North End Raccoon Walks

Hey raccoon friends! We’ve been learning lots and scheming all winter long, and we are really excited to offer this early springtime workshop series in Hamilton’s North End. Click this image for more details: !

 

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The Closure of Iroquoia Heights: “Hunting is a First Nations issue, not a policing issue”

For the past week, Iroquoia Heights Conservation Area has been closed to the public, after reports that there were hunters in the area. Large warning signs were posted on every trail in, signs with the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) logo on the bottom, urging people to call the police if they see a hunter. Today, when we walked through the area, we were pleased to find that these signs had inspired a response. The police number was crossed out, and beside it was written, “Hunting is a First Nations issue, not a policing issue”.

‘The True Cost of Coal’ by The Beehive Design Collective comes to Toronto

Residents of Appalachia gather to brainstorm and map their skills, by the Beehive Design Collective

 

No place on earth should be a sacrifice zone for the profit or luxury of any other, and no people -anywhere- are disposable. 

-The Beehive Design Collective

 

This past sunny Saturday, we were lucky enough to catch a presentation made by The Beehive Design Collective about their new epic drawing called The True Cost of Coal. The Bees were hanging out at the Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto.

‘The True Cost of Coal’ tells many stories of the Appalachian mountains. From left to right, the story’s chapters unfold through incredibly detailed, intricately symbolic and nuanced scenes, acted out by the creatures of the mountains in a visual symphony of biodiversity. It is divided into five chapters, moving through different eras of these mountains’ stories. Furthest to the left, there are the ancient old growth forest, full of health and traditional ways of being and knowing.

This gives way to colonialism, with the arrival of settlers and the displacement of Indigenous Peoples. But this era also comes with resistance, as workers, Indigenous people, and others stand up to the rapidly escalating exploitation. In the centre of the poster, a mountain is torn to pieces by the mining, consumerism, and politics, and vibrant living communities are converted into a landfill of cheap junk.

One of the key themes of this chapter was rejecting greenwashing, and it was a bit funny to be in a place heavily sponsored by Walmart looking at a critical image that features Walmart itself in the centre of the nightmarish mining disaster scene.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Along the bottom, the healthy forests of the past are linked to the future by a row of healing plants, and from these grows a chapter of resistance to coal mining. Here, the stories of the ongoing and vibrant resistance throughout Appalachia push back against the destruction. This makes space for the final, and perhaps most inspiring chapter, featuring regeneration, bioremediation, reclamation, honouring native land rights, and a hopeful healing future for Appalachia.

Our favourite part of this new Beehive design is the thread of the story starring plants that can heal both the land and ourselves, as medicine. Stinging Nettle, Dandilions, Burdock, and Cattails tie the image together in a border of plants connecting the ancestoral old growth forest on the left edge with healing lands on the right. These plants work towards healing the land and the Bees show them to be directly connected to the diverse resistance movements that are vitally necessary for curbing the all too real, present-day nightmare in the poster’s centre. This connection is powerfully rendered and deeply compelling, and the KLR collective likes it a lot.

Thanks the Bees!

Have you seen this poster yet? What image stands out for you? Post discussion here or email us at knowingtheland@gmail.com. Oh, yes, please do!

Reportback on Foodstock: Protect the land that feeds us

We first heard of the Mega Quarry years ago, while traveling in the Collingwood area. Local environmentalists were talking about a proposed quarry just to the south, a quarry larger than any ever dug in this country, so large it could swallow much of downtown Toronto and so deep that it would be taller than Niagara Falls. It was a nightmare vision – beyond the smog of thousands of trucks, across the polluted springs fed by poisoned aquifers, a devastating wound in the earth would extend past the horizon.

On Sunday October 16^th we hopped on a bus from Hamilton to Foodstock, organized by a new group called Stop the Mega Quarry-Hamilton. Foodstock was organized by the Canadian Chefs Congress and local activists fighting the quarry. Over a hundred chefs prepared food grown on the lands threatened by the quarry. Billed as a day to ‘stop the mega quarry’ and ‘save the land that feeds us’, by best estimates it attracted 28-30,000 people to one of the adjacent farmlands that has refused to sell.

Junk Tree Love: A tree grows in brooklyn

"... and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It loved poor people."

The Tree of Paradise, or as we like to call it the Junk Tree, is unfortunately probably one of the most hated trees around. People say it’s weedy or smelly or messy, but for anyone who gets out into the forgotten rewilding corners of the city, it’s a familiar and hardworking friend. Betty Smith knows, writing about it on the first page of her lovely book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Enjoy this excerpt, and be sure to look for this special tree in your neighbourhood.

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This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld.

The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.

You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone’s yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.

That was the kind of tree in Francie’s yard. Its umbrellas curled over, around and under her third-floor fire-escape. An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire-escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. That’s what Francie imagined every Saturday afternoon in Summer.

Last of the Last: Windsor’s Savannah and Tall Grass Prairie

This article is part of the series Downstream Stories: towards a watershed-scale resistance

Arriving in Windsor from Hamilton feels very familiar. The first thing we notice entering town are the many abandoned buildings with trees sprouting from their foundations and their walls covered in vines. In Hamilton, this decay makes space for more life and seeing it here makes us feel at home. Also like Hamilton, Windsor is one of the most toxic and polluted places in Southern Ontario, and it’s inspiring to see how the wounds of industry can be so joyfully bandaged by the delicate, climbing fingers of vines.

Both Hamilton and Windsor were once largely covered by Oak Savannah, an ecosystem characterized by frequent fires that keep the ground clear and by oak trees towering above. In Hamilton, we see only small remainders of this forest type in Cootes Paradise, but today, we’ll be visiting the largest and healthiest Oak Savannah and Tall Grass Prairie ecosystem remaining anywhere.

On the outskirts of Windsor, along Matchette Rd, there’s a large series of parks called Ojibway Prairie. Stepping into the cathedral of Oaks, our eyes follow from a low understory made up of prickly brambles and Poison Ivy, straight up massive trunks to a tightly packed canopy of Oaks. In between, a thin understory of Witch Hazel, Sassafras, and Hawthorns reside.

The Ashes of Essex County: on Emerald Ash Borers in Hamilton’s forests

It was here in Comber, a town in Essex county, which makes up the southern most tip of Ontario, that we first noticed it. We’ve stopped in a sports field to watch the sunset. What we see though, silhouetted against the sky’s red glow, is a long line of dead Ash trees. Ever since the Emerald Ash Borer first appeared in Hamilton, we have been hearing stories about its effect on forests further south. But this is our first time seeing a whole stand of Ashes killed by the exotic beetle.

Now we sit with the dead trees as it gets dark, reflecting with concern on the forests we love back home. Last year, we started spotting the irridescent green beetles in Cootes Paradise. This year, we can’t go for a walk there without passing one. The White Ashes that grow on those hills, with their tall diamond-bark trunks and elegant symmetric branches, are old familiar forest friends – it’s heartbreaking to imagine the trails without them.

Replacing Forests with Wastelands: farming along twelve-mile creek

Relaxing on the east bank of Twelve Mile Creek in downtown St Catharine's

The papers have been hyping it all week and it’s finally here: Thursday July 21^st, the supposed hottest day of the year. We’re in downtown St Catherines, watching as the scorching heat pushes everyone off the north side of St Paul st in favour of the shady south side.

We talk about this kind of scorching, desert-like heat as completely unnatural for this area. It’s a consequence of cutting down all the trees and replacing them with ridiculous concrete wastelands like this one. From St Paul st and Ontario st, we cut South-East, taking a foot bridge over the highway and descending down to the banks of Twelve Mile Creek. If this heat is unnatural, then the best way to beat it is by getting into spaces that are.

We hurry through the meadow and into the welcoming shade of the forest on the creek’s east bank. The relief is immediate – we slow down to savour the cool of the creek and the trees it supports. On a narrow peninsula that extends out into the creek, we find comfy spots in the shade and relax. On one side, the water runs fast and high, flooding the Elms and Willows that grow low on the bank – on the other, sheltered by the peninusla, the water pools, making space for Cattails, Lilies, Ducks, and Herons.

Through the Tangle: wetlands and developments at Trent University

From the series, Trent University's Private Residence, by Holly Norris

From the sidewalk, we can peer past the thick, tangle of Raspberry and Red Osier Dogwood framing a tantilizing vision of Cattails beneath Black Willow. But it’s difficult to find a clear passage into this cool slice of green, and so we’re left fumbling along the sidewalk under the hot sun, adjacent the sun-scorched grass of Trent’s lawns.

This wetland is a hotly contested space in Peterborough, as it is slated to become the site of a privately owned residence for Trent students. We are here to explore this site, to appreciate the health and value that it has as a healing wetland.

While searching for a path in, we reflect on all the work that has been done to oppose the university’s scheme to sign a ninety-nine year lease of this land to a private company that will build a residence here. The students at Trent are overwhelmingly opposed to this project – they see it as a step towards increased privatization and fragmentation of their education. This new residence will not pay into the university, and will not be part of the college system that currently supports Trent students as in their studies. The project was recently approved by the Peterborough city council.

However, on the websites and articles that describe these struggles, we were lucky to find even one sentence about the value of this site as a wild space, as a wetland somehow thriving between a busy road and a neighbourhood. And that one sentence would usually focus only on the presence of endangered species that may be present, but not mentioning all the other signs of health that do not have special legal status but are clear to anyone who looks.

Kingston: By the Shores of the Tannery Grounds

Willows at the Tannery Grounds, courtesy Hilbert Buist

[In the series Downstream Stories]

A tall fence surrounds the old Tannery Grounds out at Orchard st and River st, but the wildflowers spill out and press close to the pavement. Cottontails scatter as we approach, and birds are greeting the dawn from the welcoming branches of a big White Oak. On the fence there are several “No Trespassing” signs, but where River st approaches the water, a well-travelled trail enters the Tannery Grounds through a deliberate gate.

There was once a tannery here that leaked its poisons into the soil for decades, and hazardous waste continued to be dumped here even after the old tannery was torn down. The popular story is that the Tannery Grounds are poisonous, unsafe, and need to somehow be dealt with.

This story keeps most people away, and it has meant that, for the past forty or fifty years, this site has been rewilding on its own. Our first steps through the gate immediately reveal the richness of what has come to be out in this forgotten corner of Kingston.