By Lorne Small
The Rouge River Valley stretches from Lake Ontario in the south to the Oakridges Moraine in the north just east of Toronto. Much of the land in the valley is owned by the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada. Within the federal lands are over five thousand acres of good farmland which is being farmed by families descended from the settlers who cleared the land in the early 1800's.
The provincial and federal governments are currently negotiating combining their land holdings to create a new type of national park—one containing large tracts of farmland. The CFFO believes that this farmland should be retained as active farmland. We should be protecting farmland when ever and where ever we can. However, some groups with an environmental focus would prefer to see some or all of the farmland converted into a "natural heritage" area by returning the landscape to what grew before the European settlers arrived and established farms in the valley.
The Rouge lands have a special interest for me. Over twenty five years ago Jennifer and I lived in Toronto and owned a business in Scarborough. We were part of a group that wanted to preserve the Rouge. The City of Toronto was interested in creating a huge garbage dump on the farmlands of the Rouge Valley to replace the rapidly filling Keele Valley dump. The lands were conveniently owned by other governments. Lucien Bouchard, then Environment Minister in the Mulronney Government, came to one of our meetings and declared that he would save the Rouge. He went back to Ottawa and did just that. The dump idea was dead.