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Friends of the Cawthra Bush & Greater Mississauga Area
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comments: More at the end. Globe and Mail - Jan. 30, 1978, Monday - By Donald Grant Wildlife refuse, work of 2 lives, faces city threat [2 large pictures] Every creature in Bernice Inman's woods is escaping from something. Some live unaided in the forest, grateful for nature's food and shelter as urban development sweeps through Mississauga west of Metro Toronto. Others require help from humans. We have about 100 birds in the winter but about 2,000 pass through here in a year, Mrs. Inman said. They've been hit by cars and airplanes, shot by farmers and kids, cut by crashing through windows, and injured by nest-robbing youths. Mrs. Inman's sanctuary is three acres on the banks of Sawmill Creek northwest of Dundas Street and Mississauga Road, but the work she has done in her 16 years there reach out to a larger wooded area that until now has been protected by a greenbelt designation imposed by Mississauga Council. She has been carrying on the work of internationally known naturalist Roy Ivor, who's now 99 and in a nursing home but who labored for 50 years to preserve those woods as a wildlife refuge. Mrs. Inman calls the area Mississauga's only remaining virgin forest. Now the sanctuary itself seems threatened. Mississauga Council has proposed building a sewer main along a public right of way just 30 feet from Mrs. Inman's log home at the north edge of her property. And the naturalist says that if the project goes ahead it will upset the delicate balance of nature in the woods and destroy the more than half-century of work begun by Mr. Ivor. As a visitor travels the winding quarter-mile lane to the Inman place, the sounds of a booming municipality, the graders, bulldozers and heavy transports, become muffled. The woods seem silent at first to ears accustomed to the urban cacophony, but then the sounds of nature creep in - the cawing of a crow, the whooo of an owl, the screech of a blue jay warning the forest of an intruder. Overhead Big Red, a hawk, swoops silently, cautiously, while a jet roars up after leaving Toronto International Airport. Past aging bird cages and half-finished new ones, a log house appears nestled in the woods. The front doorstep is sprinkled with bird seed, and chickadees hover over the visitor's head. At times, deer, red foxes, raccoons and other small animals have made their way to that doorstep for a handout. The inside of the house is also a sanctuary, for birds that wouldn't survive in the woods. This is J.J., short for Jumping Jack, Mrs. Inman said as she opened the cage of a black-fronted jay. He hates other birds but he likes cats. That's just as well, because Mrs. Inman has two, a 15-pound black one named Prickles and a Siamese called Coco. In the house Mrs. Inman also keeps Captain, a grey African parrot, and Tuppence, another little African parrot. The exotic birds were brought to the naturalist by disenchanted owners, and Mrs. Inman made room for them. The cats have been taught not to bother the birds, using a method Mrs. Inman developed while she lived in Grandmere, north of Three Rivers, Que. There was a rat problem in that community as well as an insect problem, she said. By waving a bird's wing in front of each cat, she taught 12 of 13 felines she owned there not to touch a bird. She lured birds back into her 10-acre Quebec property with suet spiked with peanut butter, for which birds will come a thousand miles. The birds ate the insects and the cats killed the rats. But one cat, the 13th, killed both rats and birds. I had to put her to sleep and it still bothers me after all these years, Mrs. Inman said sadly. After coming to Ontario and the small town of Streetsville 16 years ago, she one day went to the aid of a crow being mishandled by some boys, and ended up taking the bird to Roy Ivor's sanctuary. I kept going back, she recalled recently. And I'm still here. Mrs. Inman bought an acre adjoining Mr. Ivor's land and took an option on his two acres. While the aging naturalist tended his birds, Mrs. Inman started doing research, began an education program and looked after injured birds. Right now Mrs. Inman is caring for Gaylord, a turkey vulture hit by an airplane; Kahoutek, a bald eagle hit by a truck; a snowy owl hit by a plane at Toronto International Airport, and an assortment of owls and hawks. Hawk needed help to build a nest One bird, a red-tailed hawk, has the notion that I'm her mother, Mrs. Inman said. That's the result of a phenomenon known as imprinting, which means that whatever (the bird) sees when it first opens its eyes is its parent. In this case it was a human so in her mind she's half hawk and half human. The hawk won't accept other hawks and I helped her build a nest. I built a beautiful nest along with her. And then there's big Terrible Thomas, Tara and Big Red, all red-tailed hawks that she can feed by hand, and eight or so kestrels. Looking out through a picture window (trimmed with fluttering ribbons to keep birds from striking the glass), Mrs. Inman pointed to some hemlocks. A pair of great horned owls are mating there now. They nest in February. She'll sit there with a pile of snow on her head. It doesn't bother her at all. I have a great horned owl that comes to me. Even the parrot imitates him and he (the owl) will come if he can hear it. That bird . . . I consider my best friend. Nature is her work, from dawn to midnight in summer and at least five hours a day in winter. One cost has been her health, because she caught parrot fever. Doctors thought it was carried only by foreign birds. I've had it for three years and it's slowed me down feeding the birds. The sanctuary also has been costly in terms of money. For example, it costs $300 to feed a great blue heron for a year. And one year we had seven of them. She said that last summer I hired a boy to help, but my money ran out and I had to let him go. Mrs. Inman, whose husband is an Ontario Government photographer, said she finances the sanctuary by making public lectures and taking donations. Scanning the woods around, she observed: There's everything here that should be in a forest. We've brought it back. This is why I want to protect it. There once was 80 acres of forest but so much has been destroyed. A few weeks ago, Mrs. Inman learned that the Credit Valley Conservation Authority had granted approval for a sewer line near her property to serve two subdivisions along Mississauga Road. She told authority officials that it was their job to protect areas in trouble. They truly don't understand enough about what they're doing. They just don't understand the complications of putting through the sewer. Mrs. Inman compared the situation with the long-drawn-out controversy over the much bigger Rattray Marsh. For years, government officials were begged by the people to buy the marsh. It would have cost then about $64,000. Now they've paid $2.5-million for something almost useless. There're no corridors for animals because they've surrounded it with development. They want to do the same here. They mustn't. This is the only virgin forest left in Mississauga . . . She said the sewer proposal has been held up while the politicians ponder other ways to serve the subdivisions, perhaps by running the sewer down the centre of Mississauga Road. There's other ways without spoiling the environment, Mrs. Inman said. Along the right-of-way there's 14 species of trees. They shouldn't spoil the forest . . . It's only by pressure that they will be forced to stop that sewer. And I'm not going to let go. PLEEASSE SIGN OUR PETITION It will make a difference! Home page - Main Table of Contents - Back up a Page - Back to Top [COMMENTS BY DON B. - ] |
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