The Oak Ridges Moraine Battles: Development, Sprawl, and Nature Conservation in the Toronto Region is a time capsule of events looking back from the year 2013, and a book that remains as relevant and important a work today as it was the year it was first put into print. Published twelve years after the passing of the 2001 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/020140) this information-packed read was also composed four years before the publishing of the 2017 Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, (https://files.ontario.ca/oak-ridges-moraine-conservation-plan-2017.pdf). Historically it precedes the activism underway today to once again protect the Moraine and the Greenbelt from encroachment. However, this title has a wise voice that transcends the passing of a decade and its words continue as guidance to activists today.
Printed in the year Kathleen Wynne stepped into power, as well as the year the ice storm and several earthquakes shook Ontario bringing climate to the fore, there was a different kind of STORM brewing in Ontario, the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition, and people were taking note. This comprehensive and detailed book was surely a welcome arrival as it would help delineate environmental action and policy. It also reinforced the astonishing breadth of support for protecting the Moraine. The writers, a smart and critically-minded team of environmentalist scholars, were also intrigued by examinations of power dynamics in coalition-forming and exposing imbalance in wider approaches to conservation.
The book has eight chapters, each approximately thirty pages long. As we learn from our reading of Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario by Mark Winfield, (UBC Press, 2012) it wasn’t until the 1990’s that “the Moraine was ultimately declared an area of provincial interest, and in 1994 a series of reports on a strategy for the Moraine was completed by the Ministries of Natural Resources, Environment, and Municipal Affairs and Housing,” (Winfield, p 82).
The Oak Ridges Moraine technical committee seems to have been one of the last great things the nineties Ontario NDP government set up before it switched over, and established a much-needed first step in protection.
The Oak Ridges Moraine Battle: Development, Sprawl, and Nature Conservation in the Toronto Region functions like a sort of essential primer to these sorts of battles, and it is filled with social and political insight. Of interest to anyone wishing to learn about the history of the Moraine, the book is pertinent to any struggle against development sprawl. If you love stories of communities taking a stand, this is a book with soul.
With plenty of fascinating historical background, high-stakes political tensions, unlikely alliances and examples of human courage in the face of adversity, The Oak Ridges Moraine Battle has one slightly unusual factor that makes it extra great. This is that the writers create a sense early on of the Moraine as an entity, and provide eloquent words of caution against simply seeing it as anything else. I think this was the most special element about the writing that made me read on. By making the Oak Ridges Moraine feel not like a landform and more like a slow-moving ancient and monolithic animal, an entity with its own agency that shifts, yields, provides, deflects and in a way even listens, the book engages reader interest from the first chapter. Once framed in this way, the effort of environmentalists to establish protections becomes a tale of people who share a relationship with earth. To this end, the book is also a bit of a toolkit for directly embracing rather than shying away from emotions in environmental causes while empowering them with facts.
While the first chapter references Latour’s concept of “actor networks” and introduces the idea of a landform itself being an active rather than passive actor in “influencing socio-political outcomes,” (Gilbert et al., page 7), it also quickly offers some stark facts regarding sprawl and encroachment in the form of several useful charts. The following chapter, “The Surfacing of a Landform,” describes historic events involving the Moraine, its ancient function as a home to Indigenous people, the impact of European resettlement, and with a bit of humour, its only fairly recent identity as a “geomorphic feature,” (Gilbert et al., page 32). Reiterating the theme of landforms having “agency” (Gilbert et al., page 31) it also presents the useful idea of the contemporary moraine as a “cultural construct” with “its own dynamic” (Gilbert et al., page 32), reminding us this is a place that will outlast humans.
While describing the Moraine as “shaping…human and non human destinies,” a section which asks “do moraines listen?” makes it evident the writers shared an intent to remodel our approach to scientific information with earth-centred compassion (Gilbert et al., page 33). In an age when many overly-technical books attempt to lead discussions of conservation, I found this refreshing and I believe it helped lay the groundwork for a more accessible writing style in the decade that followed.
Further the book criticizes a dominant framework of thinking that had presided over the then-recent conservation campaign for the Moraine, cautioning against an entrenched approach (Gilbert et al., page 90). Remarking that the interrelatedness of nature and culture as well as the need to plan for biodiversity that includes humans was obscured by certain frames of thought (Gilbert et al., page 90) was courageous and, looking back, surely quite true.
The other thing I liked about this book was its thoroughness. I’m quite sure Premier Kathleen Wynne must have seen the value in owning this title and have ideally read and reread it, as I can imagine it greatly helping her in positively influencing her policy decisions and her position that the Greenbelt must be expanded.
The Chapter Nature Conservation Planning in South-Central Ontario: A Flashpoint describes the history of hearings and the involvement of Pollution Probe, Greenpeace and local action groups in defending the Moraine (Gilbert et al., page 59). The history of conservationist science in studying the Moraine and the long history of public concern are also described in this chapter in a way policy-makers as well as everyday citizens would find accessible and informing (Gilbert et al., page 81). Charts regarding land use designation and on page 87 a list of 17 important technical papers regarding the Moraine by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of the Environment are further listed with care.
The chapter Residents Speak for the Moraine taught me to visualize three phases of citizen engagement in environmental campaigns, that of citizens learning the tools of activism over small disputes, of broader-based coalitions forming and finally, of involvement of the ministries, private sector citizens and all stakeholders in the concern (Gilbert et al., page 126). Of course, no book with a title like The Oak Ridges Moraine Battle could not supply readers with the nitty gritty details behind the forming of STORM: Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition, and the growth of coalitions is an inspiring tale as well (Gilbert et al., page 128). While the authors have encouraged us to see these events through a critical lens, the book also gains momentum: the excitement of so many groups coming together and combining their clout is palpable. The photos are also great choices, such as the one of Raging Grannies (Gilbert et al., page 150).
The Taking a Stand chapter was perhaps the most exciting as it built on the previous chapters and made the book read a bit more like the action and adventure story it truly is. Taking a Stand, Preserving Place and Nature on the Moraine opens with a description of how homeowner groups united with environmental groups and organizations such as Earthroots and the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund. It presents both the history behind these at times unlikely alliances and the ways in which this “convergence” (Gilbert et al., page 120) occurred in real life.
The chapters Conservation Planning in the Service of Growth and Producing Exclusive Landscape Aesthetics have some very good writing lurking within in the form of a critical examination of power issues in planning, “planning is a politics by other means,” (Gilbert et al., page 163) and the writing simply pulls no punches. I like that in a book, and the statement that “ the Oak Ridges Moraine is a privileged residential environment,” and that it is still “vulnerable to development pressures” underscored the issues involving classism and other buried concerns (literally in the case of Indigenous sites) that sometimes go unmentioned when coalitions combine. Both chapters were sobering after the excitement of large coalitions joining forces, and the adept writing shone a much-needed light on how much work is still to be done. The writing in the chapter Producing Exclusive Landscape Aesthetics quite brilliantly exposes the untruths behind the capitalist notion of “win-win ecology” (Gilbert et al., page 225) and the hypocrisy of aggregate companies presenting themselves as “good stewards.”
In conclusion, this is a book that is successfully timeless and the authors write with skill. It contains a lesson in perceiving any geographic landform (and by extension our planet) in a wholistic and respectful way, and it is a book loaded with indispensable information. Highly recommended.
Gilbert, L., Sandberg, L. A., & Wekerle, G. R. (2013). The Oak Ridges Moraine battles: Development, Sprawl, and nature conservation in the toronto region. University of Toronto Press.
Winfield, M. (2012). Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario. UBC Press.
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