newspapers and
brochures, paying legal fees, telephone
and office expenses were a heavy finan-
cial burden. Advertising and promotion
alone cost $21,165.81 during the first
year of the protest.
Then the Order In Council, dated Oc-
tober, 1973, created the Airport Inquiry
Commission. It was composed of Mr.
Justice Hugh Gibson, a judge of the
federal court of Canada, Murray Jones
of Toronto and Dr. Howard Petch of
Kitchener. And its terms of reference
were restrictively narrow. So narrow, in
fact, that POP could only conclude that
they were designed to choke off all the
points we had made previously and all
the objections presented to the
Swackhamer hearing. The Commission
was to consider only New evidence, if
forthcoming — and its report habitually
capitalized the word New — that had not
been in the mind of the government
before Jan. 30, 1973 when i1 recon rowed
its decision 10 go ahead with 1he airport.
POP hired another lawyer for the sec-
ond bout, and at the Commission's
organizational hearings he argued for a
wide interpretation of the terms of
reference, and for money to bring in
outside experts to contest the studies on
which the airport decision was made.
"This commission," said Mr. Justice
Gibson, "does not accept the fallacious
premise that what the Government of
Canada has filed is false and that the
function of this inquiry is to search the
world for experts to disprove it." The
message was clear: it was to be Govern-
ment vs. The People, and the Ministry of
Transport studies were to be taken more
or less as gospel.
Dr. Godfrey, the People Or Planes
chairman, had another bone to pick. He
had discovered that Commissioner
Jones, a planning consultant, had once
expressed an opinion that weighed
against expanding Mallon, and he ques-
tioned whether he could qualify as being
impartial. Godfrey made an application
to the Federal Court for an order prohi-
biting the Commission from conducting
further proceedings.
Zap! To make sure court casts would
be paid if they lost, Godfrey et al were
ordered to post a $25,000 bond — which
POP, of course, did not have — and had
to withdraw.
The Commission required that sub-
missions be received in writing in ad-
vance. But a public hearing should give
all interested parties the chance to make
their case in public, and the anti -airport
witnesses were eager to appear and read
out their -briefs. Yet the Commission re-
port says there were about 250 people
"who submitted evidence statements
and had the opportunity to give oral evi-
dence in support [of the statements], but
for reasons of their own they did not."
This is a --gross distortion. The Com-
mission's counsel actively discouraged
many citizens from reading their briefs
and, if they insisted, would suggest that
they merely summarize them. The hear-
ings stretched from March to August of
1974, and many were called when they
weren't able to be present. Resident
John Livingstone, who had written the
Commission saying that he could testify
"at any time except the evening of
Wednesday, April 10," when he had to
attend a Lenten church service, was
called on the evening of Wednesday,
April 10 — and was refused permission
to testify at a later date.
With all this, we could only view it as a
foregone conclusion when, at the end of
January, the Commission came out in
favor of a Pickering airport. The federal
government decided to start with only
one runway, and the provincial govern-
ment had scaled down the size of its
Cedarwood project considerably; but
these were small consolations.
What hurt POP supporters was not so
much that we had failed to win after
fighting so long and so hard, and after
raising and spending nearly $100,000 in
the attempt. It was that both hearings
had been so constructed as to minimize
any serious challenge to the govern-
ment's decision. Some participation.
Members sense a betrayal of the ideal
of participatory democracy as ex-
pounded by the Prime Minister. True,
he never said that it meant decisions
should be taken in the streets. "It
doesn't mean," Trudeau said once, "that
those who participate must necessarily
be those who decide." Our complaint is
that the "participation" itself was a
sham.
As a result of the experience, some
members now refuse to have anything
to do with the political process. Dr.
Godfrey, on the other hand, is still game.
"You either get into it or get out of it
altogether and become a hermit," he
says now. "1 want to stay in it and try to
make participatory democracy really
work." He's resigned the POP chairman-
ship to become a provincial NDP candi-
date.
POP itself has merged its efforts with
the Metro Toronto Airport Review
Committee, a coalition of civic and en-
vironmental groups that continue to op-
pose the airport. They remain convinced
that the airport makes no more sense
than it ever did, especially in a time of
rapid inflation, energy shortages, and
disappearing farmland.
As for me, l still take my text from the
POP membership card. It's a simple
card, designed and printed by volun-
teers. On one side it says People Or
Planes, P.O. Box 159, Claremont, Ont.,
and on the other, there's a quote from
the 1972 United Nations' Declaration on
the Human Environment:
"Individuals in all walks of life, as well
as organizations in many fields, by their
values and the sum of their actions, will
shape the world."
Recently I took a drive north through
Pickering Township. I know the conces-
sion lines now by their afflictions. The
Third Line is where there's a Toronto
garbage dump. The Fifth, where some-
body has erected a big sign saying "You
Are Now Entering The Davis Land -grab
Region," is Cedarwood country. And by
the Seventh, you're in airport country,
where you see the now -poignant signs
saying, "We Will Not Be Moved."
I visited Miss Aileen Adams at the old
Melody Farm. She, and the elderly Mr.
and Mrs. Gordon Auld around the cor-
ner, had expected to live out their years
in the neat and charming homes now
slated to be taken for the airport.
Her bags were packed and sitting by
the door. She was about to enter hospital
because of what the strain of the whole
experience has done to her.
I noticed that Miss Aileen Adams had
brought in some forsythia branches so
that they would bloom early this year. to
People Or Planes: Chronicle of a losing battle
t SPRING
FESTIVAL
7
T EA GARDE N
March, 17 / 2 Soon mer the Pickering airport announcement, May, 17 / 2 The protesters staged a two-day Spring Festival over
the People OrPlanessteering committee set up shop in an old schoolhouse. 30 square miles of Pickering Township and 50,000 Toronto -area residents
There was a three-year battle ahead. came to sample the rural life on their doorstep.
June, 17 / 2 With handmade robes and coffins, residents held a
mock funeral at Ontario's Queen's Park, to demonstrate what would be lost
if the airport and its accompanying satellite city went through.
JuneJ7 / J POP declared the demonstration "unofficial," but a
group of residents hanged Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Davis in
effigy, insisting they bore the ultimate responsibility for Pickering's fate.
W
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}
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September, 1973 Pickering produce was trucked to
Toronto City Hall for a harvest festival designed to remind city people that
the bulk of the airport site was classed by experts as prime farmland.
July, 19 4 More than a dozen of the region's artists and sculptors
donated'their efforts to POP. As well as paintings, symbols and graphics,
they produced "Blunderland" road signs for the area.
M2
October, 19 /T Antique pine furniture and farm produce
were featured at a POP auction that raised $3,851 for the cause. Farm wives
held a bake sale, as they did at most of the public functions.
February,1975After three years of meetings and protests,
residents heard that the federal government would construct an airport any-
way — though not on the scale that was first planned.
YOU ARE ENTERING�I
GREAT GOVERNMENTr
CK -NO CRAB.
sf
REGION)
50
-0100 a" "M
A SIGN OF RESENTMENT
A road sign on Highway 7 near proposed airport in Pick•
eying, east of Toronto, Mnts out the feeling of some
residents who must give up land. Original sign read,
You Are Entering Great Pine Ridge Tourist Region.
i:?la s+J �a
BY HELENN WORTHINGTON
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the corner of Highway 7 and Brock Rd., north of Pickering.
It's the showplace of the tiny hamlet of Brougham and
THIS BEAUTIFUL old home, dating back to 1842, is
owned by Mr. and Mrs. Don Gibson. Gibson, a vice -
surrounding countryside,
due to be torn d9wn to make way for the new airport.
president of General Foods, put in much time, energy
And anyone who's" been reading the papers lately
situated in Brougham, it is,an architecturaltreasure
and money restoring the, Georgian revival landmark.
knows what's going to happen to Brougham and—inevitab-
ly—its showplace.
People power they call it. Sit back and watch this one.
advantage of a quiet country life plus the advantage of
It is going to:bewiped off the map, obliterated, zapped
Or join in -the fray. 'It's going to be a beauty.
being close enough to earn a living in the city.
out 'of existence, =to make way for, our new international
It, istarted off last night at a people power meeting in
Thein reaction "was first disbelief, .then outrage. The
airport.
That's progress for you: Here one year; gone the•next.
Brougham hall -which overflowed into the neighboring
church, with lots of biggies backing the battle.
result: A battle cry:
words In the of Mrs. R. M. Elmer, who her
The showplace?
A glorious old._home, dating back to 1842, which is
Professor Donald, Creighton, probably Canada's most
,with
engineer husband and three children moved into a"magnifi-
recognized as a perfect architectural tribute to our rural
•eminent historian, 'lives in the area and is prepared to
`So
Gently renovated 135 -year-old farmhouse four years ago:'
Ontario past: -
fight. is >filmmaker Chris Chapman,, who doesn't even
"We're not just complaining about the loss of our own
This home is listed in Canada's public archives as an
live there, but wants to see this supreme sample of rural
°
home, but about the fact that this lovely' farmland will be
architectural treasure; and it is mentioned in the book, The
Ontario p
reserved.o
ruined. We're fighting to save rural Ontario."
Ancestral Roof ` as a perfect example of the Georgian
Let's face it. No . matter which. area was • chosen for
Meanwhile, Mrs. Don Gibson who, with her husband,
revival style adapted to Ontario 130 years ago.Y
expropriation to make wa for the new airport, the resi-'
P
put years of "blood, sweat and tears" into their home, tries
, To Mr. and Mrs. Don Gibson, who resurrected the
dents would have screamed. -
not to think of the unthinkable expropriation.
place from disrepair and lavished love and money upon it
But a drive through the lovely rolling rural countryside
to restore it to its former elegance, the threat of expropri ,
near Brougham and a look into some of the homes there,
Ren9vations halted
tion comes as a crushing blow.
both , o.d and new; makes you wonder if there wasn't
somewhere a less picturesque spot to be ravaged. `
.
But if the worst comes to the "worst, they'dike to see
Crushing blow
What Mrs. Lorne Almaek of Claremont would like to do
their landmark residence preserved by the Architectural
is invite Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Mrs. Trudeau
Conservancy and moved to another location.
To. anyone in this country interested in preserving our
and, Baby Justin, to her home fora weekend to , see for
At the moment she's into -a second renovation of the,
architectural heritage, it is also a crushing blow,
themselves what the federal government is going to do.
historical interior- but has had to cancel new drapes and
The L Gibsons are preparing to fight for their treasure ;
Six years ago the`. Almacks built their dream home high
other things 'she had on order.
and concerned architectural conservationists are preparing
on the" top of a oiiill with },all to h,a-.i windows overlooking
"Just think" she says, "my children may never be
also to man the barricades.
thein own 120 -acre va•ley with picnic tables, stream, and
able to bring their own children back here and say `I grew
What's in the offing is another battle on the same scale
bird -feeding -stations.
up here, I .climbed` that tree, I smoked behind that
as -or even bigger than—the one which stopped the Spadi-
*ey, ,;ke the many other city slickers who moved into
barn.. . '' t
ma Expressway.
the area, renovating historic homes or building new ones,
Only this time the troops aren't fighting City Hall;
came. to Claremont to get away from noise and pollution.
they're taking on. the. government of Canada.
Theyi considered they had -the best of two worlds: the
Star photos by Dick Loek
r...ti
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THIS BEAUTIFUL old home, dating back to 154.2., is owned by Mr. and firs. Don Gibson. Gibson, a .ice-
due to be torn down to make way for the new airport. president of General Foods, put in much time, energy
Situated in Brougham, it is an architectural treasure and money restoring the Georgian revival landmark.
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Site of
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DAVID
WORKING
TOGETHER
PETERSON
DESTROYING
MEMORIAL
ONTARIOS
HERITAGEDUMP
FOODEANDS