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Friends of the Cawthra Bush & Greater Mississauga Area
• where my videos are posted Pages of Special Interest; • • Other Table of Contents; |
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The
“It's a Tale of Two Forests”,
was written for Jo Davis Conference Coordinator for The
Kyoto & Sprawl Conference, July
25 to 27, 2003. Conference at Glendon College, York University.
Its Web-site http://www.kyotoandsprawl.ca/ & Sprawl
Stories can be found at http://www.kyotoandsprawl.ca/sprawl-stories.html
IT'S A TALE OF TWO FORESTS It was the warmest of times, it was the worst smog-alert times. It was the age of Smart Growth, it was the age of urban clear cuts, it was the spring of Kyoto, it was the winter of two thousand premature deaths, we had everything to gain, we had little support, we had the world at our feet, we were trampling upon it. There were a developer with large profits and a mayor with a wrinkled brow on the throne of Mississauga; there were a mother with a large passion for trees and a son with wrinkled lungs who was developing asthma. It was the year of Our Lord two thousand and two. At a public meeting on January 7th, the Mayor exclaimed with exceeding directness that; “she did not wish the woodlot to be destroyed and requested that she be provided a copy of the report that recommends that it not be preserved .... She further stressed that she did not wish the trees preserved, but that the woodlot be preserved." It was on June
12th that city council approved in principle the application to amend the
Official Plan to delete the "Natural Area" classification contained on
Schedule 3, Environmental Areas of City Plan as it pertained to
There was no report that said the "woodlot" should not be preserved. No follow up. No Environmental Assessment. There was a flight path above. A Britannia which stretched for miles with no other forest to speak of. A huge rolling landfill site close on the forest's heals. Obviously Dickens, I am not, but as a provincial political leader has said recently, "child asthma is up 20 per cent in the province. We shouldn't have to live like we're in Dickens' London." And so it was that on September 25th I spoke to council to appeal to them to nudge them from their slumber to wake up and smell the toxins. It was too late for another larger forest about 1.5 km from the first. Owned by the same developer, it was paved over for another doughnut shop, a car dealership, and a gas station, just a month before. I continued my plea on February 12th. And again on May 26th. While she sits in her smart chair, the mayor shrugs her shoulders, and says an aerial map of Mississauga proves just how many more trees there are now than there were in 1950. What she fails to mention is that there are millions more cars. Bad air from the U. S. Bad air from coal fired plants. Children coughing and choking due to bad air. A couple thousand people dying prematurely each year due to bad air. "An acre of trees absorbs 2.6 tons of carbon (pollution) annually and generates enough oxygen daily for 18 people. A mature leafy tree produces enough oxygen in a year for 10 people." (Toronto Star , B4 Nov 2, 2002) Clearly, trees, are our first line of defence. Reach-out and make a difference PLEEASSE SIGN OUR PETITION It will make a difference! Home Page - Main Table of Contents - Back up a page - Back to Top |
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