The Rural Voice, 1986-09, Page 16PREPARE FOR THE
FALL SEASON
• cleaning
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R.R. 3, Elmwood
363-3717
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Seaforth
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16 THE RURAL VOICE
town. The farm is rented to her
son, who farms part-time. "If this
farm economy ever picks up,
maybe we will be able to start
farming again more seriously,"
she says.
Unlike Golden and McArthur,
Johnstone doesn't see any reason
to be concerned by the park pro-
posal. "I'd heard the wildest
rumors, so I got Bob Day in here.
We sat down and had a good talk
and I see no reason to oppose the
park. I'm going to be surrounded
by it, more than anyone else. 1 see
no reason why they can't do their
thing and I do mine."
Johnstone says they helped build
the Bruce Trail in the area, that the
preservation aspect of the park is a
good idea. "I'm not in favour of
developing everything. Part of the
opposition to the park is reaction
to change, but change we're going
to get anyway," she said.
Martin Parker feels that the
local people want essentially the
same thing he does. "They want
the land left the way they
remember it. We disagree in terms
of how to do it. They don't trust
government. I do trust government
— to a degree."
Where POPP sees little pro-
spects for major change in the area
if things are left alone, Parker
believes that it is already
dangerously late if major
ecological areas are to be saved.
He says that along with western
shoreline cottage owners have
already filled in important wetland
habitat and covered it with "nice
green grass and petunias." There is
also talk of opening a road along
the last stretch of the western
shoreline for more cottage
development. Parker cites the ex-
ample of 3,000 acres in St. Ed-
monds Township owned by an
American mining company as fur-
ther evidence that conditions in the
area are not as static as some
would like to believe.
Bob Day says that the focus of
the park will be preservation, pro-
viding enough facilities, such as
hiking trails, to allow the public
reasonable access. Overnight ac-
commodation would mainly be left
to the private sector outside the
park. The Park Study Area will ex-
clude areas of farmland, according
to Day.
A major area of contention is
that fishing is permitted in national
parks but hunting is not. Both resi-
dent and non-resident hunters in
Ontario face a severe curb on their
activities, and this is rumoured to
be the main obstacle to an agree-
ment between the federal and pro-
vincial governments.
The purpose of a national park,
explains Day, is to take a few
special representative areas that
are samples of Canada's landscape
and preserve them in their natural
state. Such activities as hunting,
trapping, mining, and logging imp-
ly manipulating the environment
for a particular purpose, which
means exerting direct control over
the plants and animals that would
normally live there. National parks
provide a few small areas across
Canada where nature is allowed to
evolve under its own rules.
Gary Gurbin, member of parlia-
ment for Bruce and parliamentary
secretary to the Minister of the En-
vironment, supports the idea of the
park, adding the caveat that local
authorities must be reasonably
comfortable with the final deci-
sion. This decision, he points out,
has not yet been made. The federal
and provincial governments are
still trying to settle jurisdictional
and property matters.
Gurbin sympathizes with the
"healthy caution" in the minds of
area residents, but he suggests that
they should wait until the proposal
is finalized, take a careful look at
it, and then decide whether they
want a national park as part of
their community.
Perhaps out of all the discus-
sion, a greater awareness of the
heritage of the Bruce, and a greater
respect for the other guy's view-
point, will emerge. In talking to
people involved with the area,
whether resident or regular visitor,
they all, in their own way, feel
strongly that the Bruce is a magical
place. "It has that sort of appeal,"
Martin Parker says.