Laneways to nowhere: the community and the mega-quarry

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Published on Friday, 06 July 2012 12:53

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Artists Against the Mega Quarry - Paint-In, June 30, 2012

Bus Tour MC was NDACT Board Member Lyle Parsons

During the Canada Day weekend, I went on a bus tour of the proposed site. Don’t imagine an air-conditioned coach — it was a school bus featuring plus-30 C temperatures, even with the windows open. We were a diverse group, including hardcore locals, people who’d driven in from across southwestern Ontario and a contingent of Raging Grannies, a movement of older women who sing self-styled protest songs.

Our MC for the tour was a township man named Lyle Parsons, a former farmer who sold to The Highland Companies convinced by them that their plan was to grow potatoes. Parsons started having suspicions when Highland began drilling test wells that were far too elaborate for the mere irrigation of spuds.

Parsons is a walking Google search on the issue of the mega-quarry. But it’s not all hard facts. He also feels it. His house and barn were one of several bulldozed by Highland, resulting in sad overgrown laneways to nowhere, which he pointed out on the tour, naming the families who used to live at the end of formerly tree-lined laneways. It was like listening to a veteran read a list of the war dead. He passed around pictures of his former farm, telling us in a wavering but controlled voice that he never would have sold to them if he knew then what he knows now.

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Posted in the Guelph Mercury

By Dale Hamilton, Community Editorial Board, July 6, 2012

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