HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-09-07, Page 156 Lucknow Sentinel • Wednesday, September 7, 2016
The grandiose
Tristin Hopper
Postmedia
If things had gone Richard
Rohmer's way in the 1960s,
the Canada of 2016 could
have been home to as many
as 70 million people.
Canada would have had a
GDP rivalling that of the
United Kingdom and new
highways, new railways and
new metropolises, all built in
the sparsely populated boreal
forest region that Rohmer
came to call "Mid -Canada."
He would even help to spawn
an entirely new type of citizen:
The hearty, winter -loving
"Mid -Canadian."
Rohmer — a lawyer, deco-
rated RCAF Wing Com-
mander, Bruce Beach cottager
and one of Kincardine Air-
port's founding members —
was leading a charge to build
a "second Canada" on top of
the old one.
"It was a very simple con-
cept; the country needed long
range policies and plans for
the future orderly develop-
ment of this vast land that we
have," said Rohmer, 92, speak-
ing
peaking by phone from his home
in Collingwood, Ont.
This wasn't just some
dashed -off 60s -era flight of
fancy, either.
In its heyday, Rohmer's
Mid -Canada plan attracted
the attention of a who's who of
powerful Canadians: Captains
of industry, bank CEOs,
labour leaders, scientists and
Aboriginal leaders and the
patronage of former Prime
Minister Lester Pearson
and the Govemor General.
"Canada's future is insepa-
rably linked with the develop-
ment of Mid -Canada, read a
preliminary report. More
but failed —1960s plan by an Ontario war hero to settle a 'second Canada' below the Arctic
zealous boosters even
claimed that a Canada with-
out the moxie to develop its
boreal forest might as well
meekly surrender to U.S.
annexation.
Field surveys were con-
ducted all across the Cana-
dian North. Fact-finding trips
were organized to Siberia. A
1969 Mid -Canada Develop-
ment Conference was con-
vened in Thunder Bay, with
membership costing the
modern-day equivalent of
$26,000.
"What Canadians make of
their opportunity will be
judged by history and billions
of people around the globe,"
read the stirring words of a
final report that, its writers
believed, would soon be used
as the founding document for
a Canada Two.
And then, as Canada's still
sparsely populated boreal for-
est would indicate, it all just
fizzled out.
"The North almost always
disappoints its promoters,"
said Ken Coates, a historian
on the Canadian North and
director of the International
Centre for Northern Govern-
ance and Development. From
the disappointing returns of
the Klondike Gold Rush to the
meagre spillover effects of
Northwest Territories dia-
mond mines, he notes, the
promise of the North is never
quite what it seems.
In his nine decades, Rich-
ard Rohmer has managed to
remain persistently in the
background of Canadian
history.
He was in a P-51 Mustang
over Juno Beach on D -Day,
and only weeks later he was
flying reconnaissance when
he called in the British Spitfire
The Lucknow Sentinel
Birthday Club
Mikaela Hanna
September 10, 2006
10 years old
Your child can be a member
of the Sentinel's birthday club
call 519-528-2822 to register
IU €nUW Snntin®I
619 Campbell Street
519-528-2822
ADVERTISING WORKS!
MADEYOU
LOOK
CALL US
TO PLACE
YOUR AD HERE
1
1
! 11
N4iL oaa-40. rh Ke r:1-.—'aaa
-
u
u
tl
P. I AA o-
A! 4 , F.. t I
•
InISEEKInininrinsin
DEVELOPMENT CORRIDOR; IML EMENTATION
ME RI 3 i
Acres Research and Planning
Early concept art for the Mid -Canada development corridor. If carried out, the idea was to shift development to the largely unoccupied
greenbelt of boreal forest just underneath the Arctic.
strike that took the famed
German General Erwin Rom-
mel out of the war.
In his autobiography, he
wrote of spotting Rommel's
staff car from the air: "I could
see two men in the front and
three in the back and the
glinting of gold from the
uniforms:'
A land -use lawyer, he had a
hand in the development of
Toronto lands that now host
the CN Tower and Ontario
Science Centre. A friend of the
late Ontario premier John
Robarts, he helped conceive
the Ontario flag. An honorary
Lieutenant -General, he is
considered the most deco-
rated citizen in Canada, with
everything from the Order of
Canada to France's Legion of
Honour.
And throughout all this,
Rohmer penned bestselling
political thrillers, often
focused around some fiction-
alized U.S. scheme to steal
Canadian resources.
The general even takes
credit for helping to conceive
the name "National Post"
when he was a board member
with the Conrad Black-
helmed media company Hol-
linger Inc.
The Mid -Canada plan arose
when Rohmer suddenly
became captivated by a map
opf Canada in his study.
Before him, a vast corridor of
green boreal forest stretched
from the Yukon to James Bay,
through land that he had pre-
viously dismissed as
inhospitable.
"It's one of the largest
inhabitable — but largely
uninhabited — sectors of the
world" he said.
Thenceforth, he began
recruiting apostles to the
notion that Canada was ludi-
crously neglecting a chunk of
subarctic land the size of sev-
eral European countries.
"Much of this area is con-
sidered to be a frigid, barren
wasteland, beset with fantas-
tic problems of climate and
lengthy periods of darkness,
COUNTY OF BRUCE
HOUSEHOLD HAZARDOUS WASTE COLLECTION EVENT
Lucknow — September 10th - 8:OOam-11:OOam
Bruce County Highways Garage — 545 Ludgard Street
Acceptable Items: Paint, Solvents, Aerosols, Batteries, Oil,
Propane Tanks, Pool Chemicals, Fluorescent Lights
For a complete list of events and materials accepted vis'
www.brucecounty.on.ca/hazardous-waste.php. .•
COUNTY OF BRUCE HIGHWAYS DEPARTMENT
30 Park St. Walkerton ON NOG 2V0 1-877-681-1291
which permits only semi-per-
manent life," read a Rohmer-
commissioned report by
Acres Research & Planning.
"This description is most
inaccurate."
It's admittedly been a while
since Canada has successfully
pulled off a grandiose
megaproject, but the coun-
try's current prosperity is
largely owed to some grandi-
ose Rohmer-esque scheme or
another.
The St. Lawrence Seaway
turned the likes of Sault Ste.
Marie and Thunder Bay into
Atlantic ports. Much of
Alberta persists as a demo-
graphic monument to Clifford
Sifton, the moustachioed
early 20th century interior
minister who set out to settle
the prairies with "stalwart
peasants" from Eastern
Europe.
And across the country,
whole metropolitan areas
have risen in completely arbi-
trary locations simply because
some engineer pegged them
for a railway station or high-
way stop.
Those who joined Rohmer's
conference and his "field
trips" through Mid -Canada
included vice presidents from
Canadian National Railways,
Bombardier, the Bank of Mon-
treal and a scattering of min-
ing brass. Among the academ-
ics and architects who joined,
however, there was a base of
skeptics who suspected that
this was just another Ontario
plot to loot the West.
But the final report is nota-
ble for a tone of conservation-
ism and Aboriginal consulta-
tion that would have seemed
positively pinko by the stand-
ards of the age.
"Thoughtless meddling and
ill-considered exploitation is
just as bad as wanton destruc-
tion," read the final report,
which was issued in an era
where pipelines and hydroe-
lectric dams were largely a
matter of paperwork
CONTINUED > PAGE 7
SAUCEEN MOBILITY
and REGIONAL TRM1SST
SPECIALIZED PUBLIC TRANSIT
MENTALLY & PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED RESIDENTS
NON -EMERGENCY MEDICAL, SOCIAL & EMPLOYMENT
LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE
519-881-2504
1-866-981-2504
Please visit us at saugeenmobility.ca