Autumn In The Hills 2021

Autumn A

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VOLUME 28 NUMBER 3 2021

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Citizen scientists Agricultural roundtable An exurbanite’s guide to field crops

How to save a theatre Splendour in the grass

SP ECI A LIZING IN S TA NDING SE A M ME TA L ROOFING A ND CL A DDING, S T EEL SHINGL E S, C OMP O SI T E SHINGL E S, B A RN S T EEL , NE W C ONS T RUC T ION, EP DM F L AT ROOF S NE W ! 1-INCH SN A P L OCK S TA NDING SE A M PA NEL S ROL L-F ORMED ON SI T E T O A N Y L ENG T H 10 Year Workmanship Warranty / Excellent Customer Service / Skilled Team of Installers Highest Quality Materials Only / Jobsites Left Clean / Licensed and Insured

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Roud Private Wealth Management of RBC Dominion Securities Steve Roud, CIM Vice-President,Portfolio Manager 519-941-4883 steve.roud@rbc.com

Tyler Eby, PFP Associate Investment Advisor 519-942-1811 tyler.eby@rbc.com

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www.tumber.ca

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F E A T U R E S 28 YOU C AN BE A CITIZEN SCIENTIS T

All you need is a smartphone and a love of nature to make valuable contributions to conservation science

by Don Scallen

56 E XURBANITE’S GUIDE TO FIELD CROPS

This handy guide to local crops updates an In The Hills primer from 2000

by Dorothy Pedersen 62 A N AC T I V E IM AGIN AT ION

38 SPLENDOUR IN THE GR ASS

In 2015 Misha Dubbeld told us she planned to expand the gardens on her Mono property with a focus on grasses and fieldstone — the results are breathtaking

by Signe Ball 42 ANCES TR AL FOOT S TEPS

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Michelle Grierson’s compelling first novel, Becoming Leidah, is a fluid mix of myth, magic and the power of “blood memory”

by Ellie Eberlee 4 8 FA RMER S AT T HE TA BL E

Three Dufferin farmers — Bert Tupling, Mike Swidersky and Darryl Burnett — share their thoughts on modern farming, food security and global competition

by Anthony Jenkins

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Orangeville painter Steve Volpe plucks inspiration from a stranger’s gaze, a travel snapshot or an architectural detail

by Ellie Eberlee 70 HOW T O S AV E A T HE AT RE

The creative minds at Theatre Orangeville were not about to be upstaged by a pandemic; waiting it out was not an option

by Liz Beatty 79 S A FE AT HOME

Instead of rushing them to the hospital, these community paramedics help patients stay in their own homes

by Gail Grant 84 STORIES IN THE STONES

Grave­stones with remarkable stories to tell

by Ken Weber

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94 GOOD SPORT

Our readers write

Pick your pose: All yoga classes are not the same

by Nicola Ross

21 A R T I S T I N R E S I D E N C E

Kayla Jackson 96 HE A DWAT ER S NE S T

A time for listening

by Bethany Lee

23 FIELD NOTES

Where to shop, donate and walk this season

by Johanna Bernhardt 27 FENCE P OS T S

98 AT HOME IN T HE HIL L S 74 F O O D + D R I N K

Road rage comes to town

by Dan Needles

Coffee, wine or beer?

by Janice Quirt

Taking the long view in Mulmur

by Tralee Pearce 11 6 W H A T ’ S O N

A calendar of autumn happenings 67 MADE IN THE HILL S

90 OVER THE (NE X T ) HILL

Melissa Lester

by Johanna Bernhardt 69 LOC AL BU YS

Gearing down

by Gail Grant 92 HIS TORIC HILL S

Hiking accessories, pressed flowers and a farming-inspired cap

by Janice Quirt

In 1930, was it a spirit? A poltergeist?

by Ken Weber

1 2 6 A P U Z Z L I N G C O N C L U S I O N

by Ken Weber

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For available country properties, see Wayne’s ad in the Showcase of Fine Homes section

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VOL . 28 NO. 3 2021

publisher and editor Signe Ball art director Kim van Oosterom Wallflower Design writers Signe Ball Liz Beatty Johanna Bernhardt Ellie Eberlee Gail Grant Anthony Jenkins Bethany Lee Dan Needles Tralee Pearce Dorothy Pedersen Janice Quirt Nicola Ross Don Scallen Ken Weber photographers Rosemary Hasner Robert McCaw Pete Paterson Ben Rahn illustrators Shelagh Armstrong Ruth Ann Pearce Jim Stewart

associate editors Tralee Pearce Dyanne Rivers operations manager Cindy Caines regional sales managers Roberta Fracassi Erin Woodley advertising production Marion Hodgson Type & Images events and copy editor Janet Dimond web manager inthehills.ca Valerie Jones Echohill Web Sites on our cover Misha Dubbeld’s gorgeous grass gardens,

by Rosemary Hasner

In The Hills is published quarterly by MonoLog Communications Inc. It is distributed through controlled circulation to households in the towns of Caledon, Erin, Orangeville, Shelburne and Creemore, and Dufferin County. Annual subscriptions outside the distribution area are $27.95 (including HST).

For information regarding editorial content or letters to the editor: 519-942-8401 or sball@inthehills.ca.

For advertising, contact one of our sales managers: Roberta Fracassi 519-943-6822 roberta@inthehills.ca (Orangeville, Shelburne, Creemore, areas N of Hwy 9) Erin Woodley 519-216-3795 erin@inthehills.ca (Caledon, Bolton, Erin and areas S of Hwy 9) © 2021 MonoLog Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

No reproduction by any means or in any form may be made without prior written consent by the publisher.

www.maryklein.com

Find us online at www.inthehills.ca Like us on facebook.com/InTheHills Follow us on twitter.com/inthehillsmag and on instagram.com/inthehillsmag The ad booking deadline for the winter (November) issue is October 15, 2021.

Canada Post Agreement Number 40015856 We acknowledge the support of the Government of Canada.

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In this issue we twice quote an Ontario Federation of Agriculture statistic that farmland is disappearing in this province at a rate of 175 acres per day. Sadly, these hills are not exempt from the forces behind that alarming number.

When I first moved to the freshly minted Town of Caledon back in 1974 (the year its former townships were amalgamated into the new Region of Peel), the character of the town was still definitively agricultural. But even then, speculators were buying up farmland at the south end of the town, eager to capitalize on the massive urban development in neighbouring Brampton and Mississauga.

Twenty years later, when this magazine was launched in 1994, the town’s population had doubled and the traditional farm community was aging out. Although there were still plenty of farmers, they were outnumbered by newcomers, and agriculture did not dominate the character of the community as it once had.

By then I had moved to Dufferin, which like Caledon also had a population of about 40,000, more than half in Orangeville. But now things are evolving differently in the two municipalities. Caledon’s popula­tion has doubled again to over 80,000, and is projected to double once more in the next 20 years to 160,000 and then make an ex­po­nential jump to 300,000 by 2051. Most of that population influx will occur in the south end, wiping out thousands of acres of prime agricultural land on the Peel Plain, along with most of the town’s remaining large-scale farm operations. Dufferin’s population has likewise increased to about 70,000, but projected growth is much smaller than in Caledon, hitting about 95,000 by 2051, most of it in the existing urban centres of Orangeville and Shelburne.

In other words, large-scale farming in Dufferin still has a fighting chance of remaining a viable industry – that is, of continuing to contribute both to feeding Canadians and to maintaining national food security in an unsettled global market.

But loss of farmland is not the only threat to the sustainability of farming. Another significant one is the increasing distance between us as consumers and the origin of the food we eat. That lack of public awareness allows the vital preservation of farmers and farmland to drop beneath the radar of political policymakers. To help right that balance, in these pages, writer Anthony Jenkins sits down for a candid discussion with three Dufferin farmers to talk about their business – and what they want the public to understand about it. As a companion to that discussion, we’ve resurrected and updated a story by Dorothy Pedersen from our summer 2000 issue.

Called “An Exurbanite’s Guide to Field Crops,” it’s a primer for those who want to boost their farming IQ.

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C O N T R I B U T O R S

Meet three of our clever contributors – Ellie Eberlee, Janet Dimond and Ben Rahn. ellie eberlee For Ellie Eberlee “home” will always mean Caledon. Ellie grew up at the end of Puckering Lane with her parents, three siblings, three horses, yellow Lab and 20 or so barn cats. Though she has since moved to Toronto, she has vivid memories of salmon stocking in the Credit River, racing down hills at the Caledon Ski Club and eating butternut squash soup out of pumpkin bowls at Belfountain’s Salamander Festival. Ellie fell in love with words at Belfountain Public School where she read books about bats, wrote short stories about coyotes and composed songs about brook trout – and where her sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Bibby Smith, told her she was going to be a writer when she grew up.

Ellie went on to study literature at Middlebury College in Vermont and begins her master’s in English at the University of Oxford this fall. In her first two pieces for In The Hills, Ellie meets with a debut novelist fascinated by the relationship between women and water, and an oil painter who unites the classical and contemporary.

janet dimond In The Hills’ events and copy editor Janet Dimond has a hard time turning off her bad-punctution radar. She has been known to erase erratic apostrophes from sidewalk sandwich boards when no one is looking. “It’s true, but text and message errors from friends and family are exempt.”

If you have read articles in the magazine, Janet has gone over them with an eagle eye – catching mistakes others have missed. Her love of languages and communication first led 30 years ago to translation, then instructional writing, presenting seminars, transcription and mentoring before eventually editing found her instead of the other way around.

Janet also manages our What’s On calendar of events in print and online. She longs for a time when Covid dissipates, the world opens a little more and events return to the level we once covered. She looks forward to concerts and theatre, travel and movies, walking and hugs – and further exploring her new home of Guelph.

ben rahn Ben has been photographing architecture and interiors for more than 20 years. He founded A-Frame Studio in 2003 out of a desire to combine his love of design with his keen photographic eye. Ben splits his time between the Brooklyn studio he founded while living in New York and his lead studio in Toronto where he lives with his wife and their two children. Architects and designers hire Ben’s studio to tell the story of their spaces, using the photographs for portfolios, award submissions and publication.

Ben’s work has been recognized internationally and has appeared in magazines such as Dwell, Wallpaper, Interior Design, Condé Nast Traveler and The New York Times. His portfolio includes several Headwaters gems, two of which have appeared in In The Hills. Images in this issue’s “At Home in the Hills” are Ben’s first full commission from us.

Ben has a design-lover’s soft spot for concrete, Corten steel and vintage factory windows. He feels quite at home on top of a tall building at sunrise.

JIM WALLACE

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BROKER OF RECORD

Sutton–Headwaters Realty Inc., Brokerage

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ADCODE:RCH211001TA_Q3_FWA_Print_Ad_Update_In_The_Hills_HP4C_9i5x5i875_EN_R2

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Die Line / Fold Marks Inks: DO NOT PRINT Narine Storey.”

A More than 36 months ago, I created a platform to communicate “The REal The REal Storey Format: CMYK Fold Marks Perf Line is intended to offer real-life Real Estate stories that followers can learn from.

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Due Date: Aug 20, 2021 Scale: 1:1 | Laser is at 100% Leesa M In fact, I accurate created BLOG a response toartists a client’s request for me to create a conduit NOTES: THIS IS NOT A COLOUR PROOF. Refer to pantone chips and process match books for colour this samples.

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Lock Box Kits: Why are they still being used to gain access to your home?

Covid Showings: Best Practices Buyer Representation Agreements: Be careful when signing this contract!

Multiple Representation: Can a Realtor ethically represent both sides of a transaction?

Non Disclosure: The #1 reason Real Estate Agents are fined by the Real Estate Council of Ontario Electronic Signatures: Making the Realtor’s job easier and more complex The Deposit: What is its real purpose?

The Marketplace: Can these prices be sustained?

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BOLTON | CALEDON | ERIN | HILLSBURGH | ORANGEVILLE | MONO | AMARANTH | SHELBURNE

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L E T T E R S

regenerative farming

E

The regenerative farming article by Cecily Ross [“It’s All About the Soil” summer ’21] was inspiring and encouraging. In an industry dominated by factory farms, it’s heartening to hear about farmers taking a different path because when they do it right we all benefit.

Less heartening to read about was how short the lives of the cattle are on at least one farm. They are slaughtered at 18 to 24 months, about one-tenth their natural lifespan. The farmer claims, “…it’s a hundred per cent okay to eat grass-fed beef the way we raise them.”

Well, for this vegan reader, it’s never okay to eat a fellow creature, let alone one that has barely had time to live. Soil renewal helps to combat climate change. Another important act any individual can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to stop eating meat.

Good for the planet and good for the soul. There’s nothing more regenerative than that.

Kirk Szmon, Palgrave

Opening the doors to your real estate dreams

519-940-3677 radhadiaram@remax.net 115 First St, Orangeville 519-942-8700 /office

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no humour in climate change I am a huge fan of Dan Needles. I totally love his brilliant Wingfield series and salute him as a winner of the 2003 Leacock Medal for Humour. He also brings regular laughs to this household with “True Confessions from the Ninth Concession” in every issue of In The Hills.

But he did the whole world – and all children everywhere, including his own – a huge disservice with his latest column [“It’s the End of the World … Again” summer ’21]. By making light of the climate crisis as just another storm that will pass, Mr. Needles clearly doesn’t grasp what’s already here – with much more guaranteed to come – thanks to humanity’s love affair with burning fossil fuels and our reluctance to get off them. The horrors of heat domes, mega-droughts, crippling floods and wildfires vicious enough to create their own weather systems have woken up many this summer, finally.

Dan Needles says humanity’s record of predicting the apocalypse has been “very poor” and he’s right.

We’re proving far better at creating ugly messes and the climate crisis is a huge one that could well trigger our day of reckoning.

Like Mr. Needles, I love the sunny side of the street, but at this point, dark clouds and drifting wildfire smoke are closing in fast. It’s time for everyone who loves life and sunshine – and respects science – to get off the sidelines and fight for that livable future our kids so richly deserve but see fading all too fast.

Liz Armstrong, Erin

COURTESY L AURIE MACNAB

S A L E S R E P R E S E N TAT I V E

jim menken appreciation I was thrilled to read this recognition of Jim Menken [“Tree of Life” summer ’21].

He designed and completed a work of art for my loved late husband – a duck, goose, raptor and songbird – a year ago on the edge of our property. It was very timely since we all needed something positive to view and enjoy. People are still stopping to take pictures. At one point during the creative process, I wandered out and said to Jim it was a good thing I was not paying by the hour since so many people stopped by to talk to him and he gave them all the time in the world explaining the process.

A few have asked how much it cost and I just reply it was worth every penny.

Laurie MacNab, Milton

the belfountain blues

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Lee Douglas, Erin

For more commentary from our readers, or to add your own thoughts on any We welcome your comments! of the stories in this issue, please visit inthehills.ca. You can also send your letters by e-mail to sball@inthehills.ca.

Please include your name, address and contact information. In The Hills reserves the right to edit letters for publication.

Caledon caledonannex@gmail.com

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I cannot believe it has come to local villagers needing reservations to wander in the lovely Belfountain Conservation Area [“Belfountain Under Siege” summer ’21]. I moved from British Columbia to Orangeville in 1985. Belfountain and Erin were our places to renew our spirits. I’m feeling fortunate to have wonderful memories of visiting Belfountain with family, friends and out-of-province/country visitors. I’m feeling heartbroken that it has come to this.

Nicola Ross’s article is so incredibly well written, packed with information and presented with passion. I am going to send a link to the online version of the story to others too, because it does an excellent job of presenting our horrid dilemma of today.

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Clockwise from top left • Queen Street 36" x 36" acrylic • The Knitting Mill 16" x 20" acrylic Two from the Glimpses Series 4" x 4" acrylic • Alton Schoolhouse 16" x 20" acrylic • Tenerife Market Kids 9" x 12" acrylic

Kayla Jackson For her first solo exhibit, held in August 2021 at the Alton Mill Arts Centre, Kayla Jackson rendered a love letter to the architecture of her hometown in oils, pastels and acrylics. Fittingly, these warm, impressionistic canvases (some a mere 4" x 4") include several of Alton’s heritage landmarks, such as the mill itself and the red brick schoolhouse, as well as private homes. The Sheridan College illustration graduate says she was drawn to these buildings for their angularity and their history, and the chance to capture the myriad ways the sun moves across a stone wall or casts shadows in a doorway over the course of a day. While Kayla’s pieces are steeped in nostalgia, she says her work is not a call for statis but instead “an act of gratitude.” www.kayjaxcreativeco.com

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www.yorkdurhamheadwaters.ca COLOUR PALLETE

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where to shop, donate, walk this season

BY JOHANNA BERNHARDT

Education goes outdoors After a long year of isolation and uncertainty for most schoolkids, it’s never been a better time for more specialized educational programs to hold class in the great outdoors. The goal? To empower kids to learn about caring for themselves, each other, and the planet we call home. Many longtime local educators are behind the exciting new programming — some of which require parents and caregivers to talk to their child’s school about taking time off if a program is during school hours. A more pressing issue might be that we’ll all want to skip work and join them.

Here’s a selection: Dufferin SEEDS Mulmur Jeanette McFarlane is trying to “grow better humans” on her century farm by offering educational and experiential programs. Jeanette uses a “touch, taste and create” formula in which children learn about growing food, harvesting and food preparation. SEEDS is a private program for now, but Jeanette is hoping to one day be involved directly with schools. She is currently working out the details of her fall program, but the dates will likely be September 13 to October 8 (Term 1) and October 18 to December 20 (Term 2). Jeanette is also the owner and creator behind Dufferin County Goods Co., an online shop showcasing her Canadian-made wearables inspired by local history (see page 69 for one of her hats in our Local Buys).

Dufferin SEEDS

Fall arts pick Ready for a laugh? Theatre Orangeville is showcasing the classic romantic comedy Same Time, Next Year which follows the hilarious and touching story of Doris and George through their 25-year love affair. The show runs from October 13 to 31. (For more Theatre Orangeville news, see page 70.)

Interested in something mentioned here? Find links to social media pages & websites at Field Notes on inthehills.ca.

Ekta School near Orangeville This pilot program was created by two Orangeville teachers, Michele Johnston and Kim Ellis, to help children develop their “inner curriculum” via expressive arts, creativity and outdoor experiences. “We want to help children deepen their connection with their inner wisdom, and also learn how to embrace and navigate the full spectrum of emotions,” Kim says. Children will explore journalling, mindfulness and movement to forge a deeper relationship with the natural world.

This is a supplemental program to traditional school with the option of attending Monday or Friday afternoons for kids ages 8 to 12.

Fiddlehead Care Farm Mono This 50-acre farm offers something for everyone, from therapeutic programs for children and youth with unique needs, to family programs and school field trips. Each program is created with a focus on healing, horticulture and animalassisted care farming. A particular favourite among families is the eight-week Parent and Tot Farm and Nature Early Learning series, offering wee ones the chance to explore the forest and gardens, and help take care of friendly farm animals. Note: This one fills up fast!

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National Day for Truth and Reconciliation As we continue learning more about the tragic history and ongoing legacy of residential schools, and ensuring this history is never forgotten, the Canadian government has declared that starting this year and ongoing, September 30 will be a federal statutory holiday called the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This day provides an opportunity for federal public servants to recognize and commemorate the legacy of residential schools. The day can also be a day of quiet reflection and there may be local community events.

Walk with Dufferin County Cultural Resource Circle DCCRC is holding a National Day of Action walk on October 4 in memory of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. For more info on where and when visit, www.dufferincountyculturalresourcecircle.org

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According to the 2016 Census of Agriculture, 175 acres of Ontario farmland are converted to other uses every day.

In the last 40 years, the province lost 18 per cent of its precious farmland, leading concerned citizens to contemplate whether we will be able to grow enough food to feed future generations. It may sound grim, but the Ontario Farmland Trust is on a mission to create a future where Ontario’s agricultural lands are permanently protected through community engagement, sound policies and partnerships.

The OFT, an organization of farmers, researchers, planners and conservationists, relies on private donations and memberships to achieve their goals of protecting agricultural and natural areas of Ontario. OFT also holds an annual Farmland Forum where they bring together policymakers, farmers, planners and conservationists to discuss new ways to protect Ontario land.

Through farmland easement agreements, OFT has already protected over 1,600 acres of farmland as well as 15 provincially listed at-risk species since its founding in 2004.

We think that’s reason to celebrate. Consider learning more or donating at www.ontariofarmlandtrust.ca.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Have you visited a Mom Market yet?

The Mom Market is a national collective of women operating curated weekly markets in their own neighbourhoods at cool settings including lavender farms, event barns and country general stores. The Orangeville/Caledon Market is run by Orangeville’s Melissa Shea, who is mom to three-year-old Madison and fivemonth-old Henry. She says the markets are a way for local mothers to showcase their small businesses and products, such as artisanal clothing and mouthwatering baked goods, in their community. Each event supports a different local charity. (They recently raised $1,500 for Family Transition Place in Orangeville.)

If you need another reason to get out of the house, Melissa says the first 25 people to show up receive a swag bag with loads of goodies from participating vendors. Bringing the kids?

Each market includes a special appearance by a princess (Elsa anyone?) from Markham’s Crown Me Princess. Admission is free, but charitable donations are encouraged when possible.

Upcoming markets in Headwaters include Trick or Treat Yourself at Hockley Valley Farm on October 31, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with 50 vendors. Proceeds go to the Orangeville Food Bank. Kids are encouraged to come in costume and trick or treat at each vendor. At the same location on November 13, the Mingle and Jingle Holiday Market will have 40 vendors outside and up to 10 in the barn, along with carriage rides (public health situation willing). See The Mom Market on Facebook for other dates.

Our kinda YouTuber Now this is screen time we can get on board with. When Covid hit, retired early childhood education teacher Diana Hollister wanted to help her students through a challenging time. A natural storyteller, Diana began creating videos for children with the help of puppets Jamal and Abigail. Her videos (think Robert Munsch meets Mary Poppins) encourage play-based learning using songs, stories, props, and plenty of imagination. You can subscribe to her channel on YouTube at Diana Hollister.

— with files from Bethany Lee

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t ru e c on fe ssions from t h e n i n t h c once ssion

Road rage comes to town

BY DAN NEEDLES

L

ast time I picked up a prescription, the poor pharmacist put his hands to his forehead and wailed, “This used to be a quiet little town!” But progress has come to my little rural community since the pandemic hit.

For generations the only people in Canada who had a good word to say about Toronto were the ones living there. Now even they have decided they don’t like it and thousands of them have left to take up residence here. All those second and third homes for city people that sat empty for nine months a year have suddenly filled up with the owners’ sisters and their cousins and their aunts, and the population has doubled.

Predictably, the pace and intensity of traffic has ramped up as well. It used to be you seldom heard a car horn on the streets unless someone was tooting hello. If you made the mistake of blasting someone, it always turned out to be the minister at the church or some sweet-faced grandmother who gave piano lessons to your daughter.

Those days are gone. The lineup for lattes and Americanos that snakes out of the drive-thru coffee shop and onto the main street, strangling traffic to one lane, produces a chorus of outraged honks from 8 a.m. till noon. The last time I went into town for groceries, I drove past a line of shaking fists and extended middle fingers down to Wendy’s to join the drivethru lane for a hamburger. As I was giving my order, a little black sports car sped up from another side of the parking lot and nipped into the line ahead of two white vans behind me carrying construction crews.

More shouting and fist waving, this time with the aggrieved parties half out of their windows screaming profanities and foul slurs at the line-hopper, who sat

ILLUS TR ATION BY SHEL AGH ARMS TRONG

staring straight ahead with his cell phone at the ready to record any direct threats to his person.

I got to the grocery store and the cashier said it was nice to see a friendly face.

“People are so impatient and angry,” she sighed. “You can’t do anything without someone yelling at you.”

I loaded my groceries into the truck and moved out into traffic, waiting at the stop sign for a couple with a dog to cross in front of me. As I nudged ahead, watching for a gap in the stream of traffic coming

For generations the only people in Canada who had a good word to say about Toronto were the ones living there. Now even they have decided they don’t like it and thousands of them have left to take up residence here. from my left, a burly cyclist in Spandex came zipping up the sidewalk from my right and swerved around the front of the truck. There was barely three feet between my bumper and the oncoming traffic.

He braked and whacked the hood of the truck.

“You’re supposed to stop at that white line!” he shouted.

“Bicycles are not allowed on the sidewalk,” I said as mildly as I could. “If you have wheels, you are supposed to be on the road.” He barrelled on, middle finger extended skyward in reply.

Sheesh, I thought. What has happened to this place?

Should we be living here anymore?

I drove back to my sideroad south of town, a beau­ tiful patch of farmland as yet untouched by sodium lights and monster houses. For some odd reason, nothing has changed in our neighbourhood since I bought the farm in 1978, apart from two new houses out at the corner where the mailboxes stand. (We call them The Subdivision.) A township construction crew was still at work replacing culverts along our road. I drove around the barriers past a sign that said “Local Traffic Only” and shortly met a township truck parked across the road as a giant yellow excavator scratched out the ditch. A woman in a hard hat got out of the truck and came to my window.

“He’ll just be a minute, Danny,” she said. “Are you in a rush?”

Me, in a rush? My family would burst out laughing.

“Well, I do have ice cream,” I said. I meant it as a joke.

“Ice cream?” she said. Out came the radio. “He’s got ice cream!” she barked.

“Ice cream?” came a voice back on the radio.

Suddenly the excavator folded up and swivelled 90 degrees, exposing a truck-sized hole for me to pass through. The flag man stepped up and waved me around like I was an emergency vehicle. As I passed, the flagman and the machine operator both grinned and gave me the index finger, a traditional sign of greeting and affection in a rural community.

It was a lovely moment. I found myself at home once again.

Author and playwright Dan Needles lives on a small farm in Nottawa. www.danneedles.ca

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YOU CAN BE A

CITIZEN SCIENTIST 28

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all you need is a smartphone and a love of nature to make valuable contributions to conservation science

BY DON SCALLEN

Townsend’s solitaire

A

PHOTO ILLUS TR ATION BY ROSEMARY HA SNER; TOWNSEND SOLITAIRE BY ROBERT MCC AW

Conservationist Dan MacNeal observing cliff swallows in Amaranth.

He has submitted more than 20,000 records to iNaturalist.

t 7 a.m., when I rendezvoused with Dan MacNeal on a lonely dirt road in Amaranth, the temperature was a crisp 8 C. But the early July morning was sun-drenched and full of promise. Dan was standing atop a bridge on the road, his binoculars tracking a flurry of cliff swallows darting and gliding over a farm field and a languid stream. The flock of about 200 birds would regularly coalesce and dive under the bridge and then back out again. We clambered down to the stream bank and found scores of exquisitely hewn mud nests plastered against the concrete bridge supports. The adult swallows that entered the nests were likely brooding either eggs or recently hatched nestlings.

Finding this cliff swallow colony was propitious, a great start to a morning of birding in one of Dan MacNeal’s two observation squares for Ontario’s Breeding Bird Atlas.

Dan is a regional co-ordinator for the atlas, an impressive conserva­tion project administered by Ontario Nature in partnership with Birds Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ontario Field Ornith­ologists, and Ontario’s Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry – and made possible by the survey efforts of hundreds of citizen scientists. Dan manages and vets the data collection from 38 10x10-kilometre squares in Halton, Peel, Wellington and Dufferin.

Each of the 38 squares is assigned to a birder responsible for finding evidence of breeding birds.

I’m one of those birders – and one of the few who have now participated in all three Breeding Bird Atlas projects in Ontario, the first in the early 1980s, the second 20 years later in the early 2000s, and now the third, which will run for the standard five years from 2021 to 2025. My survey square extends north from Forks of the Credit Provincial Park in Caledon to just south of Orangeville and is made up of meadows, wetlands and forest. All this makes it a great place to bird.

Dan and I are citizen scientists, part of a growing cadre of people collecting valuable data about the abundance and distribution of not only birds, but all manner of living things. The Breeding Bird Atlas is a prominent example of citizen science in our area.

Other examples include Butterfly Blitz administered by Credit Valley Conservation, which enlists volunteers to find and report butterflies throughout the Credit River watershed, C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 2 9

and SwiftWatch, managed by Birds Canada and open to anyone who wants to help locate the nesting and roosting sites of increasingly rare chimney swifts. Many other citizen science opportunities also exist (see sidebar).

The phenomenon of the iNaturalist app deserves special mention. It enables anyone with a smartphone to record and identify any plant or animal they find. Launched in 2008 as a partnership between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, iNaturalist had grown to include nearly 1.8 million users by December 2020, and by July this year, participants had submitted an astonishing 74 million observations. Though most observers are from North America, data collection is worldwide, with strong iNaturalist communities in Europe, Australia, South Africa and Asia.

The primary goal of iNaturalist is to connect people with nature, and the numbers show it has been remarkably successful at achieving this. On a personal level, every iNaturalist participant I spoke to for this article credited the platform with expanding their knowledge and appreciation of the natural world.

One of the nearly 2 million iNatural­ ist contributors is Kim van Oosterom, art director of this magazine. Kim admits to being a little obsessive, a trait that helped hook her on iNaturalist two years ago after she found her

“gateway” bug, the whimsically named golden-backed snipe fly.

Since then Kim has submitted more than 300 observations, one of which caught the eye of an entomologist in Ottawa. This past January, Kim had an unexpected encounter with an insect crawling on the snow near her home in Mulmur. After posting its image on iNaturalist, she received an email from David Burton, a researcher at the Ottawa-based Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes. Yes, there really is such an entity! Blown away by Kim’s discovery, David recognized it as a rare insect called an eastern snowfly. Kim was thrilled and happily stepped into a role as David’s temporary research assistant, gathering several snowflies and mailing them to him in Ottawa.

One remarkable feature of iNatur­ alist is its ability to automatically identify species. The organization’s computers have been “trained,” by looking at thousands of images, to render a prompt identification of plants and animals sent to them by smartphones. These IDs are usually correct, though the algorithms can be stumped by poor quality photos or particularly rare species. With many of us unable to distinguish a wasp from a bee or a spider from a deer tick, this feature in particular, and iNaturalist in general, offers a promising corrective to our collective eco-illiteracy.

Showing the scope of the contribu­ tions a single citizen scientist can make

to iNaturalist, Dan MacNeal has, to date, submitted more than 20,000 records. His facility with a smartphone is a wonder to behold. Sightings are photographed and submitted with one hand, with his binoculars primed in the other to find his next record.

Because I am of a somewhat riper vintage than Dan, my approach is plodding in comparison. I fumble with my iPhone and prefer to take photos with my PowerShot camera, then download the images at home and send them to iNaturalist. This works for me.

More than half of Dan’s observations have been of moths. But his sightings of birds in the local countryside have sent ripples of envy through this region’s birding community. He has found several first-order rarities: birds thou­ sands of kilometres from their usual home ranges, including a Townsend’s solitaire, a Say’s phoebe and a ruff that should have been home in Latvia or Siberia, not just west of Shelburne.

Maintaining that he isn’t an expert, Dan says “being able to contribute observations to science is probably the biggest appeal to me as well as the never-ending learning opportunities.”

He views citizen science as extremely valuable. “Experts and researchers just can’t cover the area the public can.

Literally anyone can participate and contribute valuable data.”

Dan is right. Smartphones, computer algorithms and a growing community of people who care about biodiversity make doing citizen science easy and fun.

SNIPE FLY BY BOB NOBLE; SNOWFLY BY K IM VAN OOS TEROM; OTHERS BY DON SC ALLEN

Northern pearly-eyes

Just ask Dan’s 11-year-old son, Desmond, who already has more than 3,400 iNaturalist observations to his credit. Or Taya Marsala, now eight years old and already an iNaturalist veteran and a valued Butterfly Blitzer.

Last year Taya’s mom, Kristie Marsala, saw the Credit Valley Conservation program as a great way to escape Covid confines and get outside with her daughter. The rewards were imme­ diate. “I like seeing all the butterflies and naming them,” says Taya. “I love to look at them close up with my mom!” A big find Taya made in 2020 was an Arctic skipper, uncommon in Headwaters but a lovely little butterfly with checkerboard-patterned wings.

This dynamic mother-daughter team practises catch and release. Butterflies are netted and then gently placed in a container for a close look and a photo shoot. And yes, Taya does name each one before releasing it. When I “blitzed” with them along the Elora Cataract Trailway one day in early July, Taya chose “Moonbeam” as the name for the single butterfly she found.

“Taya has learned the habitats, the life cycles and the markings on some butterflies,” says Kristie. “She can now call out butterflies as she sees them flying around us. After our hikes we feel rejuvenated and energized. The conversations we have are amazing.

Seeing the butterflies through an eight-year-old’s eyes is enlightening and fascinating!”

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In 2020, young naturalist Taya Marsala spotted an Arctic skipper, rare in Headwaters.

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Arctic skipper

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Most of Kristie and Taya’s searches for butterflies take place close to their Erin home. This is another great feature of citizen science. There is abundant life just outside our doors and projects such as Butterfly Blitz and platforms such as iNaturalist encourage us to engage with it.

For 10 years, I counted turtles dur­ ing kayaking adventures throughout southern Ontario and duly submitted thousands of observations to Turtle Tally, a citizen science project administered by the Toronto Zoo. My observations were subsequently shared with the Ontario Herpetofaunal Summary, a project administered from 2009 to 2019 by Ontario Nature and continuing now as the Ontario Reptile and Amphibian Atlas. I like to think my contributions – the result of hundreds of hours of surveying – will be of value for future conservation initiatives. I hope my efforts, as well as the tsunami of data flowing into iNaturalist and various other citizen science projects, have real conservation value.

Emma Horrigan, conservation projects and education manager at Ontario Nature, thinks it does. Emma has played a lead role in managing the Ontario Reptile and Amphibian Atlas,

which uses the same survey squares as the Breeding Bird Atlas. The data collection phase is now over, and Ontario Nature staff, together with a volunteer publication committee of expert herpetologists, are hard at work creating an online atlas to show reptile and amphibian distribution across the province. Citizen scientists, however, continue to be encouraged to submit sightings to the “Herps of Ontario” project on iNaturalist – and to the Natural Heritage Information Centre if the species is at risk.

A citizen science approach “has been vital to the success of the ORAA project,” says Emma. “Herps are cryptic animals. They can be hard to find and the more eyes out there the better.” During the data collection phase, more than 12,000 pairs of eyes have helped the ORAA amass a remarkable 480,000 records. With 75 per cent of Ontario’s reptile species and 35 per cent of its amphibian species at risk, these sightings are invaluable. “Ontario Nature and other conservation organizations can now identify mortality hotspots along roads and prioritize areas for conservation action,” she adds.

In addition, at-risk Ontario herps enjoy varying measures of protection

TAYA MARSAL A , CLIFF SWALLOWS BY DON SC ALLEN; ARC TIC SK IPPER BYROBERT MCC AW

Cliff swallows

under federal and provincial statutes.

The vast body of data collected by volunteers showing where these creatures live will prove crucial when development proposals arise.

Emma also lauds the educational benefits of conducting a project like the herp atlas. “We were able to reach thousands of volunteers and interested community members during the 10 years of Ontario Nature’s involvement with the project,” she says. “This outreach is important for building a greater understanding of and appreciation for this fascinating group of animals.”

Emma is now involved in the third Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas project which, at present, has more than 2,000 participants in the field collecting data on breeding birds throughout Ontario, though anyone can submit sightings to the atlas regardless of whether they have been assigned a particular square to cover.

The goal is to map the distribution and abundance of every species of breeding bird in Ontario. This, accord­ ing to Emma, is “hugely important.

The data gathered through this project will influence status assessments of birds in the province and will be essential for scientists and researchers involved in the conservation of birds.

It will also inform policy planning by gov­ernment officials.”

When the second Breeding Bird Atlas was completed in 2005, a comparison of the numbers recorded in the first atlas, completed in the early 1980s, detected an alarming decline in the population of birds, such as swallows, nighthawks and chimney swifts, that eat insects on the wing. These findings have spurred researchers to ask why and, unsurprisingly, a decline in the overall abundance of insects is implicated as one cause. The challenge now is to develop possible remedies, including stewardship actions land­ owners and municipalities could undertake to help these birds.

The Breeding Bird Atlas is a welloiled data collection machine with a tried-and-true methodology. Priority is given to increasing the scientific literacy of contributors. Online seminars are hosted by ornithologists to help participants find birds, identify them properly, and determine breeding evidence. Survey protocols for cryptic bird species such as owls and other nocturnal birds are in place.

And observations are vetted and approved by regional experts.

Lindsey Jennings and Laura Timms of Credit Valley Conservation manage the Butterfly Blitz project that has captured young Taya Marsala’s heart.

Conducted in partnership with the Riverwood Conservancy, the project is now in year three of a five-year survey to document the distribution and abundance of species in the Credit River watershed. Last year Covid led to the cancellation of educational outreach and guided hikes, but data collection was still robust, and records increased over 2019.

Laura sees citizen science as satis­ fying two of CVC’s primary goals: connecting people to nature and collecting high quality data.

Butterflies are the focus obviously, but Laura knows that when people are tallying butterflies they inevitably “notice other things flying around and they notice plants and wonder what they are. People really start to engage in their neighbourhood and to go places they’ve never been before.

It’s a really effective way of connecting people to nature.”

Kristie and Taya Marsala prove Laura’s point. As we strolled along the trailway on that July day, drizzle kept most of the butterflies at bay, but both of them found other things to capture their interest. Kristie wondered about the land snails taking advantage of the wet weather to cross the trail. Taya, C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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meanwhile, was noticing little squiggly larval insects I had missed entirely.

To satisfy the goal of collecting high quality data, Butterfly Blitz requires that photos be taken of the butterflies, which are uploaded to iNaturalist and then verified by two butterfly experts. With confidence in the data, CVC is using it to fill gaps in butterfly coverage in the watershed. In one survey square near Orangeville, for example, only four butterfly species have previously been recorded – out of an expected species list of 60 or more.

At the close of the Butterfly Blitz project in 2023, Laura will “use the data for a conservation assessment of butterflies in the watershed. We’ll know then which species are locally rare.”

To ramp up interest in Butterfly Blitz, Lindsey Jennings, who specializes in community outreach, administered a kids’ colouring contest and a butterfly photo contest this past summer. Look for other community engagement activities from the program in 2022.

Citizen science expands our aware­ ness of species at risk and their needs.

Consider Mark Bell, a resident of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.

Sitting on his balcony a few years ago, he noticed birds careening and twittering as they coursed through the evening air. They reminded him of bats.

Googling “bat-like birds,” he discovered that they were chimney swifts. Moreover, he found out that they are a threatened species being monitored through a citizen science program called SwiftWatch. Mark was stoked. He compared his discovery of swifts to finding out that whales might exist in Lake Ontario at the end of his street. He learned about these birds’ fantastic journey from the northern Amazon area to his Toronto neighbourhood – and decided to become a swift watcher.

Mark began evening walks around the city during swift breeding season, challenging himself to find their nesting and roosting sites by watching them “parachute” into chimneys at dusk. His proudest moment was the discovery of more than 200 swifts entering a chimney on an apartment building. He suffered angst when he subsequently found a metal cap on the flue of this chimney but was relieved when the swifts were able to relocate to an adjacent flue. For now, they are safe.

Mark’s swift-watching experiences have brought him closer to nature and kindled an awareness that considering the needs of other creatures must be built into our human-based decision making.

Citizen science opportunities mentioned in this article: Credit Valley Conservation Butterfly Blitz cvc.ca/butterfly-blitz Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas Project birdsontario.org iNaturalist inaturalist.ca Herps of Ontario a project within the iNaturalist app SwiftWatch birdscanada.org/bird-science/swiftwatch Turtle Tally torontozoo.com/adoptapond/citizenscience

A small sample of other citizen science opportunities: Citizen Science Portal A great place to start is this government website that lists over 30 different projects and organizations throughout the country looking for volunteers to collect data: ic.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_97169.html Birds Canada One of the organizations listed in the Citizen Science Portal, it offers 17 Citizen Science projects involving birds, including nocturnal owl surveys and the Canadian Lakes Loon Survey: birdscanada.org/you-can-help/citizen-science NatureWatch Also hosted on the Citizen Science Portal are various NatureWatch programs including plantwatch, frogwatch, milkweedwatch, icewatch and – wait for it! – wormwatch: naturewatch.ca

An oft-quoted statistic suggests American kids can recognize about 1,000 corporate logos but less than 10 species of plants native to their own area. There is no reason to expect Canadian children are much different.

This speaks to a syndrome dubbed “nature deficit disorder.”

The surge in citizen science is helping us turn that deficit into a surplus.

Children such as Desmond MacNeal and Taya Marsala, as well as countless adults, are learning about the wondrous diversity of nature and contributing valuable observations as they do. A synergy has been established between PhDs and laypeople. Everyone wins. Moms, dads and children are going outside, revelling in the joy of discovery, while scientists at universities are using their observations to write research papers. The smartphones that so often occupy our time as we sit in easy chairs have been repurposed to encourage activity and inquiry.

In the summer I met my friend Lorysa Cornish, an Orangeville resi­ dent and another Butterfly Blitzer and iNaturalist enthusiast, for a hike in the Upper Credit Conservation Area just outside Alton. We met at 10 a.m., rising pre-dawn is for the birds. Butterflies, though, are late risers like me. The

sun beat down from a cloudless sky and the temperature was 28 C and rising. Perfect butterfly weather. We found many of our butterflies sipping moisture at a seep adjacent to the Credit River and Lorysa sent some great sightings to Butterfly Blitz, including a Compton tortoiseshell, a silver-spotted skipper and a Delaware skipper.

I asked Lorsya about her impressions of citizen science.

“Probably the greatest value it provides is by encouraging people – and I imagine children and preteens especially – to look at the world around them,” she said. “It’s a gateway to caring about nature and the planet.

Raising awareness of our natural world and seeing how interesting it is will hopefully inspire future generations to appreciate the environment and take better care of it.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Don Scallen is the author of Nature Where We Live: Activities to Engage Your Inner Scientist from Pond Dipping to Animal Tracking. You can read more of his observations on local flora and fauna in “Notes from the Wild” at inthehills.ca.

Erin, where you feel naturally inspired and genuinely at home.

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Splendour in the

BY SIGNE BALL

I

PHOTOGR APHY BY ROSEMARY HASNER

n the spring of 2015, this magazine featured the perennial garden of Misha Dubbeld. Lush and abundant in colourful, artfully curated blooms, it is an exceptional classic country garden surrounding a classic Ontario Gothic farmhouse in Mono. But even then, Misha was laying the carefully considered bones for a new garden vernacular on a much broader landscape.

Six years later, we are revisiting Misha to see how her vision has come to fruition.

Located on two acres of what was largely a flat and windswept field north of the house, the mature garden is now a moody, motion-filled canvas of swaying, textural

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grasses that line a crafted spillway of field rocks. The whole expanse is defined and protected by a stone wall to the east and a sculptural double cedar hedge to the west, and surrounded by an arboretum of unusual conifers.

In conceiving the garden, Misha says, “I wanted to burst out and take on something that was truly, for me, a challenge. What would work on a piece of land that had been a sand ring for horses – without changing too much about the soil, and without requiring a ton of inputs of water and topsoil? That was a big part of the decision to do a grass garden.”

That, and her admiration for the work of Dutch master gardener Piet Oudolf, whose sweeping and painterly

grass naturalized gardens were then gaining recognition in North America, including his famous garden on the High Line, a more than two-kilometre-long former industrial viaduct in New York City.

Rather than the pretty, smaller vignettes that defined her perennial garden, Misha says she wanted to “feel big sky, big waves, big swathes of things.”

And that is exactly what she has achieved. Filled with enticing shapes and textures throughout the year, the grasses are most resplendent in the autumn when they form a high, undulating sea of gold, bronze and copper that seduces a visitor into an expansive and magical dreamscape of colour and form.

C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

opposite : In autumn, the stone spillway, or dry creek, that forms the central axis of Misha Dubbeld’s expansive grass garden in Mono is lined by a brilliant display that includes several varieties of glowing copper-red Miscanthus sinensis. above top : A rustic bench is shaded by Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’ and Helianthus salicifolius. above bottom : The brilliant yellow of Liatris spicata and Amsonia hubrechtii glow in the autumn sun. on our cover : A sculpted double cedar hedge defines the western border of the garden.

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Gems and thugs of the grass garden Choosing the right grass for the right location can save you heart­break later. Misha Dubbeld offers these tips to get you started.

All grasses flower and seed and many propagate rapidly by runner; ergo, their success throughout the world from the prairies to the steppes to hayfields, lawns and the margins of brook and forest.

Tough plants on the whole, grasses grow in sand, clay or the humus-rich soils of well-tended domestic gardens. Once established, they can be hard to transplant.

All the following will prosper in zone 4. On very sandy, dry soil they may be a bit shorter than on rich, moist soil. But grow they will.

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The gems

Molinia caerulea (aka moor grass) are the nobility of the warm season grasses. The flowers of ‘Skyracer’ rise to 8 feet. ‘Strahlenquelle’ and ‘Moorhexe’ are more petite but equally beautiful. All are sun lovers that thrive in hot dry conditions.

Miscanthus sinensis, a robust grass, is another giant of the garden.

‘Floridula’ can grow to 8 to10 feet in the harshest conditions. The shorter (4 to 5 feet) ‘Morning Light’ forms a fountain-shaped clump.

Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster,’ ubiquitous in city parks and at Tim Hortons coffee shops, is a cool season grass sprouting fresh vertical

stems in May and blooming in June. By itself in tidy rows, it has been overused, but interplanted with other grasses and perennials, it is a strong vertical focal point throughout the seasons.

Another cool season grass is Sesleria heufleriana. Short (15 inches tall), it flowers in late spring with an almost black flower/seed pod.

Schizachyrium scoparium, aka little bluestem, looks so ordinary for most of year it could be over­looked. But come late August its stems become blue and rosy pink and make a beautiful addition to the garden.

Sporobolus heterolepsis forms mounds of soft green blades 2 to 3 feet high, topped by delicate panicles

of seed heads. Planted in a masses, they are a hardworking groundcover of the grass world.

For moist shade, Hakonechloa macra, aka Japanese forest grass, with its acid green or yellow striped foliage, adds a distinctly Asian note to the garden.

Chasmanthium latifolium, aka sea oats, also enjoys the shade and while it can self-seed prolifically, its rustling seed pods are music in the garden.

The thugs

Thugs are those plants which selfseed so prolifically as to be almost impossible to control. The other thugs are “runners.” Sadly, their roots do not run out of the garden. Instead they run

www.hillndalelandscaping.com left : On a misty August morning, the grass garden is an ethereal palette of green form and hue. lower left : Early in the summer, a wide stone mound at the mouth of the spillway is covered in an inviting and fragrant carpet of blooming thyme. centre : Against a backdrop of shimmering orange-gold grasses, plump squashes add a note of seasonal whimsy to the sweeping stone wall on the north-east side of the garden. below : The bones of the garden as Misha began to lay it out six years ago.

over everything else in an attempt to grab all the space for themselves.

Equisetum hyemale or scirpoides, aka horsetails, is a native invasive found throughout Ontario, spreading by both underground stems and spores. Almost impossible to eradicate without herbicides (and even then they return), you have to admire their ability to survive all attacks, but preferably on someone else’s plot.

Juncus (hard rush) seems such a joyful little plant until the year after you plant it when seedlings pop up everywhere.

And now for some controversy: If you have a lot of land to cover with beautiful grasses, choose some of the

Panicum virgatum aka panic or switch grasses. They are both gem and thug – beautiful but dangerous. With dozens of varieties to choose from, take care you really love the ones you select because over time they spread to control you rather than you them. For the brave, a few exceptional varieties are ‘Shenandoah,’ ‘Prairie Sky’ and ‘Heavy Metal.’

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For more photos and Misha’s handdrawn legend of the grasses in her garden, as well as a link to the 2015 story, see this article at inthehills.ca.

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Ancestral

Footsteps Michelle Grierson’s compelling first novel is a fluid mix of myth, magic and the power of “blood memory.”

BY ELLIE EBERLEE

“F

or me,” Michelle Grierson says, “it’s always been water.”

I believe her. From my seat on the author’s shady back deck, I have a distant view across the glacier-carved hillsides of Hockley Valley with the Nottawasaga coursing through its depths. On the late May morn­ ing I am visiting her home in Mono, the greying sky speak of rain. The low-hanging limbs of the sur­ rounding maple trees bow down beneath a weighty dew – “Evidence,” Grierson avers, “of the ocean in the forest.” To my left a concrete garden fountain

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burbles in unconcerned concert with the breeze.

It is more than our physical surroundings, though.

Grierson, who has spent the majority of her five decades in the Headwaters region and has danced since she was a toddler, moves with wave-like ease.

Her curly hair spills from her head and over her loose-fitting yoga garb like long, auburn rapids.

Grierson brings this free-flowing ethos to her art. Over the course of her career she has worked in forms as varied as collage, acrylic and oil painting, and dance and writing. I imagine a similar fluid energy pervades her classroom at Orangeville

District Secondary School, where she has taught a combination of visual arts, dance and drama to mainstream students and those with special needs for 20 years. And the spirit of water certainly imbues her debut novel, Becoming Leidah, published by Simon & Schuster in April.

Grierson’s book takes place by the ocean, in a fictional fishing village nestled among the hinterlands of 19th-century Norway. In the novel’s lyrical opening chapters, a young woman named Maeva gives birth to a blue-skinned, whitehaired girl with webbed fingers and toes. Leidah,

C A SSIE MCRE AV Y

as Maeva’s daughter is christened, proves even more extraordinary than her peculiar appearance suggests – in addition to a precocious sensibility and good humor, Leidah has strange, otherworldly abilities. She can make her own body invisible, and assume the form of objects and animals around her. Sometimes she can’t seem to stop herself from literally leaking water all over the tiny log cabin in which she, Maeva and Pieter, her “Pappa,” live.

Maeva seems less “Leidah had just been shocked by her daughter’s bizarre gifts than she is kind of waiting, but troubled by the speed of their progression. She’s then, about six years fairly mysterious herself.

As Grierson’s narrative ago, she really started oscillates dreamily between past (in chapters titled to speak. And that with an alluringly vague “What Was”) and present was it. I was like, (“What Is”), readers first encounter Maeva at sea, ‘I have to write.’” as a sensuous, ethereal creature who is reluctantly brought on board Pieter’s fishing boat and feels compelled to be his bride, a role she tries to fulfill against her own nature.

Onshore, she figures as a sympathetic (albeit harried) mother, haunted by failing health and desperate to regain the “treasure” Pieter hid from her when they met. As the novel progresses, the rediscovery of that treasure becomes crucial, not just for Leidah to understand her unusual abilities, but for Maeva’s survival.

Grierson, too, has Norwegian roots, courtesy of her dad, whose family migrated to the Dakotas several generations back, and then to Saskatchewan, where Grierson’s father was born.

From there, he moved to Ontario and married Grierson’s mother (whose own family came from Celtic communities in the British Isles). The two lived briefly in Windsor, where the author was born, before settling in Orangeville.

Asked whether her parents were artistic, Grierson responds blithely, “Not at all.” But then Inspired by her own Norwegian clarifies more soberly: “I don’t think either of roots, Mono author Michelle them ever found their creativity, which is sad.

Grierson’s mythical novel Becoming They were focused on everyday stuff; I was the Leidah was published in April. oddball.”

Grierson remembers prancing around her parents’ den in ballet slippers as a kid. She toted a sketchbook with her from room to room, illustrating scenes from the Grimms’ fairytales she and her mother read after dinner. Her fascination with water and the desire to make myths of her own permeated every activity, so that “even taking a bath felt like an important, potentially creative experience.”

During her undergraduate studies in English literature and the visual arts, Grierson wrote poems, essays, and short stories positing water as a kind of sacred feminine (including a piece inspired by the painter Mary Pratt’s meticulous rendering of a filleted salmon, in which Grierson interprets the exposed pink fish flesh as a metaphor for women’s subjection through marriage). The plan was to publish an anthology by her late 20s, but, as Grierson acknowledges with a sigh, life got in the way.

“You become a mom and then everything kind of turns upside down,” she says. “In a great way, but also in a very challenging one.”

As a mother and teacher, Grierson’s success finishing Leidah stemmed not so much from life getting out of the way as it did from the arrival of the titular character’s voice in her head – quietly, almost imperceptibly at first, and then with increasing clarity and persistence. The author first heard Leidah in her 20s. She didn’t begin serious work on the story, though, until late 2014 when she was in her 40s. Then, all of it – mythology, landscape, character – poured out in her lucid, earnest style.

“Leidah had just been kind of waiting,” the author says, “but then, about six years ago, she really started to speak. And that was it. I was like, ‘I have to write.’”

By 2016, Grierson had a hefty book draft. At the urging of a friend, she enrolled in an online fiction-writing program hosted by Humber College and, in her rare free moments between teaching and parenting, worked to revise Leidah’s myth-like narrative alongside professors, editors and other hopeful authors. She submitted a newly pared-down version of her manuscript to Brampton’s Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) in 2018. When she won, she had the chance to pitch her story in front of an editor at Simon & Schuster.

Grierson admits to having had no idea what she was doing while assembling, editing, or trying to publish Leidah. Were she not so obviously grateful for the guidance she received throughout the process, her manner might be construed as blasé. Instead, she exudes a disarming humility.

“I had to Google what a ‘pitch’ was,” she laughs.

The author’s relaxed approach could also be a byproduct of her ready belief in fate. She describes her writing process as if providential powers had pulled strings at every turn.

Characters that materialized in her notes for the book ended up, upon research, bearing uncanny resemblance to figures in centuries-old – and previously unknown to the author – Norse and Celtic myths. The one-eyed Norse god Odin, for instance (who takes an interest in Leidah as her C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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F O O T S T E P S C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 4 3

shape-shifting powers develop), first appeared to Grierson in a dream.

Overwhelmed by a flood of narrative potential, Grierson researched her family history with renewed urgency.

She pressed her father and cousins for sepia photographs of her austerelooking Norwegian ancestors. She registered her DNA with 23andMe, and spent hours piecing together her paternal and maternal family trees on Ancestry.com. According to the author, everything she learned only affirmed the artistic decisions she’d made in her previous work on Leidah.

“It was like, for years, I’d uncon­ sciously been responding to an under­ current,” she says.

At no point did that undercurrent exert greater pull, however, than in carrying her to Norway during the summer of 2017. Inspired by her work on the novel, Grierson and her thennine-year-old son flew to Oslo. The two took a tiny propeller plane up above the Arctic Circle to the Lofoten archipelago, and, over the subsequent three weeks, followed the fjord-studded coastline south by way of ferry boats and trains.

It was only once she’d returned home that Grierson received her results from 23andMe. By matching genetic profiles to locations, the author retroactively discovered she had unintentionally built an itinerary centred around the sites where her paternal Norse and Saami ancestors had lived.

“I shouldn’t have been so surprised,” she says. “When we reached the 68th parallel, my son turned to me and says, ‘Mom, we found home.’”

Besides providing the rugged Scandinavian topography featured in her novel, the trip to Norway thus formed a central installment in Grierson’s broader exploration of heritage. The author had taken an interest in ancestral ghosts even before she began to write Leidah. In her 20s, her studies in dance had led her to the work of Martha Graham, an American modern dancer and choreographer who adopted the term “blood memory” to describe the knowledge and emotions we inherit from our predecessors, and which go on to inform how we experience the world.

“There are always ancestral footsteps behind me, pushing me,” Graham wrote in her 1991 autobiography.

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“Our bodies know For Grierson, Graham’s work was “pure possibility.” What had been passed down by the author’s Norse and Celtic ancestors, particularly the women? Could this be the source of her lifelong love of water, for her innate knowledge of obscure Norwegian landscapes and myths?

In the decades since she came across Graham, Grierson’s understanding of heritage has taken on a biological bent.

She has read widely in genealogy and epigenetics. She speask animatedly about “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance” – or the growing body of evidence that a person’s environment and experiences before they conceive influence their offsprings’ vulnerability to certain pathological conditions. Studies of children whose parents and grandparents underwent trauma, she explains, have found significant disruptions in those children’s stress response mechanisms.

“Our bodies know things that we can’t intellectualize or rationalize,” Grierson says. “It’s exciting to watch the science catch up on this.”

Whether or not the science is there yet, Grierson didn’t hesitate to fold a kind of parental imprinting into her characterization of Leidah. The young character’s wide-reaching empathy and desire to please read, in many ways, as embedded reactions to Maeva’s oppressive situation.

Grierson’s preoccupation with blood memory has more personal motives too. She describes how her mother – to whom Leidah is dedicated – was

diagnosed with a rare form of dementia some seven or eight years ago, and her condition has recently declined sharply.

“So, so much has sunk beneath the surface,” Grierson says softly. “It’s a real deep dive some days, trying to figure out what I’ve inherited.”

As she speaks, I can’t shake the feeling I’m listening to the speaker in Adrienne Rich’s feminist manifesto “Diving Into the Wreck,” who – undertaking a scuba expedition in search of drowned female literary voices – found their “way / back to this scene / carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths,” who “came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail.”

I am also acutely aware that I could be listening to Maeva, whose own treasure wasn’t glittery or new, but something once held and since lost – something which needed rediscovering in order for her to return home. More than anything, I begin to appreciate Grierson’s attraction to the Norse view of time as a folded blanket, to the idea that “what was” and “what is” overlap.

If all moments exist in perpetuity, can anything – or anyone – really be lost?

Grierson’s interest in her heritage has offered as much cause for gratitude as grief. For one thing, it has provided myriad, vivid reminders of her relative good fortune; so many of the opportu­ nities she has enjoyed, creative or otherwise, were unavailable to older gener­ a­tions of women. The author’s own mother didn’t go to college until her 40s, when she studied to be a hairdresser.

things that we can’t intellectualize or rationalize,” Grierson says. “It’s exciting to watch the science catch up on this.”

Grierson has always sought to make the most of her comparative freedom.

She completed her BA at the University of Guelph and her bachelor of education at Brock, with specializations in dance and drama. For a time she studied expressive arts therapy in Switzerland.

She started a dance program at Orangeville District Secondary School – the first of its kind in the Upper Grand District School Board – which she plans to run until her retirement.

Grierson has also tried to open up a similar range of creative possibilities for her students. The pandemic hasn’t exactly made this easy. While she was able to meet some of her students with special needs in the classroom over the past year – “now, more than ever, it feels important to put hands on drums” – the majority of Grierson’s teaching migrated online. Still, she did her best to make space, albeit virtual, for kids to “pull stuff out of themselves that was meaningful.” As we meet in May, her students are at work on their

Grierson’s research into her family history affirmed her sense of the genetic inspiration for her art. Neela Swan (far left) was the author’s Norwegian great grandmother.

Neela was one of the eight daughters (centre) and one son of Grierson’s great, great grandparents, Samuel Swan and Christina Stemson, shown (left) on their wedding day in 1889.

final projects: films about living in isolation. What Grierson has seen so far has floored her.

“Despite all that sadness they’re feeling, they’re working hard,” she says, shaking her head in admiration.

“There’s hope in that drive.”

And just as Maeva gathers strength from Leidah’s spirit, so too has Grierson been buoyed by the resilience of her students and son, now 13. In fact, the author avows she has been more prolific over the past year than during any other period of her life.

Again, it is easy to believe her. Large, brightly painted canvases leaned against the deck-facing side of her house. Gesturing to the forest around us, Grierson explains how she and her son passed the pandemic writing, dancing and drumming outside, breaking only for hikes and bike rides along the nearby Bruce Trail. And, were I less Covid-conscious and ready to venture inside and upstairs, I would find the walls of Grierson’s attic writing studio plastered with pages from the working draft of her second book.

Understandably, the author doesn’t want to reveal much about her novelin-progress. She does note, though, that the narrative is culled from material included in the pre-Humber manuscript of Leidah. The new story examines related issues of female oppression and agency, this time in the context of 19th-century Paris. Grierson hints that the protagonist is a medium.

I smile, and observe that the author had a soft spot for magic. Grierson

blushes. She admits it takes courage to suspend disbelief. Especially as a mother in her late 50s. Especially while telling stories about female pain. But, she maintains, there was a kind of hope and reclamation in her continued play – in elbowing her way into a historically male-dominated tradition of magical realism, and refusing, regardless of age, gender, or situation, to surrender her right to joy.

She remembers having a similar discussion with a friend a few years earlier. “When you grow old,” that friend had wished her, “may you stay wet.” Grierson laughs at the phrase as she says it, adding, “You know, rather than becoming a dry stick.”

I laugh too. We end our conversation with the agreement that staving off dryness is a worthy goal.

But as I wind my way toward home along dirt roads in the rain, I find myself repeating the original phrase.

May you stay wet. I am struck: Wasn’t that Grierson’s – and, for that matter, Maeva’s – whole undertaking? A struggle to hold onto water, to that locus of artistic inspiration and strength?

Grierson’s first novel doesn’t merely riff on old Norse and Celtic stories, or meditate on inherited trauma.

Instead, Becoming Leidah reads like a master project in staying wet – in remaining fluid and open to expressive possibilities, in reaching backwards for shared familial memories and myths, in reclaiming a distinctly female ima­ gination, and continuing to play.

A reception to mark the local launch of Becoming Leidah will take place with author Michelle Grierson on Sunday, October 3 at 2 p.m. outdoors at BookLore, 121 First Street, Orangeville.

Ellie Eberlee grew up in Caledon.

This fall she is commencing studies for a master’s in English at the University of Oxford in the U.K.

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FARMERS AT THE TABLE Three Dufferin farmers sit down to talk about what it means to be a modern farmer, the challenges they face and what they wish we knew about them.

BY ANTHONY JENKINS PHOTOGR APHS BY PE TE PATERSON

F

ood is easy. Open the fridge, load a supermarket cart, dine out or order in.

Farming is difficult. It’s complex, misunderstood, labourintensive, and subject to the vagaries of weather, politics, global markets, urban development, climate change, and the boardroom decisions of multinational corporations.

As feeders of the populace and stewards of the land, today’s large-scale farmers must wear many hats, not just a weathered, sweat-stained ball cap to keep the sun off out in the fields.

They must satisfy a burgeoning metropolitan public’s insatiable demand for food, at the cheapest possible prices, and are subject to an equally voracious suburban development industry’s appetite for their farmlands.

They must dance with global corporations who supply them and whom they supply, compete with foreign food imports, manage their land toward a sustainable future while dealing with arduous here-andnow environmental rules and regulatory bodies – and make a living in a business notable both for staggering investments in land and equip­ ment and for often razor-thin margins.

In advance of the annual Dufferin Farm Tour, on a balmy midafter­ noon when their fields were surely calling, Dufferin farmers Bert Tupling, Mike Swidersky and Darryl Burnett sat down with us for a roundtable discussion in the boardroom of Tupling Farms in Melancthon At the last minute, Darryl joined the group by Zoom from the cab of his tractor. Both Mike and Darryl are featured in this fall’s farm tour video which launches October 2. Bert has participated in the past.

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The Pandemic Anthony Jenkins for In the Hills : First let me ask about the most recent challenge. How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your market or the way you do business?

Bert Tupling : Sixty-five per cent of our potatoes go out to the food service sector; 35 per cent go to some type of retail. We have a contract that supplies Swiss Chalet and stores they’re associ­ ated with, like Kelsey’s and Montana’s for their fresh-cut french fries.

When the pandemic first happened, our sales switched: 65 per cent went to stores and retail, 35 per cent went to the food service sector. In the next year or so we switched back. Today, we’re back to where we were.

Mike Swidersky : Getting supplies,

parts, it’s been more challenging, whether it’s hardware or machinery parts. You can’t just walk up to a

counter and get stuff. As far as selling product, selling lambs, our lamb mar­ket has been outstanding. More people were wanting to cook from home, especially a luxury item like lamb.

Canadian lamb producers produce only 40 per cent of our market. Most of the food service and restaurants are serviced by imported lamb. When that stopped due to Covid, our market share actually increased.

AJ : Throughout the pandemic it seems people have been wanting to know where their food comes from and to support local businesses, especially smaller market garden farmers who sell direct to the consumer. Has that been a boon to local farmers?

MS : Bert’s a beef producer. If I buy beef,

top-end steaks or roasts – whether it’s Bert’s or some of the other many beef producers in Dufferin – from Zehrs or any of the grocery stores, that’s local produce.

Sheep farmer and pasture manager Mike Swidersky with his capable canine assistants Penny, Leonardo and Willy-Jack.

BT : As far as local is concerned, we did

not see much change. In our operation, we produce beef for the domestic market, but also for the China market and for Japan and Great Britain. They all shut down.

We didn’t have the transportation and the logistics to move that beef. Because of Covid-19, the workers didn’t show up some days. The packer didn’t know if he had people coming in to kill.

Technology AJ : Has tech – drones, apps, GPS, social media and the like – changed your business?

MS : Absolutely. We farm because we can

adapt to change. We adapt all the time whether it’s the weather, the pandemic.

I did a two-year agriculture diploma at Guelph and I’m constantly learning from other people, via tech­nology, social media. Our hands are so much closer to information now.

MIKE SWIDERSK Y

DARRYL BURNET T

BERT TUPLING

Unusually, Mike Swidersky, 44, of Riverview Ranch in Melancthon, is a firstgeneration farmer. And he loves it. “Yep, pretty much every day,” he’ll admit in a quiet, thoughtful drawl.

Committed to holistic farming, Mike raises several hundred sheep and cattle in Melancthon and Southgate townships where the animals graze in rotation on open pasture, ensuring enough rest between grazings for the fields to regenerate. He also manages Grey Dufferin Community Pasture, contracting intensively managed grazing land to other herds. Riverview Ranch sells its ethically raised meat direct to the public, as well as to retailers and processors through stockyard auctions in Cookstown.

Mike’s wife, Amber, operates an on-farm flower business called Petals Flower Co. Mike says they’re giving their teenage kids, Warren and Grace, options. “They’re showing an inclination to farm. At this point we’re getting them to try other agricultural operations. My son is working in Saskatchewan right now [summer].

My daughter works on another farm as well. We want them to have a variety of knowledge they didn’t get from me.”

Darryl Burnett is a man in motion, often only an energetic voice on a cell phone from the cab of a pickup truck or combine, or a terse text from somewhere across the several hundred acres he farms in Dufferin and Wellington counties.

The 47-year-old certified crop advisor, his wife, four young adult children, and what Darryl describes as “a great team of non-related, but extended family of close friends and coworkers” operate Burnett Farms Ltd. from the home farm in East Garafraxa which has seen six generations of Burnetts over the 125 years.

Primarily a grain farm, the Burnetts plant rotational and cover crops and practise minimum or no till to mitigate erosion and enhance microbe and bacteria growth in the soil. “We contract feed nursery and market pigs and raise a handful of cow-calf pairs which offer a tremendous nutrient and fertilizer benefit to our grain operation.”

They also sell seed, fertilizer and crop protection products, as well as offer custom services such as harvest­ ing, grain drying and transport.

Farm patriarch Bert Tupling speaks with pride about everything he does, and looks forward to passing on his operation to his sons and grandsons, the fourth and fifth generation of farming Tuplings.

At 75, he continues to work 13-hourplus days, finishes about 2,500 head of cattle annually for the domestic and overseas markets, and farms wheat, alfalfa, barley and corn on about 5,000 acres across Dufferin and Grey counties and Nottawasaga Township. But those grains and alfalfa are rotational crops that keep the soil healthy and productive in support of the farm’s mainstay crop, potatoes.

The Tupling family, with the help of 15 to 30 employees depending on the season, grow 17 varieties and 54 million pounds of potatoes a year, storing and bagging them in their on-site plant at the home farm in Melancthon, and selling them mainly into the fresh potato market through grocery and restaurant chains. When not dining from a lunchbox out in the fields, Bert eats them, too. Often. “Welllll,” he says, drawing out the word as he calculates, “probably ten times a week.”

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Grain farmer Darryl Burnett climbs aboard a massive John Deere harvester at his farm in East Garafraxa.

BT : As far as the tech side of it, there

are those who still do it the oldfashioned way. But we’re among the top GPS users. We plant every row of potatoes within one inch of accuracy, which gives us a higher yield per acre.

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AJ : Do you spend more time in the office than in the fields? Do you need to be tech and media savvy to be a successful farmer nowadays? Do you need a post-secondary education?

MS : I’m still spending more time in

the fields. The office comes to the field. With the use of a mobile phone I don’t have to go to the house to have a meeting. Darryl is here via Zoom.

That’s a regular occurrence now.

Darryl Burnett : We do use a tremen­ dous amount of technology on the farm. Everybody wants to be more efficient. I’m sitting in a tractor seat right now. I’m almost always in my pickup. My pickup is my office.

BT : I’ve got grandsons who I am en­

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couraging to go to schools and learn.

But learning where to find out about

things is just as important. If you listened to the radio this morning, you heard there’s three new grassy weeds causing problems with the wheat. We know we’ve got a problem. We need to know where to go and find out how to control them.

DB : My dad didn’t finish high school.

He always thought that made it much more challenging through his farming career. My parents strongly encouraged me to further my education. I went to the University of Guelph and graduated with a bachelor of science degree.

Business was my secondary. These are all businesses we have. Mike is in lambing and livestock agriculture, Bert is in potato and beef and grain farming, but we can all sit down at the table here and all learn something from each other.

Like-minded people tend to be around like-minded people. It might be a neighbour across the road. It might be someone that’s in Saskatchewan, or around the world.

That’s where technology gets us. But you can’t rely solely on tech. It comes down to work, effort and ability, good business sense, and a good bit of luck.

Land Loss AJ : Based on census figures, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture says that for the past two decades, the province has lost 175 acres of farmland every day. Are the effects of population growth and development affecting you in Dufferin County?

BT : Yes. People are coming here to live

because they can’t afford housing in Toronto. The little hamlet of Honey­ wood is now full of “bed” people who have to leave at 5 o’clock in the morning, be at work in Toronto at 7.

They leave Toronto at 5 o’clock and get home at 7 at night, grab something to eat and go to bed.

It’s affecting us. These young people are going to have a family. Where are they going to have support from, to keep kids off the street, keep them occupied and not causing trouble? We need a new arena in Honeywood.

MS : As rural people we’re pretty self-

sufficient. We don’t need someone picking up our garbage. We don’t have

to worry about compost. We don’t mind driving on roads with some snow on them. People who move up have quite different expectations.

BT : It’s a well-known fact in this area

a whole farm in 2002 could have been bought for $250,000. A one-acre lot off that farm now sells for $250,000. That leaves a 99-acre farm. Now we’ve got a conflict of interest between whatever the person wants to do on that one acre and a farmer with a field of potatoes that has to be sprayed every five days.

We’re being affected by the urbanite who wants to come and live next door to a farm. They come, but they want us to abide by their rules and regulations.

DB : I sit on the board of the Dufferin

County Agricultural Advisory Group.

Traffic is a huge issue. The roads weren’t built for the amount of traffic we have on them now and there are risks moving heavy equipment around. Three years ago we’d pull up with farm machinery to Highway 9 from one of our back roads at 5 o’clock in the morning and basically pull out on the road knowing that there’s no cars coming. We literally wait two or three minutes at that time in the morning now, for traffic.

We’re in the south of Dufferin County. We’ve lost multiple farms we were renting at the time to urban sprawl. I’d rather have development in the towns, but it does add challenges.

For example, there are distance requirements when you’re building livestock barns or different facilities.

That all adds to costs. It does increase the value of the land substantially, though. As house prices go up, as land prices go up…

AJ : As house prices go up, are you tempted to sell off, take a big pay day and head to retirement?

MS : In local politics in Dufferin County, the municipalities with the most clout are the ones with the highest populations – Orangeville, Shelburne, Mono. If you asked them all, I’m sure they’d all say saving the farmland is important – until it comes to the dollars and cents of building subdivisions.

DB : If there’s 300,000 new Canadians

that immigrate to the country this year, I honestly think they’d be better served being where the jobs are, close to metropolitan centres. That being said, we have several “new Canadian” landowners we work with from many parts of the world, and most are much closer to their food and awareness of agriculture in general than the average population.

But the land is so expensive. When the Greenbelt was implemented around the GTA, public policy said farmland should be preserved, you’re not allowed to change that to residential.

If it’s public policy that agricultural land is to be protected, that it’s going to be green space, and you are restricted to who you can sell it to as a farm landowner, then the public taxpayer should help pay for that.

I personally think that most of the Greenbelt, other than the very protected conservation lands, is where most of the housing should be built.

They have the infrastructure, they have the roads. There’s 14 million tax­ payers that can pay for a 407 highway.

That’s what public policy did. It’s shifted these million-dollar homes in Toronto, so now they’re trading for $800,000 in the hamlet of Grand Valley and up in Honeywood, as Bert says. Our roads and infrastructure just will not cope. Someone’s going to have to bear the cost. If it’s for the greater good, it shouldn’t be the farmer, the agricultural landowner, to bear. It happens too often.

DB : That’s everybody’s option. We

The Environment

want to be in the business of agricul­ ture. I’d love my kids to be, if they choose. What’s the average age of the Ontario farmer right now? It’s got to be encroaching on 60 years old. Lots of farmers will still work. My dad’s 75; he’s still active on the farm every day because that’s what he loves to do.

AJ : The Dufferin Federation of Agri­ culture calls farmers “stewards of the land,” yet farming practices such as the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, GMOs, monocultures are blamed for contributing to climate change. Are those charges fair?

AJ : Is loss of farmland a problem and, if so, what can be done?

MS : Most of what you call environ­

mental goods and services, that’s how we stay in business. We increase

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“Most of what you call environ­mental goods and services, that’s how we stay in business. We increase our organic matter. We use the least amounts of pesticides and inputs possible. If we use less and get the same results, that’s better for us economically.”

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I’d prefer if the government would just keep their hands off.

DB : In our operation, two-thirds of

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our acres are planted with genetically modified seed. A hundred per cent by our personal business choice. And on our land after winter wheat is harvested, we integrate cover crops, we integrate animal grazing where we can on these covers. Last year we grew a beautiful cover crop of red clover and oats after wheat harvest that a neighbouring beef farmer grazed his cow-calf herd on through the fall. What a perfect nutrient cycle that made by not fighting nature but fostering it. It’s these sorts of bridges farmers make to help each other and the environment.

I’m the past president of the Inno­ vative Farmers Association of Ontario.

IFAO is entirely dedicated to soil health, cover crops and water quality.

Our grain operation is probably slightly larger than the average grain farm in Dufferin County, but that doesn’t mean we overlook any small details – quite the opposite. We have technology on our planters, sprayers and drills that almost never puts two seeds in the same spot. It’s all GPS controlled to adjust for overlaps and double applications, etc. Our sprayers, our fertilizers, every pesticide we spray, where our sprayers go, where our tractors go – I know on my phone, every detail, including how much fuel each of our combines is using in gallons per hour per acre, and it’s all livestreamed right to my handheld.

It’s more environmentally friendly.

We have less waste. We have the capacity to do this. Canadian farmers can solve so much related to climate

change through carbon sequestration and we’ve never even been invited to the table by the Canadian government.

Never.

AJ : Why is that?

DB : Because we’re 2 per cent…

MS : … 2 per cent of the population.

We mean nothing to the politicians.

In the last year I cannot tell you when I didn’t have either a bird scientist, a bee scientist, somebody tracing mosquito disease, whether a private company or academia, doing a study on our farm. My compensation has been zero dollars. We volunteer.

These are things people don’t know.

AJ : There are a great many environ­ mental regulations on farmers. Are they onerous? Are all the rules and regulatory bodies necessary?

BT : I don’t necessarily say they are

necessary, but I have come to the place where I accept them as being part of doing business. We’ve got to work with them. They’re not there to help us.

We are controlled by CanadaGAP [Good Agricultural Practices for fruits and vegetables]. We have to be certified every year or we can’t sell a bag of potatoes. An inspector comes in, watches us dig potatoes, watches us pack potatoes, stands and watches and looks at all of the things that go on in our pack house. I can’t sell potatoes if I haven’t got a CanadaGAP certificate.

DB : Twenty-five years ago there were

probably five abattoirs processing local beef and lambs. Government legislation has made it so difficult at the livestock processing facilities that they basically shut down every abattoir Dufferin had.

They have to have so many inspec­ tors and it’s so onerous. The federal government, through legislation, has pushed them so far, the plants have to be so large to be able to afford compliance and all the updates.

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The challenge is when you have countries that don’t have the same regulations. Our best management practices are so tight. Everybody knows that.

AJ : With the regulations concern­ ing food production in Canada being more arduous, are our farmers competing globally on an uneven playing field?

BT : Without any question. There

could be potatoes coming from Idaho – we think we’re good friends with the United States – and they don’t go through the CanadaGAP situation that we do. Every potato grown on this farm, every acre, I can document what field it was grown on, what fertilizer, what manure.

DB : We have enough legislation in

place that if there ever is a problem, they have traceability. We have pigs at home. Through the Canadian Quality Assurance program and other similar programs, every pig, lamb, chicken or cow is traced and detailed from birth to processing. The traceability on Mike’s lambs, the legislation is there.

I think the farming community does a fantas­tic, an A-1 job. We’re not very good at patting ourselves on the back.

When somebody isn’t in compliance, we do a friendly neighbourhood gesture saying, “Hey, this would make sense…” We’re very good at self-regulating. Do we need more regulation? Absolutely not.

AJ : Well, say your counterpart in Idaho or China doesn’t do that, saving costs. What can be done to alleviate that competitive disadvantage?

MS : I don’t understand how you could

walk by and not look at the label on a bag of potatoes. That’s bizarre to me.

The Agri-Food Chain AJ : The global agri-food industry is dominated by huge multinational corporations across energy/chemical/ machinery/seed/processing/packing/ retailing and restaurant chains.

Where does the farmer fit in?

BT : What caused the big corporations

was economics. Why did Pioneer buy out Syngenta? Or why did Bayer buy part of Monsanto? So that they could corner more of the market.

Even though they are not supposed to, the fertilizer companies get together and they know what potash is going to come from Russia, what it’s going to cost versus what they can get it produced out of Saskatchewan for.

The same thing with chemicals. They know what chemical is going to be put together in Iran, shipped to the United States and then shipped to Canada.

Then the first thing they tell you is, “It’s getting in short supply.”

DB : The farmer is still the hub of the

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agri-food industry. Unfortunately we’re in a situation where we have to buy our inputs retail and sell our product wholesale. If we don’t protect the farmers, even more so than farmland itself, we can have 25 million arable acres across Canada to farm, but who’s going to do it? When you talk about national food security – that’s huge.

AJ : You used the phrase “protect the farmer.” How do we do that?

BT : Educate the consumer about what

she’s buying. She’s not buying by the penny. She’s buying by quality. I’d like to say to the consumer, “Would you please verify where that product comes from? If you have to have it, go ahead and buy it, but here’s a local product that we feel is superior – and pay me accordingly.”

AJ : That seems a big ask. I see a bag of potatoes, I throw it in the shopping cart. I’m not reading the fine print.

How do you educate people like me?

BT : That’s what we’re doing right here

today.

DB : Have some support programs.

For 30 years Canada has had a tremendous cheap food policy.

We’re spending a million dollars on our house and we’re spending about 9 to 13 per cent of our disposable income on food. People complain more about the price of food going up, the price of potatoes and the price of lamb, than they do about the price of their house. My grandpa said it’s fantastic. He said there’s three generations of Canadians who don’t know what it’s like to go without food. But that has made Canadian consumers complacent, in my opinion.

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R O U N D TA B L E C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 5 3

A HOOF-POUNDING ADVENTURE “A propulsive plot that reads like the best Nancy Drew mystery, with a unique edge. Perfect for readers young and old!”

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Even through this pandemic the scare was for toilet paper. We’re in a First World society. When we can’t get what we want, when we want it, it’s chaos.

MS : I don’t know that protecting

farmers is a whole lot different than protecting any business in Canada.

Have policies in place that don’t limit our competitiveness. Right from the municipal level, we have expensive red tape, whether it’s from putting in a wider driveway for farm machinery to building permits to a carbon tax.

DB : Farmers are tremendously

innovative. They will diversify and they will change, but don’t make it so onerous. We’re already at the top as far as all our quality assurances. We don’t need more regulations. The door is open for other countries to export at the lowest possible price. That’s the challenge right now. There isn’t the same stringent quality assurances on things coming in from other countries.

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AJ : Promotional videos for the Dufferin Farm Tour show happy farmers, bucolic charm, the joys of new technology, but little sweat or toil. Does the public have an unrealistic, romanticized view of farmers?

drastically. Those are real farms.

When you come to a dairy, beef or grain farm, that farm is in its work clothes, though they might have pressure washed the tractor that morning, mowed the lawn, cleaned things up a bit. People visiting are seeing working farms – the cows were still milked there that morning.

probably doing the job we wanted to do since we were little kids. We’re the ones who, when we see a whitetailed deer cross our fields, we stop and look. We enjoy that. Or birds. I know farmers who for generations have tracked the day the barn swal­lows come and go in their barns.

The welfare of our animals is important to us. If something is sick, we take care of it before we eat or go to bed. Those happy people on the farm tour videos, they are who we are.

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AJ : What do you wish the public knew, or better understood, about what you do?

BT : What we do to be able to sell

our products. You can sell stuff back door or on a food stand. Are you compliant? The public needs to know all the little things that we do that come at an added cost to us, the farmers, but not necessarily an added cost to the consumer.

DB : Nobody is nostalgic for 1940s

dentistry or 1950s cancer treatment, but everybody seems to be nostalgic for 1950s food production. They have a huge skew on food production: “If it’s done on a large scale, then you must be doing something wrong.”

Nobody wants the AstraZeneca vaccine because it’s not good enough.

What everybody wants is the Pfizer vaccine. That is a genetically modified vaccination. They want the best of the best science. Why wouldn’t we use the best of the best science to feed the 7 billion people on this planet?

DB : I don’t think anything is skewed

MS : We are our own bosses. We’re

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“Nobody is nostalgic for 1940s dentistry or 1950s cancer treatment, but everybody seems to be nostalgic for 1950s food production. They have a huge skew on food production: ‘If it’s done on a large scale, then you must be doing something wrong.’”

Dufferin Farm Tour Every fall since 2000, Headwaters residents have been invited on the Dufferin Farm Tour, an up-close, self-guided look at local agriculture. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic drags on, this year’s tour will be virtual. The halfhour video will showcase the diversity of agriculture in a county where farmers are owners and stewards of 48 per cent of the land.

The tour launches with a watch party on October 2 at 7 p.m., and will continue to be available for viewing after that at dufferinfarmtour.com.

I’ve got friends who are organic farmers. I am 1000 per cent in favour of organic farm production if that’s the farmer’s choice and it puts dollars in his or her pocket. But it’s normally practised on much smaller acreages, with an often larger workload, that is not sustainable to feed the expanding world population.

MS : As farmers, we are making our

farms better. That includes having animal habitat, bird habitat, making our farms better for the next genera­ tion. We’re concerned about the environment. We’re concerned about animal welfare.

AJ : All this in addition to making a living?

MS : Yeah, because those things are

important if we want to continue.

They’re not an afterthought. It is something we’re always looking at. I’m trying to get more organic matter so I have better water holding capacity in dry weather and I’m able to use less fertilizer. Because of that my yields are better, my animals are healthier, and hopefully I’m more profitable.

On Earth Day, people say, “I recy­ cle!” Yeah, what do you do after that?

And where does your recycling go?

We buy 700-plus tonnes of compost a year. They think they’re being super environmental by composting, but they don’t know where that goes. The loop does not close. Livestock farmers are feeding their herds by-products from our wheat. Quite often food waste goes back into animal feed or fertilizer.

The circle goes beyond the table.

This roundtable discussion has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Anthony Jenkins is an exurbanite freelance writer and illustrator who lives in Mono.

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An Exurbanite’s Guide to Field Crops A drive-by primer on what’s growing in Headwaters.

BY DOROTHY PEDERSEN

ILLUS TR ATIONS BY RUTH ANN PE ARCE

I

f you’re an exurbanite who is keen to immerse yourself in rural culture, but don’t know what to say to your farmer neighbour after you’ve established it looks like rain, read on. This handy guide to common field crops grown in Headwaters won’t make you an expert, but it might help you feel a little more at home.

canola

canola

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Canola is a made-in-Canada success story – and its name tells the tale.

The word canola comes from pairing “Canada” and “ola,” which derives from“ola,” for “oil low acid.”

Canola’s story in Canada begins during World War II, with the unfor­ tunately named rapeseed, a word that comes from rapum, Latin for “turnip.”

Like turnip, rapeseed is closely related to rutabagas, cabbages and cauliflower.

Until the war, rapeseed was not grown extensively in Canada, but with lubricating oil in short supply, Canadian farmers answered the call to grow rapeseed, which was crushed to make the oil desperately needed

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to lubricate the steam engines that powered ships and trains at the time.

But scientists and nutritionists also knew rapeseed oil was highly nutritious and could be used for cooking, though it had drawbacks.

Taste was one of them. So over the next decades, Canadian scientists experimented and bred a variety of rapeseed that makes a tasty, nutritionally superior and hearthealthy oil. Once the oil is extracted from the harvested crop, the remaining meal can be used as highquality animal feed. To distinguish this new variety, the name canola was trademarked in 1978.

Canola farmers typically test their soil every year to determine the amount and strength of fertilizer needed. The fertilizer is applied in early spring before the ground is seeded in April or May. With warm soil, the seeds germinate in about a week. Canola seedlings can tolerate frost to −7 C, so the crop usually survives cold spring nights.

The primary leaves split apart, and at this point the farmer hopes there

won’t be too much rain as this can cause the crop to lose its vigour and potentially create a need to reseed.

Brilliant yellow flowers bloom in June or July and remain in flower for about a month. Mustard looks similar, but with the abundance of canola grown in Dufferin, Peel and Wellington, novice crop spotters can be fairly confident it’s canola they’re looking at.

When the flowers fall off, the pods are left. Each pod contains about 20 seeds which turn black as the pods lengthen. “In September, when the tiny seeds are black and dry, the crop is harvested,” says Meghan Moran, canola and edible bean specialist at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

The crop should have a maximum moisture level of 8 per cent, so it is left in the field to dry for 10 to 14 days, then tested to determine its moisture content. Too much moisture may lead to mould, fungus or, worst of all, fire: damp, decomposing vegetation generates temperatures that can rise until they’re hot enough to ignite.

Left to right: canola, soybeans, barley, buckwheat.

“The seeds are 41 per cent oil and are crushed to extract the oil,” says Moran. The leftover meal is used as animal feed, particularly popular with dairy farmers, but it is also fodder for chickens and swine.

Canola oil is used in food and for fry­ ing. The oil is heat stable, so it doesn’t smoke when food is fried at high heat.

It also has a relatively long shelf life.

Ontario oil is shipped all over the world. “When shipped to the U.S. it comes back as products; for instance, mayonnaise and potato chips,” says Moran.

Moran notes that crops are threat­ ened by the tiny swede midge, a pest first reported on Ontario canola in 2003. “Adults emerge from the soil around June 1 and lay eggs on the canola plants,” she says. “The larvae eat the plant and prevent it from grow­ ing.” Canola producers must carefully monitor their crops to prevent damage.

2020 CANOL A HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ..................................... 1,585 WELLINGTON ............................... 1,783 PEEL ............................................... * NA ONTARIO .................................... 32,100

* NA – Crop statistics are not available because size of crop is negligible.

soybeans Native to Asia and brought to Canada in the 1800s, soybeans require long, warm summers to flourish. Although southern Ontario used to grow nearly all Canada’s soybeans, early-maturing varieties developed over the past 20 years have expanded crop production into more northerly areas of the province and beyond.

After the fall harvest, the soil is tested to determine which nutrients need to be replenished with fertilizer.

Soybeans are usually planted near the end of the first week of May. Seeds are the size of peas and germinate in about a week. During the first few weeks, the plants require a great deal of weed control to get them past the critical period when nutritiongrabbing weeds may limit the yield of beans. Weed control is done mechanically with tractor and tiller and, depending on the conditions and practices of the farmers, may also involve chemical control.

As the plant grows and reaches a foot in height – by about mid-June – its broad leaves turn dark green. The plants flower in early July with white or purple self-pollinating flowers. The blooms are under the leaf canopy, so you won’t see them from the roadside.

“Each flower produces a bean pod,” says Brianne Curtis, who helps work the family farm in East Garafraxa and is a communications co-ordinator with Grain Farmers of Ontario. “In the fall, by harvest, the plants have dropped all their leaves, turn brown, and look like sticks in the field,” she says. “People ask why we have sticks in the field, but when people see that, they’re really seeing a mature plant ready for harvest.”

The beans are harvested in mid- to late September with a combine, a large machine that threshes, or separates, the seed from the stem and collects it in a hopper for transfer to a truck.

Soybeans are a mix of oil and protein. The oil may be used in the making of mayonnaise, soy milk, candles and plastics. The meal – what’s left after the oil has been squeezed from the beans – is used for farm animal feed.

soybeans

2020 SOYBEAN HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ................................... 30,775 PEEL ........................................... 24,999 WELLINGTON ............................. 92,923 ONTARIO .............................. 2,833,300

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potatoes Potatoes are Canada’s most popular vegetable, according to a 2020 Leger marketing poll. And Dufferin County’s high elevation, abundance of sandy loam soil, warm summer days and cool nights provide just the right conditions for growing this nutritious and versatile tuber. But Dufferin’s contribution to the Ontario potato harvest pales in comparison to that of neighbouring Simcoe County, where growers planted more than 15,000 acres of potatoes last year. No wonder Alliston bills itself as the spud capital of the province.

Prince Edward Island is, of course, the number 1 potato-producing province in Canada, with a potato industry that generates more than $1 billion a year. Island farmers, however, must ship their potatoes to markets across the country and around the world. Ontario potato growers routinely sell theirs within 200 miles of where the crop is grown.

Some potatoes are planted in spring and harvested in fall, but “early” potatoes are planted in the fall to be harvested in spring. Statistics Canada shows that, in 2020, Ontario potato production rose by more than a million hundredweight over the previous year, an increase of more than 12 per cent.

Members of the nightshade, or Solanaceae, family, along with peppers, tomatoes and eggplants, potatoes send out underground stems, or stolons, that swell and are, technically, tubers.

Above ground, the leafy plants grow one to three feet high and develop small, white, yellow or purple flowers.

Common varieties are Yukon gold, developed at the University of Guelph as an all-purpose potato, Kennebec, and Superior, a large, long white potato popular for making french fries. Once harvested, potatoes are best stored in a dark, dry place because light turns them green. The green areas contain a neurotoxin that may, if eaten, cause illness and even death. Children are especially susceptible because of their smaller size. Green spots should be excised and thrown out – or planted in the garden.

Potatoes are a source of vitamins B1, B3, B6 and C, as well as riboflavin, pantothenic acid, folate and minerals such as potassium, phosphorus and magnesium. Low in fat, these tubers also contain iron and are a good source

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of dietary fibre. The high carbohydrate content of potatoes is a drawback for some people, although many others embrace carbs as a good source of energy. As a result of its all-round nutritional value, the lowly spud has maintained its position as a Canadian dietary staple.

2020 PL ANTED POTATO CROP (ACRES) DUFFERIN ..................................... 4,193 PEEL ................................................... 69 WELLINGTON .................................... 69 ONTARIO ................................... 36,500

wheat

wheat The tight seed heads and stalks of this cereal crop are most spectacular at harvest time when they turn a stunning golden colour. Although most of the country’s wheat is grown in Saskatchewan, Ontario is also a significant producer.

Most wheat grown in Ontario is winter wheat, which is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer, while most wheat grown on the Prairies is spring wheat, planted in spring and harvested the same year.

Both “hard” wheat, with its higher gluten content, and “soft” wheat, which has more starch and less gluten, can be grown as either winter or spring wheat.

In addition, both hard and soft wheats can be either “red” (a reddish bronze) or “white” (a light golden colour).

Soft white wheat is used almost exclusively for cake and pastry flour, while all-purpose flour is a mix of hard and soft wheats. Bread flour can milled from either hard red or hard white wheat, though hard red makes for sturdier loaves. Hard white is used for softer breads, such as dinner rolls.

Durum wheat, used to create semolina for pasta products and grown mostly on the Prairies, is a variety of hard spring wheat.

2020 WINTER WHEAT HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ................................... 18,372 PEEL ............................................ 10,790 WELLINGTON ............................ 60,806 ONTARIO ............................... 1,035,100

oats Canada is the world’s largest exporter of oats, according to Statistics Canada, and Ontario oats comprise about 28 per cent of those exports. About 64 per cent of Ontario oats, however, stay in the province to be used as horse feed and pet food, as well as in cereals and cereal bars. Oats grown in Dufferin and Wellington account for a little under 9 per cent of Ontario’s oat crop.

Peel Region’s oat crop is negligible.

Oats were traditionally grown in Ontario as a feed crop, mostly for horses. But production of milling oats, a high-quality oat for human con­ sumption, is rising with the popularity of plant-based food options. Farmtario reports, for example, that in the past two years, sales of oat-based, dairyalternative drinks have increased nearly 250 per cent in Canada. Oatbased products, such as oat ice cream, appeal to those with dairy allergies or sensitivities, as well as a growing vegan population. And because oats contain no gluten, they are also popular with people with gluten sensitivities. (Look for “gluten-free” on food labels. If oats are milled in the same facility as grains that do contain gluten, crosscontamination may occur.)

Like other cereal grains, oats prefer cooler weather and are sensitive to

oats

high temperatures, so farmers tend to plant the seed in early spring. Indeed, oats are one of the first spring grains planted. The crop is ready to harvest about five or six months later.

Because most oats are eaten as a whole grain, the milling process is different from that of wheat, which is ground to make flour. For oats, a three-step milling process involves cleaning; hulling, which removes the hard outer shell and leaves the kernel, or groat; and kilning, which heats and preserves the oats.

Ripe oats are not the rich golden colour of wheat. And unlike wheat, with its upright spikes, the seeds of oats hang loosely from delicate hairlike strands at the top of the stalk.

2020 OAT HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ..................................... 3,990 WELLINGTON ............................... 3,750 PEEL ............................................... * NA ONTARIO .................................... 92,700

barley

barley Although most Canadian barley is grown on the Prairies, this adaptable plant also grows well in Ontario. Over the past 20 years, however, barley production in Headwaters – and all of Ontario – has plummeted as farmers turn to cultivating crops in higher demand. Twenty years ago in Dufferin, for example, farmers harvested about 15,000 acres of barley. Last year, they harvested less than 4,000 acres.

About half the country’s barley crop is marketed commercially, much of that as an excellent animal feed, but winter barley is also used to make

a loc avore’s guide t o loc a l fa rms a nd specia lt y f oods in t he hill s malt for brewed and distilled liquor and vinegar. Once “pearled,” a process that removes the outer hull and all or part of the bran, barley is also used in healthy soups and breakfast cereal or ground to make flatbread flour.

A D V E R T I S I N G F E AT U R E

2020 BARLEY HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ..................................... 3,740 WELLINGTON ............................... 5,360 PEEL ............................................... * NA ONTARIO .................................... 84,100

corn Corn, or maize, is the world’s number 1 crop. Two types of corn are grown in Ontario: sweet corn (think corn on the cob) and field corn. According to the Ontario agriculture ministry, field corn predominates and can be either fodder corn or grain corn. Fodder corn is used for animal feed and includes silage, corn that is stored in a silo and used as winter animal feed. Grain corn is also used for animal feed, as well as for making industrial products such as ethanol and some food products such as corn syrup.

Until about 50 years ago, the corn grown in this country was earmarked primarily for animal fodder. But this has changed. Statistics Canada notes that consumer demand is driving more farmers to produce organically grown sweet corn for human consumption, and varieties have been bred to raise the sugar content, making corn even sweeter. The Canadian Encyclopedia notes that more than 2,500 super­ market products contain corn. And corn is also used as raw material for a vast array of industrial products, such as paper and insulation.

Brianne Curtis of Grain Farmers of Ontario says she’s often asked whether the corn growing in Headwaters fields is the corn we eat. “Ninety to 95 per cent of the corn in Dufferin is grain corn,” she says. “It’s not corn-on-thecob corn.”

Like the grains listed so far, corn is a member of the Poaceae family (formerly the Gramineae family), though this tall grass is unique because each plant includes both male and female parts. The male part is the tassel at the top of the stem, while the female part is the cob wrapped in the leafy husk. Each tassel contains pollen, which it sheds to fertilize the silks,

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which become the kernels. Planted in spring, grain corn is harvested in late fall when it has a moisture content of about 25 per cent. Once harvested, the stalks may be plowed under or left in the field for cattle to graze on. Or a new crop may be planted between the rows of the previous year’s stalks.

The observant passerby will have noticed that corn fields often have small product markers posted at the ends of the rows. These are test fields. The markers indicate different varieties that will be evaluated for yield and other factors. In the past 70 years, breeding experimentation, mostly by seed companies, has transformed corn from a strictly fodder crop into a major commercial industry.

can be up to six inches long, is made up of small, tightly woven spikelets that have tiny flowers when mature.

Like the grass on our lawns, hay regrows after it is cut, and the number of times hay is cut depends on the needs of the user. Jon Blydorp, who grows hay and grain in Amaranth and Melancthon, says that in his experience, first-cut alfalfa–timothy hay is prized as horse feed, while the second cut is desired by dairy farmers.

“Dairy producers cut a lot of hay in the last week of May and then about every 30 days thereafter,” he says. The lowest quality hay is used as fodder for beef cattle.

“Someone who keeps horses will choose the hay based on appearance,” says Blydorp. “They want it a nice green colour, mature, with a good-sized timothy head and no dust or mould which can make a horse sick.” Hay like this prevents a horse from gaining too much weight. While beef farmers want their animals to gain weight, girth is something most horse owners want to avoid, and given that the average horse may eat about half a small bale a day, the weight gain potential of their hay is an important consideration.

Every third or fourth spring, Blydorp

reseeds his hay fields once they’re dry enough to plant the seed. “The more frequently you cut the hay, the more frequently you have to reseed the fields,” he says.

When cut, the hay is spread over the field to dry, which usually takes three or four days – and during this time farmers hope for sunny days.

Hay baled damp can become mouldy and, worse, generate enough heat to spontaneously combust. Once the hay is dried, it can be baled in small or large “square” bales, actually rectangular, or in “round” bales, actually cylindrical. Small bales can be stored easily in barn lofts while large bales spoil less quickly outside and can be left there for winter feeding.

And a final note to the rural newbie: Never give yourself away by confusing hay and straw. Good hay retains a greenish colour and is food for livestock. Straw, the hollow dry stalks of grain, is golden and used for livestock bedding.

2020 HAY HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ................................... 23,108 PEEL ............................................ 12,062 WELLINGTON ............................. 61,030 ONTARIO .............................. 1,435,300

corn 2020 FODDER CORN HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN .................................... 2,900 PEEL ............................................. 2,500 WELLINGTON ............................ 18,000 ONTARIO .................................. 249,100 2020 GR AIN CORN HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN .................................. 23,200 PEEL ............................................ 14,100 WELLINGTON ............................. 67,900 ONTARIO ............................... 2,140,000

hay and pasture Hay is a generic name for a variety of grasses and plants, including timothy, brome, alfalfa, clover and the like, which are cut when green, then suncured and stored as animal fodder.

Hay that is a mixture of alfalfa and timothy is highly prized by livestock owners. Most alfalfa has distinctive small purple flowers that bloom in clusters, while a timothy head, which

A word about genetic modification and hybridization

white beans Another local crop, though not a particularly abundant one, is white beans. “In Ontario white beans are navy beans, also known as white pea beans,” says Jennifer Mitchell, project manager for Ontario Bean Growers.

“These make up the largest portion of the acres of dry beans.”

Though about nine types of beans are grown in Ontario, white bean crops are growing in popularity with the province’s farmers, so expect to see more of them in local fields. They take 65 to 90 days to mature and have large flat green leaves and small white flowers. The plants are harvested close to the ground and as cleanly as possible to avoid shaking the pods.

Dry beans, which have been pack­ aged dry for sale in bags or rehydrated and cooked for sale in cans, are used in soups, stews and casseroles.

2020 DRY WHITE BEAN HARVEST (ACRES) DUFFERIN ........................................ 999 PEEL ................................................. 300 WELLINGTON ............................... 2,099 ONTARIO .................................... 81,400

*** Some farmers in Headwaters also grow other crops such as rye, a wheat-like grass used to make bread and whisky; spelt, a predecessor of modern wheat; and buckwheat, whose distinctive white flowers are the source from which bees produce buckwheat honey.

Both hybrids and genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are created when plants are altered — and both processes involve changes in a plant’s genes. Traditional hybrids are created through a natural cross-pollination process, which can be helped along by humans. GMOs are created when humans insert genes into a plant’s seeds. These genes cause the plant to develop a desired trait that will, for example, improve yield or enable it to resist certain pesticides or diseases.

According to Stacey Edwards of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, no genetically modified varieties of edible beans are available in Canada. Though genetically modified sweet corn is not uncommon, the acreage devoted to genetically modified sweet corn, silage corn and canola in Ontario is unknown.

Statistics Canada reports that 86 per cent of grain corn and 75 per cent of soybeans grown in Ontario are genetically modified.

rye

This article first appeared in the summer 2000 issue of In The Hills. It has been revised and updated by Orangeville writer Dorothy Pedersen who wrote the original article 21 years ago.

Farm harvest statistics are courtesy of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, with the exception of potato statistics which are courtesy of the Ontario Potato Board.

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Orangeville painter Steve Volpe plucks inspiration from everyday experiences – a stranger’s gaze, a travel snapshot, a striking architectural feature – then quickly sets about bending it to create a fresh visual narrative.

BY ELLIE EBERLEE

A

scholarly-looking man leans over a coffee cup, appearing to commune with the tower of apparently well-read books in front of him on the table. The musty odour of the books is nearly palpable. The man’s right hand is held aloft for emphasis while beneath the table his left hand toys with a flaming lighter.

On the uppermost book sits a polished red apple.

This is the intriguing scene in Steven Volpe’s 2018 oil painting Balzac’s Café, whose title plays on the

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names of both the contemporary Balzac’s chain of coffeehouses and the 19th-century French realist author, Honoré de Balzac.

The painting hangs in the tidy living room of the house Volpe has shared with his wife, Wendy, since the couple moved to Orangeville 21 years ago. The composition is meticulous, unfolding in gestural yet orderly brushstrokes in muted shades of brown and blue. For Volpe, though, the work’s real excitement lies in its concept. “It may start with a little phrase

or a part of a photograph,” he says, explaining his broader process as he leans forward to square the edge of the canvas with the frame of his couch.

“That’s the catalyst. And then the work begins to bring the scene to life.”

Volpe’s scenes are often held together by a dose of tension, a juxtaposition of the expected and the unexpected that may remind some viewers of traditional surrealism, though the artist doesn’t consider himself part of that tradition. “I like scenes

left Painter Steve Volpe in his studio next to a work starring a kangaroo in a party hat, called Birthday, and below it, a beach scene, Man and Pyramid.

ROSEMARY HASNER

above Police crime scene tape creates an air of anxiety around a museum exhibit of taxidermized birds in Winter Gathering.

to be plausible, believable,” he says. Nevertheless, an observer is left wondering what led to the moment captured in paint, what’s just outside the frame and what’s about to happen next.

Like the subject of Balzac’s Café, the painter cuts a gentle, erudite figure. On this mid-July morning, he’s clad in a T-shirt and khaki pants. His face mask, indigo with silver dashes, grazes the greying edges of his trim, black hair.

Neither Volpe nor Wendy has roots in Orangeville.

facing In Balzac’s Café, an erudite man communes with a stack of books over a cup of coffee while he toys with a flaming lighter.

The painter grew up in Port Credit, while Wendy is from Colpoy’s Bay near Wiarton. The two met while planning the wedding of Wendy’s university roommate and Steve’s brother and, after getting married themselves, identified Orangeville as the “perfect combination of a small-town feel and access to big-city attractions” – not to mention a spot within driving distance of both their families.

Volpe can’t remember a time when he didn’t make art. “I’ve drawn and painted so far back that it

has always been part of who I am,” says the awardwinning painter, whose work will be on display at the Museum of Dufferin commencing in April 2022. His extensive list of honours includes the Laura Ciruls Painting Award, administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation, and numerous Headwaters Arts Festival prizes for individual pieces.

As a kid, Volpe carefully copied magazine pictures of cars, hockey goalies and animals. But as he matured and went on to study fine art at Queen’s University his interests changed. “I became drawn to paintings that showed evidence of brushwork that was more expressive and vibrant, but that were still convincing and naturalistic,” he says.

Over the years Volpe’s style became looser, more imaginative. He switched from acrylic to oil. Today, his dynamic, fable-like images – dogs leading protests, men and women in museums, children cartwheeling beside national monuments – are the products of concentrated invention. To create them, the painter often draws elements of French, Dutch and Italian masterpieces into his work and combines ideas from hundreds of photographs, ideas and sketches.

Most of the material Volpe uses for reference are his own. He takes frequent, hasty pictures wherever he goes, so that his œuvre “resembles a travel log” of places he has visited with his wife. “Montreal, Ottawa, Kelowna – they all seem to pop up in paint.

And the interiors of galleries and museums I like.”

As the pandemic obstructed travel and galleries stayed closed, Volpe’s archive of images dwindled, but he hasn’t struggled for inspiration. TV is one source. An architectural feature that shows up in C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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the background or an aspect of the cinematography may catch his eye – and fire his imagination.

Volpe’s bright, uncluttered studio is arranged as deliberately as his paintings. Against one wall a wooden H-frame easel supports his work-inprogress. On my visit, this work was Man and Pyramid, a 27-by-20-inch portrait of an older man in a vermilion bathing suit stooped over a sandcastle.

Within steps of Volpe’s easel, a waisthigh cabinet holds a neat assortment of gesso and canvas primer, bottles of amber-coloured varnish, a palette knife, a blowdryer, a roll of brown paper towel and paintbrushes of vari­ ous sizes collected in a white and gold McCain’s Steel Cut Oats can. A leather guitar case – Volpe improvises jazz and blues riffs when he needs a break – leans against a white set of drawers. The painter’s desk sits sandwiched between cream-coloured bookshelves laden with artist biographies, birdwatchers’ field guides and books about hockey goalies.

When pictures don’t suffice, Volpe works from life. Both he and Wendy pose for reference. He builds Plasticine models and positions flashlights at various angles to create shadows.

While painting Winter Gathering, 64

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which depicts a winter songbird exhibit cordoned off as a crime scene at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the artist strung yellow caution tape across his kitchen and prevailed upon Wendy to serve as the model for the woman. To get the arms just right in Beach Game, in which an older man lies on the sand with a yellow balloon in one hand and a pistol in the other, Volpe asked a neighbour to lie on his lawn, arms outstretched, while holding a fake handgun.

Once he has the germ of an idea, he explores possible visual associations and tensions during the one or two months he works on a piece. When he started Balzac’s Café, Volpe, who had encountered a couple in public and liked the man’s “scholarly air, his expression and the gesture of his hand,” found himself wondering what would happen if he placed his subject in conversation with an object rather than another person. And what object might a man like that be speaking to? Could and would the object answer back?

“To laboriously copy a scene as it exists in a photograph … I’d have no interest in painting that,” Volpe says. “Why would I? You know what the end product is going to be. There are no surprises, no elements of the

far left Fluffy clouds and billowing steam frame the artist’s selfportrait in the stark urban landscape of Artist and Hawk. left In the unsettling Parliament Hill, women crouch and run near the Canadian capital’s Centennial Flame. Fire is a frequent visual trope in Volpe’s work. bottom Arrival and Departure features a WestJet plane taking off outside an airport window.

unexpected.” A moment later he adds, “I think the invention comes through in the look – my paintings look like paintings.”

If a scene he’s developing feels too calm, Volpe is quick to provide a counterweight. The Bystander, for instance, began as a serene portrait of a plein-air painter. In its unnerving, finished state, the painter calmly focuses on his palette as flames shoot from a van down the block. Smoke and fire lend a sense of urgency, as well as compositional cohesion, to several of Volpe’s creations.

Conversely, the artist often adds elements for levity. Birthday, in which a figure languishes on a Kelowna beach while smoke-obscured flames overtake a distant forest, features a kangaroo sporting a carrot-coloured party hat.

“It’s about balance,” Volpe says.

Negotiating that balance isn’t easy. Before setting up his easel, Volpe uses Photoshop as a drafting tool. He spends hours adjusting underpaintings, and readily wipes large swathes of paint from his canvas.

If a composition isn’t working, he’ll cut the canvas down to frame his preferred image. Describing his own process, Volpe invokes the work of 18thcentury British artist Joshua Reynolds

on his oft-revised masterpiece The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents in His Cradle: “There were 10 pictures under it, some better, some worse.”

While Volpe admires – and often echoes – centuries-old works of art, he also embraces current commercial subject matter. His paintings include smoke alarms, name tags, welding torches, plastic menus and graffiti. In Arrival and Departure, a plane bearing the WestJet logo takes off beyond an airport window. In Artist and Hawk, an outsized disposable Tim Hortons cup looms in the distance as Volpe himself releases a red-tailed hawk.

“It’s all part of contemporary society,” he says, shrugging.

Originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed by the pandemic, the exhibit in April will feature up to a dozen of Volpe’s most recent works.

When pressed to reveal his next project, the artist’s hazel eyes glint with amusement. He acknowledges plotting many canvases but declines to share specifics about future work.

He does, however, express the wish to invent more and continue loosening his style. “But,” he says, catching himself, “I don’t want to diffuse that energy by talking about it. I prefer to reveal the painting when it’s done.”

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MEET THE MAKER Candlemaker Melissa Lester in her pristine Caledon studio backed by tidy shelves of her handmade June + Rose Candle Co. products.

Melissa Lester A Caledon clothing retailer changed course to become a candlemaker with a knack for irresistible aromas.

BY JOHANNA BERNHARDT

T

he bright and airy Caledon studio where candlemaker Melissa Lester plies her trade feels less like a workspace than a spa-like oasis filled with subtle aromas. The gently flickering flame of a single candle casts a glow on a wooden table. All feels right with the world.

As Melissa stands in front of floor-to-ceiling shelves of neatly displayed four- and nineounce candles in gold tin canisters, as well as nine-ounce candles in her signature June + Rose Candle Co. glass jars, she shares the story of how she came to fill her days with soy wax and all this chic, simple packaging.

A graduate of Toronto’s International Academy of Design in fashion marketing, Melissa worked as a runway stylist and a personal shopper before opening Bloom Fashion Boutique, her own fashion and accessories store, in her hometown of Caledon East in 2012.

When she started selling candles in her store, she discovered many of them contain substances

linked to asthma, cancer, hormone disruption and even indoor pollution. “There was a very limited supply of candles I felt comfortable burning around my family, my children or my pets,” she says. So she took matters into her own hands and began experimenting in her kitchen and pouring her heart into research. “Everything is trial and error with candles. It’s hours and hours of research and testing to get the proper wick size to go with the wax and the scent.”

Melissa now sources her ingredients and sup­ plies from Canadian companies only and blends two types of non-GMO soy waxes. Her wicks are 100 per cent cotton and contain no lead.

In 2018, Melissa debuted her candles in Bloom and was amazed by the success. “I had so many customers tell me, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for.’” Her candles were so popular she decided to close Bloom and focus full-time on candlemaking. Looking back, she’s grateful she did. She knew she wanted more time with her two young children, Connor, 7, and Colby, 9, and

the freedom to make her own schedule. She has tremendous support from her husband, Scott, whose unofficial title is head of shipping and receiving, and her parents contribute by helping with deliveries to local retailers.

Melissa’s family is also a frequent source of inspiration. In her company name, for example, “June” is significant because several happy family events occurred on the same date in that month. “Rose” was her grandmother’s name.

And for her “Numbers” collection, Melissa created a custom fragrance that represents something special to each family member.

Connor’s No Thirteen candle, for instance, is a delectable blend of vanilla and buttercream with base notes of sugar redolent of a local bakery.

June + Rose candles are hand poured in small batches. The soy wax pellets are slowly heated in a large vat until they reach the desired temperature. (It’s a secret!) The wax is then transferred into a stainless-steel pitcher, called a “pour pot,” and the premixed fragrance oils are C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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Melissa pours a mix of heated soy wax and fragrance oils into their containers where they will cure for about two weeks.

M A K E R C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 67

added. The wax is then slowly poured into jars and tins. The candles cure for about two weeks, and Melissa then tests them in various rooms of her house for good measure. She checks the “cold throw,” the way a candle smells when it’s unlit. She then lights it to discern the “hot scent throw,” which should fill the room without being overpowering.

Melissa uses only high-grade fragrance oils manufactured without preservatives, parabens, phthalates, additives or dyes. And each candle burns for 40 to 50 hours, if cared for properly.

She will never forget the first candle she blended, dubbing it Sunday Morning. Its scent, a mixture of grapefruit, raspberry, dill and clove, is “like shopping at the farmers’ market on a Sunday morning,” she says. Along with Tobacco + Tea Leaf, a surprisingly floral concoction with notes of orange, vanilla and amber, Sunday Morning remains her biggest seller.

Melissa loves the way scent can evoke memory in an even more deeply personal way. “I recently had a customer purchase a set of very gardenia-heavy candles because it reminded her of her grandmother and she wanted to give one to all her cousins.”

Many of her candles are sold online at juneandrosecandleco.com and through Instagram and Facebook, as well as at local shops, some of whom commission custom scents. During Covid, she arranged porch pickups so customers could at least get out of the house and see a friendly face. When permitted, she jumps at the chance to attend special events. “I miss the shows. I miss being out there and meeting new people.”

To compensate, she crafted a soothing Quarantine + Chill candle, a blend of pecan, honey, vanilla and sugar. Melissa hopes she will soon be able to continue offering her popular candlemaking workshops, welcoming small groups to her studio to eat, drink and create their own candles.

With her whole line to choose from, it’s no surprise to learn that every Thursday evening, without fail, Melissa treats herself to a bubble bath and a glass of champagne, lighting whatever candle suits her mood. She strongly recommends her customers follow suit.

Johanna Bernhardt is a freelance writer who lives in Orangeville.

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local buys Hiking accessories, pressed flowers and a nod to local farming culture

BY JANICE QUIRT

Hats off You may have seen the locally inspired, hand-screened shirts and hoodies by Mulmur’s Dufferin County Goods Co. in shops across Headwaters. This tractor cap is the label’s hottest new design, one close to creator Jeanette McFarlane’s heart. “It is based on my family’s roots farming in Dufferin since the 1830s,” she says. “This design comes from my grandfather’s post-war farm. It was a big deal when they got their first tractor, as gasoline was rationed during the war and my father grew up ploughing the fields by horse.” The line of products can be found at Maple Grove Farm, Landman Gardens & Bakery, Superburger, Limitless Inc. by My Crafty Neighbour, and online. (Tractor cap, $25, Dufferin County Goods Co.)

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Pewter hits the trails In The Hills columnist Nicola Ross takes her Loops & Lattes hiking book brand in a new direction with clever zipper pulls (no more struggling to find that elusive zipper mid-stride – excellent!) and earrings. This magazine’s connection doesn’t stop there; the script and mascot were originally designed by our art director, Kim van Oosterom, for use in Nicola’s guides. “In naming the mascot, I went with ‘Dodie,’” Nicola says.

“That was my mother’s nickname and she was a pretty special person.

Now Dodie has a spot in my hiking guides.” And now these baubles. The items are made by Ruth and Grant Robinson of Watson Pewter in Tweed, Ontario, and $5 from the sale of each item is donated to the Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy. (Zipper pull, $21.95, Loops and Lattes)

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Allison transforms the flowers into earrings and necklaces by encasing them in resin. “Last year was a season of growth for me because I learned a lot about how to press and what works well,” she says. “I appreciate my craft for the opportunity to combine art with nature.” Each piece is one of a kind and handmade in Allison’s home studio. A portion of each sale is donated to MakeWay, a Canadian coalition for social, economic and environmental equity. (Earrings from $36. Necklaces from $34, Pressed in Thyme)

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How to save a theatre The creative minds at Theatre Orangeville were not about to be upstaged by a pandemic.

BY LIZ BE AT T Y

O

pening night. March 13, 2020. Friday the 13th.

Usually David Nairn’s lucky day, a quirk of his celebrated and prolific 22-year career as artistic director of Theatre Orangeville.

With Nairn at the helm since 1999, Theatre Orangeville has become the blueprint for profes­sional regional theatre in Ontario. From Dan Needles’ homespun Wingfield series to the 2021 world premiere of John Spurway’s The Third Life of Eddie Mann, the Opera House stage in Orangeville town hall – serendipitously located “on Broadway,” the town’s main street – has hosted many an open­ing night for Canadian play­ wrights. It has also launched more than a few theatre careers.

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That Friday shouldn’t have been any different – or so Nairn and his team had hoped. The journey that began that night, however, would brim with unthinkable disap­pointment and uncertainty, but also with opportunity. It would open the door to a new chapter in Theatre Orangeville history, one that no one could have imagined.

“We were selling out and just coming off the high of Little Women over Christmas. Our subscription numbers were up,” recalls Nairn. “We had brought in a show based on the music of Gordon Lightfoot. That sold out. Then, that Friday night, we were looking forward to the world premiere of a new play, Too Close to Home by Alison Lawrence, a delightful comedy.

PETE PATERSON

In the seats they hope will soon host theatre-lovers again, some of the staff who kept things going: (front row) David Nairn, artistic director; Sharyn Ayliffe, general manager; (rear rows, left to right) Diane Bator, box office manager; Lisa Lahue, technical director; Sara May, videographer; Kait Gallant, programs coordinator; Paula Stewart, office manager; Dan Palmieri, assistant technical director; Beckie Morris, production manager.

It’s always a joy, an honour, a thrill to bring a new work here – to know that playwrights trust us with their plays.”

As if conjuring up that night, Nairn casts a long look around the empty 273-seat house where we’re chatting. The memory is bittersweet. That Friday the 13th performance was the last time stage lights would go up in the space before the pandemic lockdown. “I remember joking to the cast and crew, ‘Who can say they opened and closed on Broadway on the same night?’” says Nairn.

Sharyn Ayliffe had just taken over as general manager. A veteran of the theatre’s management team, she was still finding her feet in her new role.

The day of that opening night began like any other.

“We started that morning with 273 seats sold, a full house. By 10 a.m., there were some cancellations, but we were sitting at 220. By 1 o’clock, it was down to 175.” Like Nairn, Ayliffe recounts the day as if it’s

livestreaming in her head. “By just before curtain, I recall walking in here, and I want to say there were maybe 120 people in the house. It was clear, in just that time and space, the world had changed.”

The next day Orangeville mayor Sandy Brown called Nairn into his office. It was a sombre meeting.

All town facilities, including the theatre, were being closed down. Nairn and Ayliffe informed the actors and crew. People came in to clear out dressing rooms.

“Like everyone in the world, all of us were in shock, disbelief, denial – all of those stages of grieving,” reflects Ayliffe.

It would be more than five months before they would return. “When we finally came back, the open­ ing night set was sitting there just as we had left it,” recalls Nairn. “It was very strange. Almost macabre.”

Even this past summer, headshots of the cast of Too Close to Home remained on the wall in the lobby.

The closing in 2020 was not the first time the stage of the Orangeville Opera House had gone dark. In the late 1960s the space was converted to offices. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the town hall, including the Opera House, was renovated in a style celebrating its 19th-century glory – and its original purpose as a meeting place for community, commerce and the arts.

Built for $10,000 and completed in 1876, the town hall included space for a public market, as well as the council chambers. On the second floor, an assembly hall with a small stage could be rented for meetings, concerts, balls and receptions. The renovation, com­ pleted in 1994, created the Opera House, a theatre space that was much more functional than the origi­ nal multipurpose assembly hall. This reimagining of the space marked both a full-circle moment and new creative era for Orangeville and the surrounding area.

“This corner once again became the heart of town,” says Nairn of those early Theatre Orangeville years. “If you’ve got a problem, you need a permit for a fence. If you want to argue a bylaw or scream at the mayor about your high tax bill, whatever you want to do, you come here. Anytime there’s a major event that galvanizes the community, it happens at this corner, in and around this building. And this theatre is a huge part of that.”

Nairn then shares an anecdote that shows how the synergy between the town and the theatre works. He recalls the time the mayor ran up the stairs to ask for a pause in what was happening onstage. With the stage directly above the council chambers, the pound­ ing was disrupting the business of council below.

Ever since, scheduling of the theatre space has been organized with this in mind. Indeed, the collaboration and co-operation between the town and the theatre is the envy of most regional theatres. Says Nairn, “They support us in every way, including coming to our shows. And of course, through the pandemic.”

And don’t get Nairn started on Orangeville’s broader creative community. “There’s a reason In The Hills magazine, the Museum of Dufferin, Dufferin Arts Council and Theatre Orangeville all started around the same year,” he says, pointing out that these organizations have been celebrating their shared beginnings and continued success by marking

anniversaries every five years since. “It was this con­ fluence of creativity, of people making the decision to come up here. There is no other creative community like this anywhere across this country. Nowhere.”

So yes, spend five minutes with Nairn and you feel the creative g-force of his vision, of his passion for this region. Which raises the question: What happens to a theatre full of creative people, led by this force of nature, when the way they create is suddenly shut down? Simply put, if Nairn is your leader, you never give up.

“David is an old theatre cat. He just can’t stop working,” says celebrated local playwright, author and columnist for this magazine Dan Needles. “He needs to be building a set, booking a hall, telling people how wonderful this production is going to be and getting it on the boards.” He chuckles. “The fact no one was coming into the building … that wasn’t going to stop David.”

Of course, Needles is a creative fixture in Headwaters, and indeed within the pages of this magazine. The first of his plays to appear on the Orangeville stage was the fourth in the Wingfield farm series, Wingfield Unbound. Needles traditionally launched the plays on the tiny stage of the Rosemont Orange Lodge because of his childhood connections to that community. But the play was moved to the Opera House when the staging proved too much for the lodge’s ancient wiring. “My mother was running the lights and her ancient dimmer board got so hot it melted the plastic control knobs. She had to use vice grips and over mitts.” He chuckles again.

“I think we came to Orangeville for safety’s sake.”

Nearly all of Needles’ 15 plays and one musical have been performed on the Orangeville stage and Nairn has had a hand in developing six of the scripts.

“He often worked me over with a lead pipe,” Needles jokes. “But I’m always grateful for his close reads.

David is a great detail man. He calls himself the lowest common denominator. If he doesn’t get it, his audience won’t!”

Needles was among many Headwaters veteran artists who contributed to the theatre’s pandemic reinvention: ghost stories at Halloween, reading of A Christmas Carol and other bits and pieces. “He never lets me rest,” says Needles with very thinly veiled deep affection. “It’s always, ‘What have you done for me lately!’ … I knew he’d find a way forward, film it, take it outside, do something. And you never ask him, ‘What’s the point?’ The point is ‘we must keep working!’”

And they did.

“Priority one was keeping staff safe and engaged,” says Ayliffe. “Trying to avoid scary conversations around layoffs and all of those kinds of words that shall not be uttered.” Like Nairn, Ayliffe’s admiration for her colleagues is palpable. “This team is truly and hon­estly remarkable. These are passionate people who truly love having a job in the arts, but even more so, they believe in the organization, in the community, and they want to see it all succeed.”

As GM, Ayliffe’s usual role is to help realize the theatre’s mission and the artis­tic director’s creative C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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Videographer Sara May was one of the team hired during the pandemic to launch Theatre Orangeville Presents Online.

BECKIE MORRIS

www.colleenk.ca

vision through fiscal management, budgeting and staff management.

That’s a tough job for any nonprofit theatre in a normal year. Hello, pandemic. Goodbye binders of planning templates passed on to her by her capable predecessors.

As with many of us, the pandemic lockdown started for Ayliffe as a wait­ ing game. Surely, hoping against hope, the worst would be over by summer.

“We began tackling all those backburner projects – updating policy manuals, cleaning and reorganizing storage – little jobs we don’t have time to do when we’re in production,” recalls Ayliffe. Soon though, it became clear that waiting was not an option. It was time to change direction. And this group was perhaps more prepared than most of us for embracing the unknown.

Nairn describes theatre as an art form based, at least in part, on im­ provisation, so the notion of thinking out of the box was not a huge leap. But even Nairn describes one of their early ideas as out there. “Okay, Cocktail of the Week went way out of the box, but it also got us going to maintain these connections with our community and get us all through the storm.”

The Cocktail of the Week YouTube series, now in its second season, celebrated the history and making of sundry alcoholic confections (some­ times including costume changes … you have to watch). And funnily, its success turned into a recipe book – a second edition is planned for release in time for this Christmas – and a fantastic fundraising success. It was a good start, but what next?

David Childs, former Theatre Orangeville board member, superfan and friend of Nairn, recalls those early uncertain days of the pandemic: “David and I made a pact to Zoom regularly. He was great through all this. Very capable of wearing his heart on his sleeve when things were not good, which gave me permission to do the same.”

Still, at a time when so many nearby theatres went silent, Nairn doubled down, resolving to forge ahead somehow. “There is no going back to what it was,” he says. “We can only move forward. It’s new. We’re going straight ahead.”

Step 1: Follow the money.

“I can’t count how many grant applications we’ve filled out. It feels

endless,” says Ayliffe. “Some have been awarded and some not. But it has meant we’ve been able to make a commitment to our staff and the community to continue to produce work, whatever that looks like.” Both Ayliffe and Nairn belly laugh when they describe their pandemic operat­ ing budget as a “living document.”

Then came the wee matter of finding a new way of sharing their art. Enter Theatre Orangeville Presents Online.

“Taking productions online meant acquiring a ton of skills, starting with creating a ticketing system for virtual programming,” Ayliffe explains. “We had a room full of world-class technicians at producing theatre – but what would it mean to film a stage play?” In answer to that question, Theatre Orangeville became one of the very few Canadian theatre organizations that actually hired staff over the past 18 months.

The team was prolific, producing everything from a cabaret of local artists, comedy sketches and a jazz

concert to a Christmas concert and a Zoom reading of a play about violence against women. They shared playlists and created a video blog called Back­ stage Pass. They encouraged the young people of the community to write, compose and create new works, which they then filmed. They did online production and young people’s workshops, as well as programs for the neurodiverse. Finally, at about 10 productions in, they felt ready to tackle a full play.

Ayliffe recalls dropping in to the theatre on a Sunday to check out film­ ing – with all the required health pro­ tocols in place. She sat near the front, taking in the performances, as she had done so often before. The actors’ work on stage drew her full attention, until she briefly turned her head. And recognized the new normal – she was the only one in the room watching the stage. The other six people, including Nairn, were focused on monitors, checking captures, tweaking lighting, adjusting shot angles.

PE TE PATERSON

The cast and crew of Too Close to Home. The play opened and closed on one fateful night in March 2020, and the set then languished on stage for months afterward. The play will be restaged at a future date.

“We’re not competing with film,” says Nairn. “We’re not trying to make a TV show. We’re creating a play the same way we would if you just walked in, but capturing it on film.” Wouldn’t Marshall McLuhan’s head explode if he were pondering this media hybrid. He adds, “I’m an old guy. Look at me. I’m ancient. But as a director, I’ve learned more in the last 15 or 18 months about my craft than I have in the last 20 years.”

In learning to deliver the best exper­ ience, theatre staff have also had to help upgrade the digital skills of their sometimes older audience, sharing instructions for connecting laptops and iPads to large-screen TVs. And with good success. Viewers have said they feel as if they’re in the theatre, a high compliment, says Nairn.

“We loved watching the online shows,” says Childs. Even after things open up, he welcomes the idea of being able to watch a show at home when there’s a blinding snowstorm outside. “The only hard part is jumping up to applaud and knowing they can’t hear us,” he adds. “They deserve so much more.”

Nairn and Ayliffe say people will soon be back in the theatre’s 273 seats – when it’s safe, in their own time, and probably in record numbers. All of us crave a reason to come together.

Indeed, the first step toward this return began in August with live outdoor performances at Caledon’s new Mount Alverno Luxury Resorts of Chase the Ace by Mark Crawford.

And in September, Josiah, by Charles Robertson, was performed at the same venue.

The management duo hope that live in-theatre performances will begin again in October when they plan – with fingers crossed! – to kick off a full season with playwright Bernard Slade’s classic romantic comedy Same Time, Next Year. As for Too Close to Home, the play that was derailed by the pandemic, they hope to bring it back for a full run, though that won’t happen this season. At the moment, the number of patrons allowed to join a live audience is uncertain, though Ayliffe says figuring out the numbers and their configuration is simply a geometry exercise in physical distancing and other health department requirements.

And while both Nairn and Ayliffe yearn for a live audience, they gleefully insist the new online world they’ve created is here to stay. Livestreaming and on-demand viewing will continue.

The theatre’s virtual productions have attracted viewers in France, Panama, Winnipeg and elsewhere. Add this new audience to the Opera House’s 273 physical seats, and Nairn says Theatre Orangeville now has an additional way of fulfilling its mission.

In shorts and Hawaiian shirt, Nairn is seated front row centre in the vacant theatre. He leans forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. The hidden blessings in this horribly challenging year and a half seem to be on the tip of his tongue. “There’s been so much gratitude, particularly from artists who have come to be part of our pro­ ductions,” he says, looking up at the empty stage. A veteran actor himself, he says, “Sometimes there’s just an overwhelming sense of emotion to be standing on that stage. It isn’t just a job.

Right? It’s a passion. It’s part of who we are.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s always about the people, right? I mean, this theatre has a vibe. But until people come into it, walk across the stage, sit in these seats, it’s just an empty room.”

Learn more about Theatre Orangeville’s coming in-person and online perform­ ances at www.theatreorangeville.ca.

Liz Beatty is a freelance writer and podcaster who lives in Brimstone.

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Inglewood foodie spots, local wine and beer news, and pumpkins galore

BY JANICE QUIRT

SPOTLIGHT

The coffee’s back on in Inglewood!

As an adult, Ariel Somes has never strayed too far or for very long from her childhood home on the well-known equestrian farm, Lothlorien, near Cheltenham. And now, the horsewoman is doubling down on her local roots by reviving the long-empty general store in the neighbouring village of Inglewood. Coywolf Coffee, named after the Caledon farm where she currently lives, opened at the end of June.

PE TE PATERSON

“The neighbourhood seems to love having

Ariel Somes at her new Coywolf Coffee in Inglewood.

a place to gather and chat,” says Ariel. “The general store had such a lovely atmosphere before and I wanted to bring back the homestyle feeling of being able to go to ‘your spot’ and sit with a friend or read a book.”

Creating a community hub is important to Ariel, who feels a deep connection to the area.

She grew up on the rail trail and recalls biking from Cheltenham to Inglewood to see her best friend, and playing sports in the arena along with her three brothers.

At Coywolf Coffee, menu items flying out the door include apple fritters, sausage rolls,

sandwiches, iced drinks and lemonades. Ariel doesn’t drink coffee herself – even Coywolf’s freshly ground offerings – so she offers a signature hot chocolate, perfect for fall’s cooler days. Equally important has been the aesthetic of the seating area, with books and photos lining the shelves and a kids’ corner she promises to expand as Covid restrictions lift.

Ariel also owns the gracious white clapboard building to the north of Coywolf Coffee,

now home to The Cub Ice Cream & Smoothies – her take on a vintage, old-fashioned malt shop. “When I was a kid I loved getting ice cream with friends or going for a cone after hockey with my parents,” she says. “With so many young families now growing up in town, ice cream seemed the way to go!”

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More foodie news Dave Scoffield and Wade Plewes, owners and chefs at Midland’s Georgian Shores Catering and Food Shop, have opened an Orangeville outpost with fresh and frozen entrées including meat pies, lasagne, and mac and cheese. Lunch specials include wraps and quiche. We’re fond of their dessert menu’s brownies and blondies. In Creemore, Quince Bistro owner/chef/sommelier Otta Zapotocky has morphed the business into La Cucina by Quince, with a focus on authentic Italian antipasti, pasta, secondi and pizza made using local and seasonal ingredients. Lunch specials include eggplant parmigiana and mortadella sandwiches.

A D V E R T I S I N G F E AT U R E

Step right up!

We love a good fair, but until they’re back in full force, Orangeville specialists in celebratory moments, Fun Faces by Mel (Meleny Vezzani) and Confections by Cristina (Cristina Gravina), fill the gap with “A Day at the Fair.” It’s a complete carnival food kit available in two- and four-person sizes for delivery.

Perfect for a birthday party, they include single-serving funnel cakes with chocolate and strawberry sauces, whipped cream, cotton candy, pink popcorn, giant twirl lollipops, a face paint kit and sparklers. For more fair fare, Mel also rents snow cone and cotton candy machines.

Cue the sugar rush.

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Local sips

Cambium Farms

Headwaters’ beer and wine destinations continue to multiply. Grand Valley gets a great place for craft beer and burgers with the opening of Wrinkly Bear Brewing Company by Larry and Sherry Matlashewski and family. Located in the scenic village’s two-storey, heritage schoolhouse, the Main Street spot is named for their wrinkly-faced brown Labrador with a bear swagger. And coming soon:

Grand Valley Brewery, just north of town.

The intriguing fall and winter beer, cider and wine tastings at Caledon’s Cambium Farms include a dozen or so palate-pleasing events. On September 26, for instance, Toronto’s Max Roemer, aka TheLoneSomm, shares the best whites to pair with your Thanksgiving Feast. And on October 7 the focus is red beers. Bourbon and scotch tastings are also on the agenda

later this year. Partners include Ontario Brew Tours and local food purveyors such as Orangeville’s Fromage. “Our events provide guests with a glimpse at the beautiful and intimate event setting at Cambium Farms while learning about the featured drinks, the history behind the beverages and other fun facts,” says Cambium’s Colin Williams. “We have well-established partnerships with talented local businesses, and these tastings are the perfect way to showcase and support industries that, like us, were hard hit by the pandemic.” Visit Cambium’s website, The Curated Experience, for details.

And lastly, some good news for fans of Blue Mountain’s Spy Cider House and Distillery. It now has a booth at the Orangeville Farmers’ Market offering a variety of ciders as well as other apple-based distilled products in small bottles for at-home taste testing.

A pumpkin patch awaits This we know is true: fall = pumpkins. And you can find them dotted all over Headwaters. Downey’s Farm in Caledon features thousands of pumpkins and a corn maze – and their pumpkin doughnuts alone are worth the trip. To the north lies Dixie Orchards, which hosts pumpkin picking, wagon rides – and the more niche offering of hazelnut picking! Don’t sleep on their mainstay apples either. Caledon’s Albion Orchards Apple A Halloween scene at Beth-Neil Farms.

Farm & Country Market boasts an expansive pumpkin patch and a shop groaning with freshly baked pies, Mennonite summer sausage and maple syrup. Newly open on weekends in Caledon, Beth-Neil Farms offers nature walks, Instaworthy hay bale structures and pumpkin picking – watch for adorable Minion-painted versions, too. Cricket Creek Farm in Hockley Valley offers organic pumpkins and hardwood trails through their 100 acres, plus a chance to visit with resident chickens, cows and horses. Kids will love Sweet Peas Farm in Amaranth, which offers wagon rides, a straw jump, a farm animal petting zoo, a bouncy castle and (gulp) monster truck rides. Mulmur’s Maple Grove Farm & Market is home to a corn maze and pumpkin patch, plus you can zip through your weekly grocery shop at their market, which is stocked with meats, cheese, produce, sauces and prepared meals.

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Interested in something mentioned here? Find links to social media pages & websites at Food+Drink on inthehills.ca.

A D V E R T I S I N G F E AT U R E

BEST NEW BITES

Curries and Trini doubles Jody and Salisha Farida Dindial of Fari Trini Tings are making waves at the Orangeville Farmers’ Market with their Trinidadian doubles featuring a tantalizing chickpea filling wrapped in a soft, fried bread called bara. Don’t miss their aloo pies, fried bread stuffed with seasoned potato, and served with tamarind or hot pepper sauce. Contact them for pre-orders and catering options, too.

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PATIO AND INDOOR DINING At the new Daal Roti Express on First Street in Orangeville, owners Parin Choksi and Nishith Shah offer multi-dish combos to curb multiple cravings at once. If you go for the crisp and savoury samosas with two curries, may we suggest the creamy cheese paneer drenched in flavourful palak (spinach) and the smoky chicken tandoori.

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business@caledon.ca

Dufferin community paramedics Josselyn Hudasek, Krystle Neumann and Cara Burleigh.

SAFE at HOME ROSEMARY HASNER

Instead of rushing them to hospital, community paramedics are helping patients stay in their own home.

BY GAIL GRANT

T

hinking back, Joan McDonald was aware the living arrangement she shared with her husband, David, occasionally put the couple in a vulnerable position.

Both in their 70s, they loved their relatively isolated rural property in Mono, but for a few months during the winter of 2020, the ice buildup in the courtyard outside their door made them virtual prisoners.

Joan was in line for hip replacement surgery and used a cane to get around, while David’s medical conditions meant he was somewhat unsteady on his feet. Friends and family were keeping an eye on them, and they were grateful for home grocery delivery.

One blustery morning in February, Joan, a registered nurse and elder-care consultant, phoned David’s doctor with a question about a new symptom. The doctor needed

bloodwork to make an effective diagnosis and offered to fax the requisition to the lab in Orangeville.

But with neither Joan nor David able to navigate the ice field surround­ing them, they couldn’t get to their car. Then Joan remembered a chance conversation with a friend about a community paramedicine program offered by the Dufferin County Paramedic Service. She found a phone number online, made the call and, later that day, a sympathetic and knowledgeable paramedic was on their doorstep.

The paramedic took David’s vitals, drew blood and, after consulting by phone with David’s doctor, administered an electrocardiogram. He faxed the ECG results to the doctor and dropped the blood samples at the lab in Orangeville for analysis. Early the next day, with up-to-the-minute information in hand, the doctor was able to advise the couple, C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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by phone, on the next steps of David’s treatments. Since then, community paramedics have continued to provide David with a helping hand.

For Joan and David, Dufferin’s community paramedicine program is a welcome innovation. The program is a model of community-based care in which paramedics use their training and expertise in non-emergencies, such as that experienced by the McDonalds. There are no flashing lights or blaring sirens as the county’s specially trained paramedics go about their daily business, a departure from their common image as first responders only.

“The goal is to keep Dufferin residents healthy in the comfort of their own home,” says Gary Staples, deputy chief of the Dufferin County Paramedic Service. “Patients we connect with overwhelmingly want to avoid going to hospital. We see it as our job to advocate for them.”

Staples is justifiably proud of the leadership role played by Dufferin’s paramedic service in getting the community paramedicine model off the ground. In 2014, the Ontario Ministry of Health earmarked $6 million a year to support 30 community paramedicine demonstration projects across the province. Though Dufferin didn’t make the province’s list of pilot projects, Tom Reid, the county’s chief of paramedic services, immediately understood the benefits of filling in care gaps to enable people to stay at home rather than go into hospital.

Reid and his team also recognized that Dufferin’s service was perfectly positioned to introduce the community paramedicine model. The service operates as a partnership between the county and Headwaters Health Care Centre, a somewhat unusual collaboration in Ontario where most emergency medical services report exclusively to the municipality. The service’s existing synergy with the hospital meant many of the processes vital to community paramedicine were already in place.

“Our partnerships are based on mutual respect and shared views regarding the roles we play in the community. And we co-ordinate our equipment and medical practices in order to increase our efficiency. For example, supplies and equipment in our ambulances and in the hospital are the same, making for ease of transition when paramedics arrive with a patient,” says Staples.

So under Reid’s direction, the spark was lit, and Dufferin helped pioneer the program that has been so successful it is now being rolled out across the province.

Still, in the absence of official provincial funding, it was challenging at first to get the local program up and running. The Central West Local Health Integration Network, the LHIN responsible for managing and co-ordinating health care in Dufferin, initially provided funding for three months, then year by year.

As the program developed and its value became more evident, the Ministry of Long-Term Care committed last March to providing three years’ funding to existing community paramedicine programs. The more stable funding ensured Dufferin would continue for at least the next three years with three community paramedics available seven days a week.

“That’s a great step forward for us and will directly benefit the clients we serve,” says Staples.

Community paramedic programs work in collaboration with other health care professionals and agencies, connecting patients with relevant services, and offering support for high-risk and vulnerable individuals.

Services are provided throughout Dufferin, and in Caledon through Peel Region’s community paramedic program, as well as in Erin through GuelphWellington Community Paramedicine, though the services offered may vary.

The programs work hand in hand with Community Paramedicine Remote Patient Monitoring, or CPRPM. This Ontario-wide monitoring program uses remote technology to help people with chronic conditions effectively manage their own care in the comfort of their home. These patients have typically been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes or other life-threatening or chronic illnesses.

Depending on the condition, paramedics set up self-management devices in the home and train the patient how to use them. Devices may include a

weigh scale, blood pressure monitor, pulse oximeter or a glucometer – along with a pod connecting the device to community paramedics, who monitor the biometric data flowing from the patient’s home.

If the data exceed set thresholds, an alert is generated and paramedics will contact the patient to review their current health status, care plans and updates. Through a partnership with Future Health Services, a not-forprofit agency that provides telehome monitoring services to chronically ill residents of southern Ontario, qualified patients can enroll in the program at no cost. In Dufferin about 50 patients are currently monitored at home.

Enabling people to stay in their own home is not only a benefit to the patient, it generates enormous savings to the health care system. In 2018, the Sustainable Execution Research Collaborative published the results of a six-month study of the effectiveness of the CPRPM program in up to 14 Ontario municipalities. Analyzing the cost of monitoring patients at home compared with in the hospital, the study found that CPRPM patients’ 911 calls dropped by 26 per cent, as did their emergency department visits, and their hospital admissions declined by 32 per cent. These reductions amounted to a staggering 542 per cent return on the province’s investment in CPRPM. “Even though our services aren’t needed on a day-to-day basis, our patients know we’re available if needed,” says Cara Burleigh, a paramedic with Dufferin for the past 23 years. Burleigh has participated enthusias­ tically in the evolution of her profession. In addition to responding to 911 emergency calls, she also visits patients through referrals and requests from primary care physicians, performing initial wellness checks and assessing current needs.

“Sometimes we schedule weekly wellness checks to keep an eye on vitals, or recommend personal service worker support, or perhaps occupational therapy,” she says.

“We help with flu vaccinations for elderly people who are concerned about leaving home through the pandemic. We fill in the gaps and provide another set of eyes, while trying to do everything we can to assist Dufferin residents.”

The most consistent feedback Burleigh and her team receive — Garry Staples is that both patients and their fami­lies take comfort in knowing someone is looking out for them.

It takes two years at a community college to qualify as a primary care paramedic. A further one-year course is available for those interested in becoming an advanced care paramedic – and community paramedics undergo still more training.

“The most important thing about our community care programs is how quickly we are able to evolve and go with what’s currently needed in the community,” says Staples.

Paramedic help in creating autonomy for palliative care patients is an obvious example. In their role as first responders, paramedics are able to quickly support those nearing end of life by delivering pain medications for agitation, breathing difficulties and anxiety while nursing staff or a palliative care physician are making arrangements to get to the patient’s home.

Family physicians, too, are becoming aware of the expanded services now offered by paramedics. Burleigh, for example, was contacted by a local doctor concerned about a patient who was unable to come to his office and adamant she didn’t want to go to the hospital. The woman had a complicated health history, including congestive heart failure.

At the patient’s home, Burleigh conducted a thorough assessment, patching in by phone with the doctor, who prescribed oxygen. Because

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Cara Burleigh prepares for a regular check-up with one of the in-home patients she monitors.

AUTUMN

ONLINE

ROSEMARY HASNER

GET OUT THERE Consider paddling a kayak, fly fishing or hitting the trails for a Nordic-pole walk with In The Hills columnist Nicola Ross.

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PRESERVING THE HARVEST

AUTUMN CRITTER PRIMER Our resident naturalist Don Scallen on the cast of fall characters to watch for outdoors, including black-throated blue warblers, singing tree crickets and nocturnal frogs.

FOLLOW US inthehill s

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inthehill smag

DON SC ALLEN . TANYA K HROMOVA . ROSEMARY HA SNER

From homegrown chili sauce to the best red pepper jelly, discover the recipes and personal stories behind the region’s best preserves.

paramedic vans are equipped with oxygen, Burleigh was able to administer the treatment. The patient’s vitals improved rapidly, and the doctor ordered continuing home oxygen for her.

Bloodwork was done, medications were altered, and by the time Burleigh was ready to leave the home, the oxygen company was on the doorstep with the required equipment for continuing home care. A year later the woman is still living at home and doing very well with weekly visits from the paramedic team.

In response to the current Covid pandemic, Dufferin’s community paramedics have also been working with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, Dufferin Area Family Health Team, Home and Community Care Support Services and Headwaters Health Care Centre to support patients who require in-home vaccinations. So far, about 175 patients have taken advantage of the service.

According to Staples, the vaccination initiative presented its own set of challenges. “It took some time to get approval for the Moderna vaccine to be moved in a single dose. Once this was accomplished we were able to start the home-bound vaccinations.

“The Moderna vaccine came in an 11-dose vial, so we were required to draw up all 11 doses at one time, and then they had to be administered within six hours. We are also required to wait with the patient for 15 minutes after the vaccine has been administered. The Dufferin geography makes it challenging to get around to all the houses and administer the vaccine within the required time frame,” he says.

Since then the home vaccination process has been somewhat more streamlined, but Staples notes it has taken “some creative scheduling and support from our community partners to get this done.”

In 2020, Dufferin County paramedics responded to more than 9,500 emergency calls. But whether as first responders dealing with emergency calls or as community paramedics offering a compassionate helping hand, they are integral to the health of the community, providing wraparound services for the most vulnerable. It’s a long way from the days when they were known simply as “ambulance drivers.”

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Stories in the Stones

BY KEN WEBER

In the cemeteries across these hills, there are gravestones with remarkable stories to tell.

Here are some of them.

not just any hallowed ground Hugh Matson (1792–1863) Anglican Burying Ground (within Laurel Cemetery), Bolton The pallbearers at Hugh Matson’s funeral in late March 1863 faced a mighty task. The wake was in Palgrave; the grave was 10 kilometres south in Bolton, and the burden would be on their shoulders the entire way because neither horse nor oxen could pull a load down the narrow, muddy trail that one day would be Highway 50. On the way, they would pass two cemeteries. Both were Methodist though, and eternity for Hugh had to be met in an Anglican burying ground.

Heavy rain not only made the journey difficult for the bearers, it also leached the dye from the under­ taker’s funeral capes, turning their clothes purple.

And they had to bail out Hugh’s grave! It was full of water. For these men it was a long and exhausting day, but they would have had comfort in knowing their friend was now in the hallowed ground of his choice. He would have done the same for them.

Bolton’s Anglican Burying Ground was closed in 1925 and like many pioneer cemeteries went into

PHOTOGR APHY BY PE TE PATERSON

decline. It was rehabilitated in 1972. Typically in this process, the bodies are left undisturbed and whatever stones that can be located are remounted in cairn walls. Hugh Matson’s original stone was not included in the new cairn. Along with several Matson children who died in the late 19th century, Hugh was reinterred in adjacent Laurel Cemetery c.1934, where he (with his spouse) is memorialized on a modern granite stone.

a story without a stone Mary Wilkins (1840−1878) Wellington County House of Industry and Refuge Mary Wilkins was taken into the House of Industry and Refuge against her will on December 26, 1878.

“The Poorhouse,” as it was commonly known, was not a prison, but it had strict rules and on a bitterly cold night Mary escaped. She’d been there only two days. Her getaway was successful, but the following April her frozen body was found on a nearby farm.

Mary’s remains were stored in an empty shed to await an inquest, but they mysteriously disappeared and local doctors were suspected of body snatching.

Acquiring a skeleton for the office by first acquiring a body was not unheard of in the Victorian era, and because most of the stolen bodies were those of indigents or with dubious histories, investigations into body snatching were not a priority. Mary, regrettably, was an ideal candidate for she had been

The cairn wall at Bolton’s Anglican Burying Ground.

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officially determined to be of “loose character” and was suspected of having venereal disease. At the inquest in Fergus, the jury, along with the local press, came to unflattering conclusions about Mary and no further effort was made. Her body was never found and no one was ever charged with stealing it.

not to be forgotten – ever John Kidd (1798−1895) Kidd Family Vault, Mono Mills Reaching age 97 was unusual in the 19th century and that achievement alone would have attracted attention to John Kidd, but this successful innkeeper wasn’t leaving his memory to chance. Besides arranging for a lofty monument (at about 7 metres it is one of the tallest private stones in Ontario), Kidd had a grand vault for himself dug into a hill. Lest that escape notice, he commissioned a glass-lidded coffin that he displayed in his inn for years prior to his death – an event he managed to highlight by marrying 16-year-old Gertie Robins when he had, as it turned out, just six months left.

Gertie attained fame of her own by deserting the marriage, winning a $5,000 lawsuit from Kidd’s estate, and then leaving for parts unknown with a new husband. She was soon forgotten. Kidd’s memory is preserved in stone.

one stone, two sides, two stories William Roadhouse Sr. (1774−1857) & Elizabeth (Crissey) Roadhouse (1774−1864) Mt. Pleasant Pioneer Cemetery, Caledon In 1830, William Roadhouse Sr. set aside a piece of his pioneer farm for a burial ground. In 1842, he deeded the site to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and when he died in 1857, his marker was rightly given a place of prominence. In the 1970s, with the cemetery long in decline, William’s stone was taken away for repairs and forgotten. Its discovery in 1998 – under straw in an unused barn in King Township – together with William’s stature as one of the first settlers in Albion Township led to a rehabilitation of the cemetery and construction of a cairn wall with his stone once again in a position of prominence.

The memorial details of his wife, Elizabeth Crissey, were engraved on the other side of the stone when she was buried beside her husband in 1864, thus posing a problem for the construction of the cairn wall. Typically, retrieved gravestones are set in concrete in the wall. For this unique husband and wife stone, the contractor (male)

decided that William, as the allegedly more significant deceased, would face outward, which meant burying Elizabeth’s memorial in the concrete. The heritage officer (female) overseeing the project learned of this just in time, so that today Elizabeth’s memorial can be seen in a special inset on the obverse of the cairn wall. William and Elizabeth thus remain together, equally memorialized for all to see.

“wilfully shot while sitting at his own fireside” Isaac Easbury (1807−1858) Old St. John’s Cemetery, Mono The grave and the stone belong to Isaac Easbury.

The story he shares with John Irwin. The inscription says, “I.E was wilfully shot while sitting at his own fireside by ...” and everyone in Mono Township just knew the “by ...” referred to Irwin.

He had been aggressively courting Isaac’s mother, Lydia, a much older woman (with property), and Isaac was strongly opposed to the match.

The constabulary agreed with prevailing opinion and laid a murder charge against Irwin, but it was dismissed at trial for lack of evidence.

Still, events over the next two years did little to restore his reputation. He married Lydia almost immediately after the acquittal, and within a few months, title to her property passed into his hands. A few more months passed and Lydia died in circumstances mysterious enough for her stomach contents to be sent to Toronto to be

analyzed for poison. Irwin was again suspected, but results were negative and he was not charged.

Lydia was buried beside Isaac on August 26, 1861. Irwin did not attend the ceremony.

hollywood in horning’s mills Erin Fleming (1941–2003) Horning’s Mills Cemetery To movie buffs, “Hello ... I must be going” is a famous line from a famous 1930 Groucho Marx movie, Animal Crackers. Erin Fleming became known because of her connection to Groucho.

Marilyn “Erin” Fleming was born in New Liskeard and left for Hollywood to become a star. Her acting career, despite a few notable roles (one in a Woody Allen movie) was modest, but she achieved status in Hollywood through her involvement with Groucho. He was nearly 80 when Erin, some 50 years younger, became his companion and agent.

Although she is credited with briefly reviving Groucho’s career, Erin was headline fodder for the tabloids, especially after he died in 1977 and she was accused of abuse and fraud. The case made her famous, but her career was irreparably harmed. She eventually became homeless and died by her own hand in Los Angeles.

The Fleming family name on stones in the cemetery at Horning’s Mills suggests why Erin is memorial­ized here. Groucho’s pet phrase on her stone suggests that the family, like many who knew her, accepts that her connection with Marx was caring and genuine.

C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

The John Kidd family monument and the gravestones of William and Elizabeth (Crissey) Roadhouse, Isaac Easbury and Erin Fleming.

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heroism cloaked in irony Asa Downey (1877−1915) Laurel Cemetery, Bolton Getting a team of horses and loaded wagon down Bolton’s steep north hill was always a risky business, so Asa Downey, a 38-year-old widower with his young son aboard, was concentrating on the task as he edged his team down to McFall’s mill – until there was a noise behind him no farmer ever wanted to hear. A runaway team was galloping down the hill, pulling a wagon with children aboard. Instinctively, Asa jumped off his own wagon to prevent a sure disaster but tripped and fell under the runaways. Seconds later the frenzied horses reached the bottom of the hill and because the mill was a familiar destination they simply stopped there as they had many times before. The wagon was intact and the passengers, although completely terrified, were unharmed. Asa lay up on the hill. His injuries had been fatal.

did spelling count?

George Godbolt (1783−1855) Godbolt Family Cemetery, Caledon If this stone could talk, “deid” might be the first story to be explained. English spelling was pretty much standardized well over a century before George Godbolt died, so this seems to be a typo set in stone. Still, George’s name is spelled correctly and that was not always a certainty in his time. In a graveyard not far from this one, 12 members of one family (neighbours of George) are commem­orated in three different spellings: Wolfe, Woulfe and Wolf.

George Godbolt is buried in a family cemetery along with his wife, Rachel Bolton (1787−1868), and four

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extended family members on land he acquired and farmed c.1840. There are more than a few small, intimate cemeteries like this one in the hills, some established before church-based burying grounds were available, others because a family chose to do so.

a final loving act Christian (McLeven) Cameron (1794−1823) St. Andrew’s Stone Church, Caledon In March 1821, Donald and Christian Cameron spent their first night in Caledon in a snowbank. They wrapped themselves in sailcloth with their two-year-old cuddled between them. They slept that way each night for two weeks until they could build a crude, doorless cabin.

Then Donald left for Lake Erie to retrieve their one cow.

Christian was newly pregnant.

Over the next two years, the cabin acquired a door, the Camerons planted potatoes, bought two young steers to develop as oxen, and Christian gave birth to a daughter.

The potatoes grew, one of the steers died, a newly purchased calf ran away and Christian became ill. In August 1823, utterly worn out by isolation, hard work and the challenges of surviving in the wilderness, Christian died giving birth to her third (stillborn) child. Donald buried them beside the cabin. He had little option.

As pioneers would do, Donald married again just months later. With his new wife, Elizabeth, and his two daughters he moved to Vaughan Township and raised a second family.

In 1855, sensing his end was near, Donald came back to Caledon and dug up Christian’s remains and reburied them under a new memorial stone at St. Andrew’s Stone Church (built in 1853), north of where the cabin once stood.

Donald is buried with Elizabeth in Vaughan, but in a final act of respect and affection he made sure that Christian, whose time in Caledon was so difficult and so brief, would not be forgotten. The stone bears her maiden name.

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The gravestones of Asa Downey, George Godbolt and Christian (McLeven) Cameron.

she was able to save others ...

Euphenia Rowan (1788−1846) Melville White Church Cemetery, Belfountain To the early settlers in the Rockside and Greenlaw area and on into Belfountain and Erin, Euphenia Rowan was a local angel. She was a certified midwife (qualifications earned in Glasgow, Scotland) and her considerable skills, together with a reputation for common sense and a willingness to serve no matter what the situation, meant she was summoned to deal with illnesses far beyond matters of childbirth.

Although Euphenia’s lifetime predated the germ theory discov­ eries of Pasteur, Lister and others, she would have been well aware of the risks of contagion, yet according to testimonials recorded in the Perkins Bull histories, she did not hesitate to offer treatment when others feared to go near. In 1846, during one of the recurring waves of cholera that spread into these hills from communities on the Lake Ontario shoreline, Euphenia tested the limits once too often and was overcome by the very disease she was treating.

the disappearing grave Father Francis McSpiritt (1830−1895) St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Wildfield Shortly before his death in 1895, Father Frances McSpiritt, the ailing parish priest of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, was said to have predicted that soil from his gravesite would be used to cure disease. It was not a claim to be ignored for he was widely known as the “Miracle Priest.” Throughout his priesthood, Father McSpiritt had earned a reputation for miraculous healing. Whether his ministrations were authentic was never proven or even investigated by church or civilian authorities, but the number of attestations from individuals and families supporting their experiences had made this gentle, unassuming priest a legend across Ontario and bordering U.S. states.

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The gravestones of Euphenia Rowan and Father Francis McSpiritt.

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From the day of his funeral, soil on his grave at St. Patrick’s began to disappear in handfuls scooped up by believers. The practice carried on for decades, leading the parish to diminish the visibility of his grave, replacing an elaborate shrine installed by a devoted follower with a metal plaque on the grave at ground level. (In 2009, an upright granite monument was installed by the Region of Peel.)

stops along the way John Walker (1780−1856) Greenwood Cemetery, Orangeville

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When John Walker died in Guelph Township, he was buried on his farm, not unusual at the time especially if the religiously appropriate cemetery, or any cemetery, was too far away.

(John was a Wesleyan Methodist.) Sometime after 1867 when Providence Cemetery was opened in Garafraxa Township, his body was disinterred and moved there. Providence was a Primitive Methodist burying ground, but it took in a surprising number of burials from other religions. John’s wife, Elizabeth Hextall, was buried beside him in 1881, and then near the end of the century, both were disinterred and reburied in Orangeville at Greenwood Cemetery, a burying ground that hosts a remarkable number of the reinterred like John and Elizabeth.

wrapped in the tree that fell on him David Williams (1794−1823) Boston Mills Cemetery, Caledon On a spring morning in 1823, as David Williams was clearing the land that was to be his farm, he was crushed by a tree he was cutting down – a tree that then became his coffin. Limited resources in newly surveyed Chinguacousy Township meant

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The gravestones of John Walker and David Williams.

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pioneers had to make do, so David’s body was wrapped in the bark of that tree and he was buried where he fell. Three decades later, in the 1850s, citizens of developing Boston Mills established a community cemetery where David had been interred.

This cemetery is one of the oldest in the hills and still accepts interments. In the cemetery is a former one-room school, a Union School (S.S. #8 Chinguacousy and S.S. #17 Caledon) built in 1888 that today serves as a mortuary.

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Isabella Synott (1830−1900) Potter’s field in Greenwood Cemetery, Orangeville Isabella Synott died in the Dufferin County Jail. She was destitute, ill and homeless, but because the county had no refuge for the indigent, there was no other place available to her. However, in an ironic twist of things, once she was dead, there was a place. Greenwood Cemetery, established in 1876 (the second oldest public cemetery in Ontario), had allocated a potter’s field on its grounds, a special section where “the indigent, the unknown, the unwanted and unclaimed” could be buried.

Most cemeteries in days past did not use the traditional term “potter’s field,” but they usually accepted the bodies of people who died with no one available (or willing) to see to their burial – and still do.

Today, what was once a matter of charity on the part of a municipality as in Isabella’s case, or a local church depending on the deceased’s religious affiliation, is now carefully regulated by legislation.

At Isabella’s death in 1900, the Orangeville Sun noted she had relatives in Mulmur Township “in good circumstances,” a bit of editorial scolding which implied a pauper’s grave for her may not have been necessary. Still, though Isabella may have been unwanted and unclaimed, and unlikely to be memorialized with a stone, perhaps even buried in a shroud rather than a coffin, she would surely have known that at Greenwood she’d be laid to rest with dignity. Interment there, even in the potter’s field, was carried out with proper ceremony by an undertaker and with clergy attending.

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www.hormonetesting.ca • contact • kelly@avitaintegrativehealth.ca Gravestones in potter’s field in Greenwood Cemetery.

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Gearing down When it’s time to put on the brakes — for good.

BY GAIL GRANT

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ith the isolation of Covid, we hope, almost behind us, and the promise of renewed activities ahead, let’s talk about driving. It’s a necessary activity for many of us in Headwaters, but as we age, diminishing confidence in our “motor skills” often makes us nervous about getting behind the wheel, especially if we’ve grown out of practice during the pandemic.

It’s true seniors may not be the only ones with driving-related worries. According to an informal survey by Terry O’Reilly, Mulmurbased author, podcaster and well-loved host of CBC Radio’s Under the Influence, the book most often stolen from Canadian libraries is neither a classic nor hockey-related, but The Driver’s Handbook. Go figure.

Nevertheless, as seniors we begin to worry our slower reflexes won’t allow us to react quickly enough in an emergency.

Then we notice changes in our vision. At night the intensity of both car and truck headlights is exaggerated, and halos begin to appear around streetlights and oncoming headlights.

These distractions are unnerving and often lead to a decision to confine night driving to local, familiar routes, or to eliminate it entirely.

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Donna Holmes

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he picturesque little church at a rural Mono intersection has been a big part of Donna Holmes’ life for as long as she can remember.

However, her formal involvement with the six-member Relessey Cemetery Board, which manages the graveyard next to the church, began in 1989 when she became its hard-working secretary-treasurer.

A fifth-generation descendent of Irish-Protestant homesteaders who arrived in the area in 1830, Donna has been married to Howard for 57 years, is the mother of two children and grandmother of four.

She is unable to picture her life without the presence of the church on the corner. “I was married here, my kids were married here, and my parents are buried here. It’s where real life happens,” she says.

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Originally Methodist, the first service was held at the church on September 4, 1870. It was called Ebenezer Church at that time, but the name was changed after the local postmaster named the com­ munity for his old home in County Tyrone, Ireland.

Unfortunately the structure, with its distinctive crenellated tower, clear-glass Gothic windows, and painted and stencilled wooden ceiling, was destroyed by a freak windstorm in 1909. But the community rallied to rebuild, with fundraising picnics, socials and fowl suppers, fostering ties of kinship, community, and often romance.

Time-stained headstones in the cemetery next to the church date back to 1867. However, official burial records were lost in a house fire in 1920.

Likewise, hearing loss reduces our ability to distinguish among general traffic sounds, making it hard to determine what direction high-pitched sounds such as sirens are coming from.

As for those pesky traffic circles – am I navigating them correctly?

Each limiting factor brings us closer to the decision to put on the brakes – for good.

Here in Ontario we have a licence renewal process for all drivers 80 and older. Though the program aims to keep us driving for as long as we safely can, at 80 and every two years thereafter, seniors must take a vision test, undergo a driver record review, participate in a group education session, and complete two in-class screening assignments. In addition, a road test or submission of medical information from your doctor may be required.

And this last bit is tricky. Since July 2018, it has been mandatory for some members of the medical profession to report conditions that would make it dangerous for a person to continue getting behind the wheel. As a result, some seniors are steering clear of their medical advisers to avoid the possibility of losing their driver’s licence.

LORD DUFFERIN CENTRE And finally, there’s the expense. I have friends who just downsized from a two- to a one-car family. Though the decision wasn’t made lightly, when the dollars were totted up (lease costs, gas, repairs, maintenance, winter tires, insurance, licence plates, car washes), selling one car saved the couple a little more than $1,000 a month.

Perhaps it’s time to explore driving alternatives.

In response to an increasing need for public transportation in Caledon’s growing communities, particularly among seniors and youth, the town has recently launched two local bus lines, one in Southfields Village and one in Bolton. Caledon council has also asked the Ontario government to secure the location of a future Go Transit rail site north of Bolton to serve as a transit hub and connect town residents to the GTA. Orangeville council is also planning to expand its public transit routes. And with the help of provincial money, Grey County recently launched Monday to Friday transit service between Dundalk and Orangeville via Shelburne. In addition, community service organizations in Dufferin, Wellington and Caledon offer varying levels of personalized transportation for people who require it.

Caledon Community Services, for example, operates buses, passenger vans and cars driven by dedicated staff and volunteers. For a nominal fee a vehicle will appear at your doorstep at the allotted time, ready to transport you to a medical appointment, weekly grocery shopping or social activity. All that’s required is completion of a brief online

application and you’re good to go.

“It’s an excellent service,” said Vicki Hunter, a new resident of Caledon who, at 73, has access to a car but finds driving worrisome, especially with the increasing number of large trucks on the roads. “With the CCS service I can safely get to Bolton or Brampton for a medical appointment, or to Orangeville to check out the shops, right from my doorstep,” she said.

And if the 400 series highways have become too challenging, we can always take the scenic route. After all, one of the perks of retirement is that we alone control our timetable. We can avoid travel altogether in bad weather, or travel during off-peak hours and stop along the way for a coffee or ice cream cone.

Certainly the auto industry has been making impressive efforts to keep us safe, with innovations ranging from push-button parking to blind-spot and lane-changing alerts, as well as upgraded cruise control features.

But I’m waiting for the self-driving car, preferably one powered by solar.

Perhaps by the time they are in general use, even single ownership of automobiles will be a thing of the past, and we’ll be sharing our hands-free cars with neighbours.

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Links to the local public transit options in these hills can be found with this article at inthehills.ca

Gail Grant is a happily retired senior who lives in Palgrave.

BRENDA HOLMES

Donna Holmes at the door of the Mono pioneer church that has been part of her life for as long as she can remember. “It’s where real life happens,” she says.

Traditionally, local parishioners claimed their place in the cemetery and tended their site, but as the decades passed, families moved away and church attendance fell, the graveyard languished unkempt and overgrown with weeds.

Again the community rallied. “The Relessey Cemetery Board was created in 1950 to bring structure and continuity to the graveyard, and to oversee its maintenance and improvements,” says Donna. “The church held its last service in December of 1964, and the structure, designated of local historical and architectural significance, was purchased by the cemetery board for $2 in 1968.”

Ever-present unsung volunteers like Donna, her family and her neighbours, plus devoted silent sponsors, honour the memories of those buried there, and keep the community grounded and its history vibrant in the process.

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“Spooks Drive Man From Home” O R A N G E V I L L E S U N , A U G U S T 7, 1 9 3 0

In 1930, a series of strange physical disturbances led a family to abandon their farm in Mulmur Township. Was a spirit at work? A poltergeist? Was it real?

BY KEN WEBER

F

or eight years, Alfred and Sophia Dobson had lived comfortably on their Mulmur farm at the corner of the 4th Line and 5 Sideroad.

But then some very strange things began happening in their house.

It started with the kitchen broom.

Normally, between uses the broom stood in the hallway to the parlour.

But in the winter of 1930, the broom seemed to relocate – on its own – to various other places.

At first it was a phenomenon easy to dismiss, for in a house with several adult occupants, a broom is often moved and forgotten. Not so, though, for a lightning rod with a distinct shape.

To see it fixed on the east side of the roof one day and on the west a day later definitely gave pause. Then there was the butter dish. The Dobsons’ 22-yearold son, Oliver, watched the dish flip over on its own and then flip again after he righted it! The dish sat on a table that would often be found inexplicably lying on its side or even upside down.

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The unexplainable accelerates By early May the broom had grown bolder. Another Dobson son, 35-yearold Ross, swore he saw it dance about on the parlour floor with a coat draped on its handle – and then go up the stairs. The coat, along with shoes, boots, caps and other clothing that customarily hung inside the rear door of the farmhouse, would often be found in the yard, although the door was shut, on one occasion actually nailed shut to frustrate the mysterious force.

The family dog, once privileged to lie on the parlour floor, would no longer enter the room. Meanwhile, heavier objects were now flying around (a bolt smashed through the kitchen window) and the broom became even more aggressive, whacking the Dobsons’ little granddaughter on her back.

Time to get out The Dobsons fled in June. According to Alfred Dobson, the tipping point came when the strange power moved to the barn. “It would take the halter off a

horse and tie it around the front feet so it couldn’t move,” he told the Shelburne Free Press and Economist. “A set of team harness would go missing; we’d find it in the mow. And then the thing would loose the cattle and horses, open the doors and we would find the stock outside. Soon I couldn’t stand it.

I didn’t put in any crop and I have now been forced to leave the place.”

Word gets around Neighbours found themselves involv­ ed in the mystifying events on the Dobson farm when traffic jams formed along the 4th Line and up and down 5 Sideroad. After the Toronto Star and the Evening Telegram reported on the “spook farm,” as they called it, and the story was picked up by wire services, Mulmur Township became a go-to spot on Sunday afternoons. Most visitors were simply curious. Some were spirit seekers keen to find the source of the physical disturbances. An unfortunate number were souvenir hunters, and in short order the abandoned farmhouse lost

almost anything that could be picked up or pried off.

Investigators get involved Inevitably, the media buzz meant that expert opinion was called for, but the conclusions of the “professionals” were mixed.

After visiting the property, Frederick York, editor and publisher of The Spiritual Voice in Toronto, asserted there was “no tangible evidence that spirits had anything to do with the manifestations.” However, spiritualist investigator Ivan W. Hutchins, described by the Orangeville Sun as holding “a religious charter from the provincial government,” opined that a spiritual force was definitely at work, likely operating through a member of the Dobson family (thus implying a poltergeist). But in August, when Mr. Hutchins held an “official” seance in the farmhouse – as opposed to an “unofficial” one (see sidebar) – no manifestations occurred to indicate the presence of a spirit.

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A poltergeist?

In the paranormal canon, a poltergeist is generally held to be a force that mischievously — sometimes malevolently — generates strange noises and mysteriously moves objects. The force is often said to operate through a single individual, unaware he or she is the medium.

Among the alleged flaws in the Dobson story is that only family members ever witnessed the uncanny phenomena, but that very point has also been used to substantiate the possibility of a poltergeist.

Interest fades Failure to produce an intriguing explanation of the events at the farm meant the story soon lost its cachet with the public. As late as October, the Orangeville Banner had reported an investigation that suggested “the presence of a feminine force,” adding weight to the theory that a poltergeist was the Dobsons’ problem, but by the time the first snow fell, interest in the “spook farm of Mulmur Township” had disappeared into the files of people who studied the paranormal.

What really happened at the Dobson farm?

For sceptics there remains a compel­ ling argument to dismiss the story.

Following the Dobson tenure, the farm was occupied for 20 years by the Orr family, then for more than 60 years by the Kennedy family, with no reported incidents. Current owner Kathleen Kennedy says to her knowledge no one living at the farm since the Dobsons has ever reported a supernatural phenomenon.

Still, for those inclined to accept the possibility of “something strange,” there is the uncomfortable fact that Alfred and Sophia Dobson suddenly left a productive 160-acre farm for an 18-acre stead 10 miles away and never came back. Which emphatically provokes a “why?”

A cynic would place money at the heart of the matter. Alfred Dobson, then 72, candidly admitted to the Shelburne Free Press and Economist

that he was broke, and added that not only was he unable to rent the farm, but he’d paid $15,000 for it in 1922 and would get less than half that if indeed it would even sell.

There was still a mortgage on the property in 1930 and land title records, while difficult to interpret, indicate there was a foreclosure. We know today that the Great Depression was well launched by mid-1930s and farmers who simply walked away from their properties were already becoming a feature of the times.

The cynical view, however, ignores that whatever the family’s financial situation, Dobsons had nothing to gain by promoting their property as a “spook farm.” In fact, Alfred always insisted this was not the case. “It is not a ghost,” he told the Shelburne paper.

“We have never seen one. I have sat up many nights in the house and barn watching but never was able to discern anything that would lead me to think it was a ghost.”

Such frankness suggests it could be fair to grant Alfred Dobson the benefit of the doubt. As hard as it might be for others to believe, the presence of a force on the farm seems to have been real to him. “It’s an evil influence,” he told the press. “This thing has more power than you think.”

Caledon writer Ken Weber is the author of the internationally bestselling Five-Minute Mysteries series.

How not to hold a seance?

During August and September 1930, at least two unproductive seances led by acknowledged spiritualists were held in the Dobsons’ empty farmhouse with the family present. Several “unofficial” sittings were also held with sincere but amateur leaders at the helm. At one of these, participants were encouraged to bring objects they felt might encourage a manifestation, and a local farmhand named Eddy brought an accordion.

After an hour of traditional stimuli brought no results, he was called upon to see if music would have an effect. The instrument may have been a poor choice or perhaps it was Eddy’s limited repertoire (he could play “God Save the King” and “How Dry I Am”), but no spirit appeared.

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Sue Joy’s canine companion, Traffic, 11, masters a sun salutation during a “doga” (dog yoga) class in August among the sunflowers at Campell’s Cross Farm in Caledon. Yoga with animals is one of the many contemporary variations of the ancient practice.

pick your pose All yoga classes are not the same.

BY NICOL A ROSS

T

o some, yoga has come a long way since it was first practised about 5,000 years ago. To others, it has lost its way. As much fun as yoga with babies, with pets and on stand-up paddleboards may be, some believe classes like these aren’t in keeping with a practice meant to lead to “the union of individual consciousness with that

of the Universal Consciousness, indi­cating a perfect harmony between the mind and body...,” as described by Ishwar V. Basavaraddi, director of the government-sanctioned Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga in India.

The path people take in search of that union is a matter of individual choice, but my preference is plain old yoga.

This is what works for me. I leave a class

Types of yoga This is a guide to the main types of yoga, but keep in mind that new approaches are constantly being developed.

One of them may suit you to a T.

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Vinyasa The most athletic Hatha Physical-based, but suitable for beginners

feeling more agile and an inch taller. I may not be in perfect harmony, but I’m in a lot better state of mind than when I rushed into the classroom a few minutes late. As the proliferation of specialized yoga-with and yoga-for classes suggests, there are now so many different types of this ancient practice, and so many studios and instructors available, that it can be confusing. The trick is

Iyengar Great when recuperating from an injury Kundalini Fast-moving physical and breathing exercises

to understand that all classes are not the same. Yoga comprises many types and degrees of difficulty, taught by instructors who bring their own style.

As a result, it can take time to find the class(es) and teacher(s) that suit you.

I asked Caron Shepley, my instructor and the founder of Blue Dog Yoga and Healing, why she practises yoga.

I had expected her to say it improves flexibility or even strength, but instead, she said, “I would sum it up in one word: balance.” By “balance,” she wasn’t referring to the ability to stand on one foot doing tree pose for minutes at a time. She meant the balance among body, mind and spirit.

I get the body part of yoga. Yoga improves my flexibility and my strength; hence I can slip easily into my kayak and paddle hard for hours on end. I even understand the mind part. When I get into a 60-minute class, especially if it includes new or more taxing poses or “postures,” as the moves performed in yoga are called, I usually forget, if temporarily, the concerns that have been dogging me all day. As they say, I’m more in the moment.

But spirit? What did Caron mean by spirit?

Basavaraddi makes it clear that yoga doesn’t adhere to any religion or belief system, so it isn’t that kind of spirit. As he has explained it, the word yoga derives from the Sanskrit word yuj, which translates as “to join,” “to yoke” or “to unite.” The balance, or the joining of mind and body, is said to lead to nirvana. I can appreciate what this means, but that is not why I do yoga, and I doubt it’s the incentive for those who attend classes with their babies or their pets. Animals are known to have a calming effect on people, and the increasingly popular yoga-with-animals classes are often

Ashtanga Physically demanding, for more advanced yogis Hot (Bikram) Practised in a hot room

Yin Slow stretching for long duration Restorative Relaxing for body and mind

Find the right yoga for you Be aware that there are many types of yoga and many different instructional styles.

run by animal adoption agencies. They hope the playful cat scampering around the classroom, tackling a student’s ponytail, might find a new home.

The physical benefits of yoga are illustrated by the growing number of routines specifically designed for athletes from runners to paddlers to curlers – or for those who sit at a computer all day. Caron explains: “A good instructor will change the poses they do depending on the students they are teaching.” I discovered how specific yoga can be when I did my yoga routine after I’d been out kayaking for several hours. I found the triangle pose zeroed in on the knots I get between my paddle-weary shoulder blades.

Increasingly, yoga is being adopted by professional athletes. The NBA’s LeBron James, for example, has been practising yoga for more than a decade, and Serbian tennis phenom Novak Djokovic’s near invincibility has been linked to his use of yoga and medita­ tion. I’m not sure if Djokovic had reached nirvana as he beat Canada’s own Denis Shapovalov at the most recent Wimbledon tournament, but he was clearly more mentally tough than his young opponent.

Djokovic’s winning ways might relate to another aspect of yoga called pranayama, which involves breathing. Basavaraddi explains that pranayama “consists in developing awareness of one’s breathing followed by willful regulation of respiration as the functional or vital basis of one’s existence.”

If that sounds too yoga-like, then consider what Caron says about prana­ yama. “If athletes can learn to control their breathing, then they can use it to relax and loosen their muscles.”

People who play or watch sports will be familiar with how athletes

Jivamukti Emphasizes spirituality and connection to Earth Anusara Focusing on the mindbody-heart connection

Take advantage of the fact that most yoga studios offer a first class for free.

If you don’t enjoy a yoga class, try a different type of yoga or a different instructor or both.

Practise yoga for your own reasons, be they spirituality, exercise, strength, relaxation, etc.

If attending a class is intimidating, look online for yoga routines to perform in your own home.

often tighten up in a clutch situation.

Think about a golfer having to sink that winning putt or Shapovalov when he lost the first set at Wimbledon to Djokovic. If athletes can willfully regulate their breathing, it goes a long way to relaxing the tight muscles that can cause a three-foot, tournamentwinning putt to fall short of its target.

It’s no stretch to see how pranayama can also help in stressful situations at work and at home. How often have you been told to count to 10 to calm yourself? Now consciously align your breathing to that counting and you are on your way to the “willful regulation of respiration.”

For most people, practising yoga will never lead to nirvana. For me, being able to easily slip into my kayak and find relief for knotted muscles is more than enough incentive to put the time into finding the right type of yoga and the most suitable instructor.

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Nicola Ross is the author of the Loops & Lattes series of hiking guides.

SUP (stand-up paddleboard) Practised standing up on a paddleboard

Prenatal Safe poses or pregnant women

Yoga with animals As it sounds

(List adapted from mindbodygreen.com)

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a Time for Listening

BY BETHANY LEE

Indigenous Culture in Dufferin Dufferin County Cultural Resource Circle is an Indigenous-led, not-for-profit organization that aims to create a safe space for the restoration and revival of traditional Indigenous culture in the county. dufferincountyculturalresourcecircle.org —

Honouring Indigenous Children In honour of Indigenous children found buried at former residential schools, the DCCRC invites you to visit the Mino Kamik Medicine Wheel Garden for reflection.

When you visit, you may see chalk outlines of feet — these outlines represent children found and the many others lost in residential schools — and you are welcome to add your own. You can leave a pair of children’s shoes or moccasins in commemoration, or contribute stones painted orange as you reflect with your children at this site. Did you know that medicines in the garden may be harvested responsibly for free to use for smudging? This is a special site and worth a visit. The medicine wheel garden is located in Bravery Park behind the Alder Rec Centre in Orangeville.

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ILLUS TR ATION BY SHEL AGH ARMS TRONG

S

ometimes we describe our eyesight as “laser-focused.” Lately, I’ve been finding it’s my ears that are laser-focused.

It started during the pandemic. Perhaps it was the need to really take in as much as I could from the person on the screen, who was just 14 inches from my face, but 70 kilometres away. I needed more information to understand the context of their words than ever before. I was finding it hard to tell if someone stiffened up in response to what I was saying, or if their legs were shaking under the table because they were nervous. Were they sweaty and rushed because they’d been chasing their kids or dog, or tending to an elderly parent, just before they came on screen? Or because they were uncertain about how to get through the mountain of sometimes traumatic work ahead of them? I couldn’t tell. Many people keep their cameras off. Can we blame them?

In our controlled, pre-pandemic office environ­ ment, communications were more predictable.

Mostly everyone was calm. When they were happy and excited, it stood out, same when if someone was even slightly agitated – and all of it was in the context of work. Someone rushing to my desk meant they had important work-related news and we had a problem to solve. How someone walked into a room revealed a lot. I knew what was up.

Like us, kids have experienced a disconnect with the move to online schooling. How do they know if they’re doing a good job? When is the teacher leaning in on a certain subject, forcing their marker across the whiteboard with skippy squeaks of excitement? There haven’t been the small, individual nods of approval during the past year and a half, or conversely the ability for a teacher to spot red-faced anxiety and hold someone after class for a chat. Students’ screens were mostly nulled, teachers exasperated, and kids

lost in the in-between internet ether.

It’s hard to grasp the full meaning of what is being “said” when we aren’t face to face. When I see the ALL CAPS MESSAGES sent to my son, Adrian, from his teacher, they “sound” like shouting – not really acceptable communication no matter how frustrating the situation.

“That frustration is about the entire system, the entire class being disengaged behind their screens,” explains the teacher when I ask him what the text exchanges are all about. “I’m at my wits’ end,” he admits. I’m sure Adrian has missed much of the opportunity to learn from his smart and capable teachers by literally not having the full picture.

During the pandemic he’s gravitated to in-person learning when he’s been able, albeit from the far back corner. It’s who he is. A listener and an observer.

On the other hand, juxtaposed with the lack of holistic information and the ability to read the room,

there is a new dimension to knowing our colleagues or schoolmates or leaders. In the past, for the most part, our outside world didn’t intrude on our 9-to-5 lives. No home chaos around us; it was mostly packed away for the day. Now, from time to time, babies squawk, dogs woof and we see messy counters and beds – glimpses of real life undermining carefully cultivated professional veneers.

Covid has forced us to work in new ways, and absorb these absurd family pressures. But coincident with the pandemic, we have also been confronting the horrors of racism, genocide and global inequities.

Listening more intently can feel very confusing and overwhelming, but it has helped me try to unravel the personal histories that might be underlying the words of the people I’m listening to – the pains, joys or complicated, generational traumas.

Who says what and how they say it carries more significance than before.

Sometimes, through the pandemic, we have heard voices not heard clearly in the past – Indigenous and Black people, women, nurses, vulnerable workers, scientists. So I’m listening to who is speaking in a meeting, but I’m also listening to those who are silent, and wondering if some larger social trauma has affected their confidence to speak up.

I’m listening hard and trying to watch my own words at the same time. I’m watching faces closely when I can on my screen, asking a followup question, reaching out by text or phone call after a meeting to make sure I understood and what pieces I might have missed. I listen for tone. I close my eyes and picture each person listed on the screen – their faces, imagining how they might react. If the screen is silent when I’m leading a team meeting, I realize I might have misstepped. “What did I say? Help me understand,” I ask my trusted friends and colleagues.

“We are all just tired of listening, to be honest,” my one teammate says. I agree. It’s a lot, but we all have to keep trying.

As I write this, we are preparing for the school year again, and I hope Adrian will be back in the classroom – science and society willing. We will all keep trying new ways of listening, students that we all are. “Be patient and keep trying. Keep listening in all its forms,” I say to him.

Bethany Lee is a communications manager and freelance writer who lives in Mono.

www.leahwilkins.com Leah Wilkins | Sales Representative C:519.384.4879 | www.leahwilkins.com

Orange Shirt Day is September 30 Orange Shirt Day, coinciding with the new National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, is an opportunity to create meaningful discussion about the effects of residential schools. It’s a time for listening and supporting the Indigenous community. Watch for recognitions here and across Canada. www.orangeshirtday.org

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Our Diverse Communities Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committees are doing good work in the hills. We have a long way to go — and reading up, following and supporting this work is important for our families and communities to be vibrant and welcoming to all. Here are a few places this work is being done:

Emily Jean Photography

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Shelburne’s Anti-Black Racism, Racism and Discrimination Task Force has set out a blueprint to address racism and discrimination in the community; read the recommendations and meeting updates online. shelburne.ca Orangeville is developing a work plan through their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. They act as an advisory body to town council on matters related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and work to break down barriers for all. orangeville.ca Dufferin County’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Community Advisory Committee has a similar mandate to Orangeville’s — to advise county council, make recommendations, and provide a monitoring and measuring role to help ensure the county applies a diversity, equity and inclusion lens to its policies, services and programs. dufferincounty.ca Peel Region’s Diversity, Equity and Anti Racism (DEAR) Committee is working to remove systemic barriers and address racism in one of the most diverse regions in Canada. The work of this committee is focused on adopting an intentional approach to equity in programming and service delivery. peelregion.ca/diversity

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taking the long view A contemporary family home melds into a Mulmur hillside and makes the case for the transportive joys of miles-long vistas and oversized windows.

BY TRALEE PEARCE

T

he couple who owns this sleek contemporary home feel lucky to roam its generous, wellappointed spaces. But it’s where and how the all-black structure sits on the landscape that has wowed the husband-and-wife duo since they first encountered it. Set into the crest of a sloping Mulmur hillside, the inky structure melds with its environment and offers a front-row seat to the changing seasons. “The outside is the focal point,” says the wife in an

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PHOTOGR APHY BY BEN RAHN

interview. “I never tire of the views; the sunsets and sunrises are different every day.”

And while long walks with their two chocolate Labs on just under 90 acres of land is no doubt a top-tier way to experience those vistas, being inside barely breaks their line of sight.

One of the home’s most striking design elements is its giant picture windows on all sides of the roughly 4,000-square-foot main floor. In the kitchen and family room area,

broad glass panels act as portals to grasses and perennials so close as to appear like the stars of gigantic terrariums. From the living area and screened-in porch, the windows frame an eastern landscape stretching to Alliston. Still, somehow, “Even when people are outside, you feel a sense of privacy inside which is an interesting achievement,” she says.

In one sense, the breathtaking location was what these two successful Toronto professionals had been

looking for – a rural property within a short drive of their home in Toronto.

The pair owns a vacation property outside Canada, but as their kids – a blended trio of a teenaged son and two twentysomething daughters – get older and face more demands on their time, bringing everyone together closer to home became a priority. (And this was before a pandemic grounded flights and cancelled travel plans.) “We just wanted a place where we could all C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 10 0

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main This all-black contemporary home is built into a hillside, affording the owners sweeping views eastward and protection from Mulmur’s famously harsh winter winds. top The home’s simple covered entryway frames a view of the gardens to the west of the building. above Inside the front door, visitors are greeted by the first of many Douglas fir panels lining the walls. A leather Molteni&C bench hints at the spare Italian furnishings inside.

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top left In the family room, the large window appears to box in the plantings outside.

The family room sofa and the chairs are via Toronto’s Italinteriors. top right A dusky purple abstract by New Yorkbased Canadian painter Bobbie Oliver pulls the dining area together.

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bottom left The horizontal lines of the Douglas fir panelling were expertly matched to run seamlessly from the kitchen to the hallways and beyond by Creemore’s J.W. Gordon Custom Builders. bottom right In the screened-in porch the seating and ceramic tables facing the wall of windows are by Minotti.

AT H O M E C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 9 8

gather – we didn’t have a particular location in mind,” she recalls.

As they began the hunt, the idea was they would shop for land and build their dream home from the ground up. The plan was to build something contemporary, but nothing that would jar with the landscape. In autumn 2019, when they laid eyes on the place, their plans to build from scratch seemed suddenly redundant.

Touring the five-bedroom home on

a postcard-perfect October day sealed the deal. “The real estate agent told us we would never see it looking nicer,” the owner says. “She was right. We drove down this half-kilometre drive and the sky was cobalt blue, the fields were golden, the leaves had just started to turn, and we then saw that black zinc roof. It was stunning.”

At first glance, the building appears to be a bungalow, but there is an expansive lower floor beneath the main which includes a den area with

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UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP

its own kitchen.

Work began for the previous owner almost 15 years ago and involved various architects including Steve Abrams of IBI Group Architects and Donald McKay, both of Toronto.

John Gordon of Creemore-based J.W. Gordon Custom Builders, who dubbed the home the Black House, completed the interior construction in 2015. John is responsible for ordering, cutting and installing the warm B.C. Douglas fir panelling throughout the home. It was

crafted to create seamless horizontal lines between rooms. “It makes the house. What he did was next-level,” the owner says, adding that John is now working on a guest house to match the mother ship.

The owner says one of her favourite ways to view the house is from below.

“Looking back up, it looks like it could be a line of trees. It’s doesn’t interrupt or impose on its surroundings.”

Nestled into the hill and protected by C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

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AT H O M E C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 101

deft landscaping, the house is built to withstand the whistling Mulmur winds. John, who has built many impressive homes in the area, agrees the siting of the house is phenomenal.

He adds, “The whole house is dialed in with the elevation. It’s positioned to take full advantage of the panoramic views and yet offers comforting protection from the prevailing wind.”

After the sale closed in early December 2019, the couple turned to

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their friend and longtime Torontobased designer, Bill Mockler of William Mockler & Associates, to ask if he could get at least enough décor – most importantly beds! – ordered and delivered in time for the family to spend Christmas there. He succeeded.

His broader assignment: The owners wanted nothing that would overpower or visually clutter the space, i.e., no look-at-me statement pieces. They needed chic furnishings, but only those that could handle lots of people

left A love letter rendered in paint by the late Sarnia-born artist John Brown punctuates a wall of panelling near the stairs to the lower level. bottom In the living room, the notched lowbacked sectional makes way for the giant picture window and its long view.

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Let us build your tomorrow, today

and those two chocolate Labs. “We like it low-key and comfortable. Nothing should be louder than the people in the room,” the owner says. “It just works.”

Still, aficionados of contemporary Italian design who know their Molteni from their Minotti will envy the owners’ collection of modern yet inviting sofas, chairs and other pieces.

Bill says if you’re looking for high design that is anything but cold, a country known for its fabric mills is hard to beat. “They’ve been creating

and sewing fabrics for clothing and upholstery for centuries,” he says.

“The manufacturers I used have a long history of impeccable workmanship and quality. I don’t think you can go wrong.” (Well, that might not be true when it comes to shipping logistics.

Bill likes to tell the story of two chairs in the family room being mistakenly shipped from Italy to New Zealand.

“Well, at least it’s close,” Bill quipped to the bearer of that bad news before C O N T I N U E D O N N E X T PA G E

www.celticcarpet.ca We’re not just a carpet store...

Hardwood · Tile · Luxury Vinyl · Carpet · We’ve Got It All Quality Installations · Free Estimates 18 Centennial Road, Orangeville 519-942-3414 www.celticcarpet.ca I N

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top A rug from Toronto’s Elte anchors the calm principal bedroom. left The owner says the free­ standing tub in the marblelined principal bathroom was a major factor in her decision to buy the home.

AT H O M E C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 10 3

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ensuring the new ones were shipped from Europe. Pronto.)

And even the best Italian furniture occasionally takes second billing to those eastern views. After much discussion about how to place a sectional in the living room for the best flow, Bill suggested a design with a notch of back cushions missing, allowing for a pleasing pocket view out the showstopping living room window.

Elsewhere, it’s fitting that there’s plenty of wall space for art at a scale that can compete with all the headturning views. Two stand out – the dusky purple abstract by New Yorkbased Canadian painter Bobbie Oliver in the dining area and a love letter depicted on a pale canvas by the late Sarnia-born artist John Brown which faces the living room. The latter was too big for any wall in their Toronto home, so the couple stored it in the

hope of one day having the right place to hang it. Turns out they just had to buy this whole house for it. “We joke that it turned out to be a very expensive painting,” the owner says.

Jokes aside, little did Bill nor the owners – nor any of us – know that just as these finishing touches were being made in early 2020, Ontario, like much of the world, would move into lockdown. Having the space to retreat to was an enormous blessing. “It gave us all a sanctuary,” she says. “We had a gathering with extended family, including some from the United States, just before the first lockdown, thank goodness.”

And as they consider another October of perfect days, the owners can’t believe their luck in a locale that somehow mixes peace and quiet with super-friendly neighbours – and topnotch food destinations. “Maple Grove Farm is our go-to market. The 100

above The couple’s private patio area beckons through the sliding doors of their bedroom.

Mile Store in Creemore was a lifesaver during the pandemic. So many of them did a brilliant job during the lockdowns.”

The owner has rediscovered her love of horseback riding, and she also counts herself as good friends with the real estate agent who showed her the home that October day. As a glimpse of just how long-term the owner thinks they’ll be there, she admits she’s pictured the downstairs den and kitchen area as useful for, say, new parents who need their own space.

“We see the house for us – but also grandkids over the next 20 years.”

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mulmur farmhouse

Jacqui Viaene fall21_layout 21-08-27 9:30 PM Page 1

REALTOR + DESIGN CONSULTANT + HOME STAGER Your Buy and Sell Realtor and Relocation Specialist to the Blue Mountain area. List with me and receive free home staging and design advice. Call me today for a free in-home assessment.

416-919-5400 jacqui@clairwoodrealestate.com jacquiviaene.ca clairwoodrealestate.com

596224 4TH LINE, THE BLUE MOUNTAINS Welcome to “Confederation House” built in 1867, this stunning recently renovated estate home on over 60 acres is located at the top of the escarpment. Beautifully landscaped property is equipped with a large detached garage for all your toys, plus has manicured trails throughout the acreage that offers awesome hiking, mountain biking or snowshoeing right at your doorstep, plus approximately 20 acres that is used for farming. The estate home is beautifully restored throughout, the interior is stylish and functional, offers a main floor master with 3-piece ensuite plus 3 additional bedrooms upstairs for the growing family. Absolute turnkey property that still holds future possibilities, like creating an upper escarpment viewing area, or restore the existing ruins that exist from the original farm building. $2,495,000

LIFE IS GOOD IN COLLINGWOOD Bungalow style condo w/ single-car garage & 1 add’l parking space. O/c kit/dining/living leads to patio. Two airy bdrms w/ 4-pc ensuites. 2nd bdrm can be studio apt. Living Stone Resort amenities available w/ membership. $635,000

EXECUTIVE WATERFRONT Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own 117 ft of Georgian Bay waterfront in the charming town of Meaford. This spectacular architecturally designed home known as “Lakehouse”, will take your breath away. Boasting 4+1 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and 5400 sq ft of living space, this home has all the bells and whistles any discerning buyer would dream of. $4,500,000

LIGHTHOUSE POINT Enjoy all the amenities of this popular waterfront development on the shores of Georgian Bay. This 2 bdrm, 1.5 bath features 1042 sq ft of 2-storey living space. Great weekend getaway and excellent rental potential. $714,900

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MOFFAT DUNLAP

HOCKLEY VALLEY CABIN

905-841-7430 moffatdunlap.com Moffat Dunlap*, John Dunlap**, Murray Snider, Nik Bonellos, Elizabeth Campbell, Courtney Murgatroyd, Sean Wynn, Mark Campbell***, David Warren****

Reclaimed log cabin overlooking the Nottawasaga River with pebble beach.

Asking $849,000

SOLD

*Chairman, **Broker of Record, ***Sales Representative,****Broker

SOLD

REAL ESTATE LIMITED, BROKERAGE

HORSESHOE HILL LAKE, CALEDON 106 acres of property with private lake and old growth forest. Two separate houses with 3000+ ft of frontage. Enjoy year round outdoor activities.

Swimming, fishing and hiking. $4,750,000

CALEDON EQUESTRIAN COMPLEX, 2 HOUSES Caledon horse farm with state-of-the-art horse facilities. Charming Napier Simpson home + 2nd house, 12-stall main barn + 4-stall second barn. 80x180 ft indoor arena + outdoor arena with irrigated footing. 49 acres. 10 minutes to Caledon Equestrian Park. $5,300,000

THE SCOTCH ESTATE, HALTON Three residences. 185 acres of farmland.

Three possible severances. Several dwellings and farm buildings. Private access to the Scotch Block reservoir. $14,990,000

HIGHPOINT RETREAT, CALEDON Rare 100-acre property. Update current 80’s ranch bungalow or create a new residence.

Rolling hills, pond, pastures, hardwood forest. $3,899,000

FAMILY COMPOUND, 160 ACRES, CALEDON Newly designed interiors. Exceptional country estate. Main residence with 10 bedrooms, indoor pool. Underground parking. Multiple guest houses. Trout pond, tennis, miles of trails.

Superb entertainment venue. $18,000,000

BRAECROFT, HALTON Family residence surrounded by gardens, within 150 acres of inspiring vistas along the shores of the Scotch Block reservoir. Ponds, farmland, barn, outbuildings. $4,950,000

COUNTRY HOME, NEAR PALGRAVE Fully restored log home with a beautiful board and batten addition. 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom country property. 7 acres. $2,200,000

BEECH GROVE HALL, CALEDON Custom-built bungalow + 4-bay garage with loft apartment. Privately sited country home on 46 acres. High-efficiency and high-calibre build. Exclusive

SOLD

SHELDON CREEK FARM, HOCKLEY 100 acres. Across from majestic Mono Cliffs.

7-bedroom stone Century home. Pool, pond, 6-stall barn, workshop. Asking $3,490,000

THE GRANGE HOUSE, CALEDON Surrounded by inspiring gardens. 4-bedroom, 4-bath residence with an inviting main flr suite and large 5-pc ensuite. Outside entertainment area with kitchen and seating area. $2,495,000

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HILLS OF ERIN Prime 8th Line location on the edge of Erin.

Rolling hills, farmed fields, woodlands with trails and a pond. Asking $2,499,000

1600 ACRES, HAY ISLAND, GEORGIAN BAY Beautiful and rugged, this magnificent 1600-acre private island is an idyllic retreat to enjoy with family and friends. Registered airstrip, protected lagoon, 6 cottages, lodge, 10 kms of smooth stone beach and 44 kms of trails. 3-hour drive or 1-hour flight from Toronto. $14,500,000

Ronan Lunn fall21_layout 21-08-28 9:01 PM Page 1

Britton Ronan

Sales Representative o: 705.435.4336 britton@marcronan.com www.marcronan.com

Marc Ronan

Sales Representative/ Owner o: 905.936.4216 marc@marcronan.com www.marcronan.com

Sarah Lunn

Broker of Record o: 905.936.4216 sarah@sarahlunn.com www.sarahlunn.com Each Office is Independently Owned And Operated

SOLD

89-ACRE HORSE FARM – NEAR WASAGA BEACH Features 2018 stone bungalow, 3+3 bedrooms, custom finishes top to bottom. 11-stall barn and 120x60 ft arena, 30 acres of pasture, round pen, 3 outdoor rings, 45+ acres in hay, forest trails.

Currently operates as a successful boarding and lesson facility. 10 minutes to Wasaga Beach, 25 minutes to Essa Agriplex, 1 hour to Palgrave. $2,790,000

PRIVATE COUNTRY LIVING – NORTH OF ALLISTON Beautiful 1.65-acre property at the end of a cul-de-sac. Renovated in 2015 creating open living family space with walkout to deck, inside entry from garage with loft and adding a spa-like master retreat with office and luxury ensuite. Finished lower levels offer tons of options for family living.

Relax in your fenced yard complete with a chicken coop, tons of room for gardens and entertaining in nature. $1,250,000

HUMMINGBIRD HILL FARM – ADJALA This 91 acre perfectly appointed corner property bordering Caledon with the Humber River running through will check all the boxes. Fully renovated century home with pool/spa area and bbq building overlooking the rolling paddocks on this country estate. 12 paddocks, 50x140 ft indoor arena, 150x140 ft outdoor sand ring, 50x40 ft heated and insulated building currently used as country artisan store. $4,999,000

SOLD

EQUESTRIAN FACILITY – BRADFORD WEST GWILLIMBURY Private horse farm on 29.76 acres featuring beautiful post and beam home. Barn with 6 stalls, heated tack lounge with view of the arena. 10x12 ft indoor wash stall. 60x120 ft indoor sand arena.

90x156 ft outdoor sand arena, 12 paddocks. Field and forested trails that connect to neighboring groomed trails providing hours of riding enjoyment. $3,950,000

SOLD

100 ACRES – NEW TECUMSETH 100 rolling acres with 70 acres arable land. 3-bedroom home with in-law suite, 2 shops and a drive shed. This property is minutes to town and central to Bolton, Orangeville, and Newmarket.

40 minutes to Toronto Pearson Airport. $4,200,000

SOLD

40 MINUTES TO WOODBINE Spectacular horse facility on 100 acres on the edge of Caledon. 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom renovated century home with 3-bedroom in-law suite over the 3-car garage. 100-acre equestrian facility.

Main barn with 42 stalls, 60x140 ft arena, indoor equisizer and viewing room. 23 paddocks, 100x400 ft sand ring. 3/4-mile dirt track (6 furlong). $5,500,000

104-ACRE EQUESTRIAN PROPERTY NEAR COOKSTOWN Invest in this 104-acre farm property at Highway 400 and Highway 89. Views of green pastures and paddocks from a beautifully renovated farmhouse. Whether you're looking to run your farming operation or are looking to invest, this property has it all. With a 13-stall barn, 60x100 ft indoor arena, 1000 sq ft farm help accommodation, 19x30 ft insulated heated shop and more. $5,000,000

EXCEPTIONAL INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY IN ALLISTON Exceptional investment opportunity beside an estate subdivision and near expanding Nottawasaga Inn & Resort. Custom-built bungalow. Large workshop and covered storage area. 100 acres of quality soil suitable for all crops. These properties rarely see the market and has been in the same family for generations. Don't miss out on this exclusive property! $5,000,000

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VICTORIAN FARMHOUSE – 14.1 ACRES Rare offering, private serene setting in Mulmur. Beautiful forested property with trails, open meadows, orchard and picturesque gardens. Classic 3-bedroom brick farmhouse with geothermal heating/cooling system. Original bank barn in excellent condition with space for large gatherings, studio, workshop, garage and stable area. Seeing is believing ... $1,649,900

BEAUTIFUL GREEN ACRES – 3.6 ACRES Located just north of Highway 89 and only 3km from the charming town of Shelburne. The property is level with some mixed bush at the rear and south. Enjoy a peaceful rural setting, just minutes from convenient town amenities. $599,900

ROOM TO ROAM – 81 ACRES Large land parcel with approximately 43 acres of workable farmland with a building site for your dream home. Beautiful rolling property with tree plantation approx 10,000 - 12,000 trees includes white pine, cedar, tamarack and spruce. Plus 5 spring-fed ponds by Ducks Unlimited. Added benefit of partial land lease to energy producer, with annual income of $10,000. $1,249,000

ENJOY THE EASY LIFESTYLE Great 2-bedroom townhouse with attached single-car garage. Foyer welcomes you to a living room and eat-in-kitchen. Enjoy spacious bedrooms on the second floor and a 4-piece main bathroom.

Downstairs has a recreation room, separate laundry room and an additional 3-piece bathroom. $499,900

Ashlyn Trevelyan fall21_layout 21-08-27 8:38 PM Page 1

Award winning local realtor Thinking of selling?

Call me today for a no obligation free market evaluation

RARELY OFFERED 3-bedroom, 4-bathroom detached bungaloft with newly renovated walkout basement, in the exclusive enclave of Legacy Pines. Perfect for the active adult lifestyle.

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PRIVATE COUNTRY PARADISE Pretty two-acre lot, surrounded by trees and nature. Overlooking the rolling hills of Erin.

Summer pond and a secret bunkie in the woods. Spacious 2-car detached garage.

Wrap-around deck with stunning views.

TURNKEY EQUESTRIAN FACILITY 100 acres, 25 stalls, indoor and outdoor arenas, 5/8-mile sand track, 9 paddocks and fully renovated two-storey home.

SOLD

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COMING SOON Rare offering in the heart of Caledon. Breathtaking vistas on 97 acres. Develop this into your dream home, country retreat, hobby farm, or invest for the future. Conveniently located to conservation, golf, tennis, skiing, equestrian and 35 minutes to Pearson Airport. Original farmhouse, detached two-car garage and bank barn. Endless possibilities and truly a must see!

100-ACRE EQUESTRIAN ESTATE The most captivating views you could imagine!

Set w/ 2 road frontages in the middle of the hills of Mono. Gated entry leads past riding arena & multiple agri-buildings. Board & batten bungaloft features post & beam interior w/ soaring ceilings.

EACH OFFICE IS INDEPENDENTLY OWNED AND OPERATED**

SOLD

SOLD

Sales Representative

905-936-4216 Office 416-508-3356 Direct ashlyn@ronanrealty.com

PRESTIGIOUS LEGACY PINES Stunning detached bungalow. Open concept kit/great room w/ vaulted ceilings, gas fp and w/o to oversized patio. Custom kit w/ granite countertops, s/s appliances, master on main w/ 3-pc ensuite. Boasting resort-like amenities.

SOLD

ASHLYN TREVELYAN

ABSOLUTE PRIVACY Custom home on a gorgeous 10-acre parcel with breathtaking panoramic views of the rolling hills and countryside. A nature/horse lover’s paradise steps to the 11000-acre Ganaraska Central Forest.

Chris Richie fall21_layout 21-08-28 9:19 PM Page 1

Sean Anderson

Broker of Record seananderson@remaxinthehills.com

Dale Poremba

Sales Representative dale@remaxinthehills.com

905-584-0234 519-942-0234

1-888-667-8299 www.remaxinthehills.com

Jennifer Unger

It’s the MARKETING, the EXPOSURE, the RESULTS!

Our Award Winning agents have 86 years of combined experience at your service! Caledon, Mono, Adjala and surrounding areas.

Chris P. Richie

Broker chris@remaxinthehills.com

Sales Representative jenunger@remaxinthehills.com

13 DEAN ROAD Springwater Lakes welcomes you! You jointly own 2 small lakes w/ access to swimming, fishing & acs of hiking! Sweeping views of majestic pines & blue spruce! Inside this bungalow on 1/2 ac there are features galore! Loads of cabinetry in spacious kit which opens to din area, cozy fam rm w/ vaulted ceilings, hrdwd flrs & stone fp in the liv rm. Downstairs has rec rm w/ bar & 3-pc bath close to extra deep grg & bonus insul’d 22x28 workshop! Concrete circular drive w/ 2 road entries is handy! Hardwired for generator, newer: propane furnace; roof; soffit; eaves & most windows! Mulmur $899,900

3911 CHARLESTON SIDEROAD Outstanding solid brick/stone home on 12.7 private acres in Caledon. Located on a paved road just 20 mins to the 410, 40 mins to Pearson. The house size and layout can support large extended families while offering private living areas plus separate entries. Fully finished home with multiple walkouts and garage access from 2 levels. Large circular driveway, in-floor heating in lower level, geothermal 2012, upgraded electrical, water treatment system, roof 2017, large chef’s kit, kitchenette in lower level, screened-in porch, large deck, covered patio, trails, perimeter fencing. $2,999,999

SOME OF OUR RECENT SOLDS

17963 MOUNTAINVIEW ROAD 145-acre farm in the heartland of Caledon with two road frontages. 658 ft on Airport Rd and 1468 ft on Mountainview Rd. 75 acres currently being farmed with potential for more. The family farmhouse has seen better days but would not take much to make a great rental unit. Steel Quonset hut on cement pad with hydro, detached 2-car garage, former cow barn (57 ft x 55 ft) with storage, silo and secondary outbuilding. Tax credits for the beautiful forest lands with cut trails leading to the sugar shack and two serene pond sites. Up the hillside there are views of the Toronto skyline. This is a beautiful property with both abundant farmland and serene rolling forest alive with nature. With the expansive growth of nearby Caledon East, this is a truly remarkable investment opportunity. Caledon $5,500,000

Caledon Sold For Over Asking

Caledon (Alton) Sold For Over Asking

Caledon Sold

Caledon Sold For Asking

Brampton Sold

Caledon Sold For Over Asking

Caledon (Palgrave) Sold

Erin Sold For Over Asking

Mono Sold For Over Asking

Mono Sold

Mono Sold For Over Asking

Erin Sold For Over Asking

Caledon Sold For Asking

Caledon East Sold

Caledon Sold For Asking

Orangeville Sold For Over Asking Give THE CHRIS RICHIE GROUP a call today for your FREE EVALUATION.

Adjala Sold For Over Asking

Caledon Sold For Over Asking

Mono Sold

Mono Sold

Caledon Village Sold For Over Asking

Caledon Sold For Over Asking

Brampton Sold For Over Asking

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PUTTING SOLD SIGNS ON HOMES FOR 30+ YEARS!

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Denise Dilbey fall21_layout 21-08-28 11:10 AM Page 1

Dedicated to Serving Town & Country Properties Your REALTOR® for Life link2realestate.ca 416.919.9802 direct denise@link2realestate.ca

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a dramatic increase in the purchase of investment properties. Wise investors know the value of diversifying.

Commercial and farmland properties are options for those looking to increase their net worth while taking advantage of low-interest rates. For investors, there are plenty of solid commercial, residential, farm, and mixed-use investments to help grow your income. Be marketwise when it comes to real estate investments, there has never been a better time to take advantage of all the opportunities to increase your portfolio. Want to have a better understanding of the market and how it affects you and your family investments?

I can answer your questions and provide expert insight into market trends and analysis. Let me know how I can help you! Call me direct at 416-919-9802 or email denise@link2realestate.ca

Meadowtowne Realty, Brokerage Independently Owned & Operated ®Trademark owned or controlled by The Canadian Real Estate Association. Used under license.

DOWNTOWN INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY This majestic multiple-use zoned DC-1 detached building is nestled on a prominent corner of Main St S and Church St in downtown Georgetown. This stately building serves 12 commercial units and 3 residential studio apartments. The 2.5-storey building spans +/- 7386 sq ft. 3 residential studio apartments each have a private kitchen, living area, and 4-piece bath. Taxes reflect BIA membership for all commercial tenants. Commercial tenant Net + TMI leases were negotiated in 2020. Sep hydro meters, gas meters, and HVAC with residential & 2nd-floor office tenant rents incl utilities. Excellent long-term commercial tenants. This property is understood to be on the Town of Halton Hills heritage list but not designated. Call for more details. MLS $2,100,000

MOTHER NATURE’S CALLING Just a short drive north of Orangeville is where you will find this peaceful & treed 11.8-acre parcel of land. The abundance of wildlife and flora offers you a little piece of heaven. Property is subject to HST. Paved road. MLS $599,000

FOR ROOMS WITH A VIEW Build your masterpiece on a 2.8-acre lot overlooking Georgian Bay with a meandering river & towering trees. Mins from the public dock slip & beaches. Close to Owen Sound. Bldg envelope & survey available. Paved road. MLS $399,000

QUAINT VILLAGE INVESTMENT Retail storefront w/ att’d 750 sq ft, 3-bdrm, 2-bath home in the heart of Rockwood. High traffic gives you a live/work option or provides solid income investment in a growing market mins from Milton, Hwy 401, Guelph. C1 zoning. MLS $649,900

Dillon Holden fall21_layout 21-08-27 9:23 PM Page 1

@dholdenrealty

19215 SHAWS CREEK ROAD Caledon $1,499,900

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794219 3RD LINE EHS, ORANGEVILLE Enjoy open concept living in this meticulously maintained 4300+ sq ft bungalow featuring a large main floor master with 6-piece ensuite and 4 additional bedrooms and bathrooms. Experience the convenience of this immaculate bungalow with every necessary room being located on the main floor. Embrace the country lifestyle on 16 acres of private property and managed forest. Enjoy the stunning views of Hockley Valley from your backyard. This home is wired for entertainment, features upgraded mechanics and 2 geothermal furnaces.

845 OLD SCHOOL ROAD Caledon $2,499,000

13 KENNEDY ROAD Cheltenham $1,099,000

13 DAWNRIDGE TRAIL Brampton $1,525,000

Regan Lindsay fall21_layout 21-08-27 8:59 PM Page 1

WELCOME TO ST ANDREW’S IN CALEDON Welcome to this 5.5-acre park-like setting in the heart of the Caledon countryside yet only 30 minutes from Pearson Airport. This meticulous custom-built home is tastefully done with a cedar shake roof, hand-hewn square logs and a covered front porch. The home is spacious with numerous large picture windows, gorgeous living room and dining room with wide plank hardwood flooring, stone fireplace and sunroom with views overlooking beautiful perennial gardens. Principal bedroom is enormous with a huge 5-piece ensuite. The property has magnificent mature trees creating a peaceful oasis.

The Paintbrush golf course is 650 yards/par 5 from your doorstep. $2,975,000 Matt Lindsay fall21_layout 21-08-27 9:07 PM Page 1

PEACEFUL COUNTRY LIVING IN MONO Gorgeous 27-acre property in the heart of Mono overlooking the Hockley Valley and backing onto the Hockley Valley Nature Reserve. A long laneway from a paved road leads you a peaceful and beautifully landscaped property with exceptional views. Completely renovated home with a steel roof, updated kitchen, bathrooms and flooring. Mono Centre is a hop skip up the road offering fine dining, a great pub and access to Mono Cliffs Provincial Park. Hockley Valley Resort amenities and Adamo Estate Winery are also at your doorstep.

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BUILD YOUR DREAM HOME IN MONO Come build your dream home on this gorgeous 49-acre property in the rolling hills of Mono. This property offers 7 acres of recreational land, 17 acres of great workable land and 25 acres of managed forest consisting of Black Walnut, White Ash, Red Oak, White Pine, Red Pine, Norway Spruce and Sugar Maples. Plus, your own 2050 feet of airstrip running east west. This property is very private and sheltered from the prevailing winds. Truly a one-of-a-kind property with numerous building locations to choose from throughout the property. $1,389,000

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L P

REAL ESTATE SOLUTIONS PERFECTLY PLANNED

L NDAPICKERING.CA

www.lindapickering.ca | O: 519-943-0860

SOLD

Escape to a Country Lifestyle

SOLD

SOLD

PRIVATE MONO ESTATE Luxury Country Lifestyle 50+ acres with a Modern spaciously designed residence. Wrap-around decks to enjoy sunsets and magnificent views! Freshwater pond to cool off in and several kilometres of trails to hike! Wild flower fields, apple trees, pine forest, secluded no exit road makes for fabulous Country Living yet close to wonderful Markets, Wineries and all amenities you need. Looking to Escape to the Country Lifestyle…then let’s plan your next Move! $2,475,000

THE ROLLING HILLS OF MULMUR Breathtaking views! Fabulous Country Lifestyle awaits you to play and enjoy over 90 acres with a picture perfect red brick Century Farmhouse & Magnificent Barn backing onto a Natural Biosphere, close to Bruce & Dufferin Trails, Conservation lands, Ski Hills, & the Charming Village of Creemore!

Why not explore the area & see what living Life in the Country is all about! Buyer Representative.

MAGNIFICENT MONO A Very Special bi-level bungalow, meticulously maintained and updated with Gorgeous Gardens to enjoy year-round. Easy commute to GTA and minutes to Orangeville for all amenities. Hiking trails on your doorstep, Hockley Skiing, Golf, Winery plus peace and quite await your Luxury Country Lifestyle! Turn the Dream of Escaping to the Country a reality now! Buyer Representative.

Irwin Bennett fall21_layout 21-08-29 6:04 PM Page 1

Sue Collis fall21_layout 21-08-27 8:55 PM Page 1 Caledon, Erin, Mono & Surrounding Areas

www.chestnutparkcountry.com Country Office: 519.833.0888 Sue - Direct: 519.837.7764 Sarah - Direct: 905.872.5829 Sarah MacLean

Sales Representative

Sales Representative

sue@chestnutpark.com sarahmaclean@chestnutpark.com

SOLD

Sue Collis

SOLD

BEAUTIFUL ESTATE HOME Beautifully maintained home on quiet street in desirable family neighbourhood. 2.09-acre lot in Palgrave School District. Fabulous sunroom addition open to chef’s kitchen with butler’s pantry, raised breakfast bar, granite counters, stunning cabinetry. Family room off kitchen with fireplace, separate dining room, 5 bedrooms/4 bathrooms/4 fireplaces/3-car garage/ pool/putting green.

STUNNING PROPERTY – WOW This lovely open concept layout home with high ceilings, finished lower level with separate entrance and stunning backyard oasis. Beautiful gardens, huge kitchen, sunken great room with 18ft ceiling, separate office, 3-car garage, inground pool with waterfall.

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VERY PRIVATE ESTATE ON 12.7 PARK-LIKE ACRES Down a stately winding drive, pass the beautiful natural pond, find this handsome mid-century modern stone home, 9000+ square feet on multiple levels. 6 bedroom, 7 bathroom with indoor pool. Multi-level decks and flagstone patios for enjoying the mature perennial landscaping and plenty of space for the family. Separate 12+ vehicle carport garage/workshop. Many more features to see! An amazing central Puslinch location: 30 minutes to Milton, Guelph, Kitchener, Hamilton or Cambridge and quick access to the 401 to Toronto. $3,900,000

Suzanne Lawrence fall21_layout 21-08-27 8:53 PM Page 1

Wayne Baguley fall21_layout 21-08-29 6:10 PM Page 1

OFFICE 705.466.2115 TOLL FREE 1.800.360.5821 ONLINE info@suzannelawrence.ca suzannelawrence.ca VISIT US 154B Mill Street, Creemore, ON L0M 1G0 RCR Realty, Brokerage.

Independently Owned & Operated.

STUNNING RURAL HOME Dead end road, Sheldon Creek at its back door. Private backyard oasis. Island with tree house.

Open concept living space with vaulted ceilings. In-floor heat. Views of the water. Walkout basement with large windows. Separate entrance to in-law suite. Sauna and additional laundry.

Main floor master suite with 2 bedrooms and laundry on 2nd floor. $1,599,000

YOUR NATURE’S PARADISE Charming 3-bedroom home on 11+ acres w/ trails to Grand River, gorgeous ponds for swimming & skating. Features eat-in kit, lrg liv rm, sep family rm, mstr w/ w/o to balcony.

Drive shed/hobby barn & chicken coop. $1,699,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

HIDDEN CASTLE IN THE WOODS 10+ acres, 3 ponds, waterfall, tennis court.

Grand entry, 7 bdrms, 13 baths, 2-storey library, home theatre, indoor firing range, indoor pool, solarium, 5-car garage with nanny suite above. Caledon Wonderland. $6,799,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

CHARMING NORMERICA POST & BEAM HILLTOP HOME 10 acres with winding driveway. Private home, large detached garage, separate heated workshop/guest house 220v. 3 bunkies with hydro. 20ft Quonset and south facing deck with awning. Auto propane generator. Countryside views located 3km west of Mansfield Ski Club and 4km south of Terra Nova Pub. $1,579,000

OVER 4000 SQ FT HIDDEN GEM Timeless 2-1/2 storey on 2.6 acs overlooking the escarpment. Grand media room, eat-in kitchen with walkout to yard, massive windows & access to a guest suite above the 2-car grg. Private backyard & inground pool. $2,799,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

STUNNING 100-ACRE FARM Great views with approx 85 workable acres, rolling land, 2-level chicken barn, 2 drive sheds, workshop, dryer complex, bank barn.

Farmhouse features 3 bdrms, eat-in kitchen, dining rm & office space. Unfin’d attic space. $2,799,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

BREATHTAKING VIEWS FROM THIS EXCEPTIONAL 90-ACRE ESTATE Incomparable quality and care is evident from the land to the buildings. Perfectly situated to enjoy the quiet setting in Nottawasaga with views of Georgian Bay and beyond. Renovated circa 1850's stone home. Saltwater pool. Second residence with 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths. Barn 36'x51' with stables and storage. Shop 40'x60' built in 2018 with 1200 sq ft apartment. $6,500,000

100 ACRES, ULTIMATE PRIVACY 1-km driveway to 1870s brick farmhouse, 4 bdrms, eat-in kitchen. Det 2-car garage, workshop, hobby barn with stalls. 80 acres tile drained. High speed internet. Fabulous farm/solar income. 1/2 hr to Elora & Fergus. $2,799,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

SURROUNDED BY NATURE Perched up on a hill, hidden in the Hockley woods. 34 acres adjacent to Bruce Trail. 4+1 bdrm, 4-bath bungalow overlooking a rolling landscape. Inground pool. Separate barn/ workshop. Stunning weekend getaway/home. $2,799,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

IDEAL PROPERTY FOR YOUR EXTENDED FAMILY Two beautiful residences. Reno’d Century home offering features w/ modern conveniences. 1500 sq ft no expense spared coach house incl elevator access from heated 4-bay grg. An equestrian facility with 2 stables, indoor (200'x80')/outdoor arenas, hacking trails, woodlands. Fabulous countryside vistas from 82.6 acs m/l w/ no NEC or Oak Ridges Moraine jurisdiction. $3,495,000

OWN YOUR OWN LAKE 53 acres with approx 7-acre lake, stream, forest & large bungalow overlooking rolling hills, pond & approx 12 workable acres.

Soaring cathedral ceilings, 3+2 bdrms, fin bsmt with in-law potential. 10 mins to Elora. $2,399,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

EVERGREEN TREE FARM 27+ acres. 3-bdrm Cape Cod with separate entrance to 1-bdrm in-law suite. Swim spa & pond. Outbuilding plus barn w/ finished upper level for retail space or convert for animals.

Great for landscaping/Christmas tree sales. $2,400,000 Wayne Baguley 519-941-5151

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Lisa Kell fall21_layout 21-08-27 9:10 PM Page 1

Cell: 705-241-5380 lisakell@remaxchay.com www.lisakell.com

BEAUTIFUL 101-ACRE FARM Rare opportunity to own a picturesque farm located outside the Village of Creemore. Locally known as "The Eyrie", this property offers a mixture of workable acreage, pasture for the animal enthusiast, a beautiful hardwood bush with a peaceful trail to ride your horses or snowshoe through, and a spring-fed pond. A unique chapel, built from stone and cedars around the farm, adds to the charm of this property and is ideally set to enjoy lovely views. $3,399,900

SCENIC VIEWS This turn-of-the-century farmhouse with expansive views sits atop Fairgrounds Road a mere minute from Creemore. Professionally restored and designed with a seamless new addition, the main floor offers a chef’s kitchen with exposed original beams, butler’s pantry, in-floor heat underneath engineered hardwood floors, large windows and 9-10’ ceilings. Enjoy your personal oasis in the grand primary bedroom on the main floor, highlighted by vaulted 15’ ceilings, a propane fireplace, and large windows with valley views. The basement boasts an open concept living space with 10’ ceilings and in-floor heating perfect for entertaining in front of the propane fireplace. A beautiful 2000 sq ft wrap-around deck with frameless glass railings, takes in massive views to Barrie, Creemore valley and glimpses of Georgian Bay. No expense has been spared on this entertainer’s dream. $2,274,900 Phillips Imrie fall21_layout 21-08-27 9:02 PM Page 1

Adrian Muscat fall21_layout 21-08-27 7:05 PM Page 1

Move With the Muscats

Welcome to Headwaters Country HeadwatersCountry.com info@headwaterscountry.com 519-941-5151 Victoria Phillips and Janna Imrie

RCR Realty, Brokerage

The ultimate real estate experience.

Independently Owned & Operated

Sales Representatives

Adrian Muscat

Charsanda Muscat

SALES REPRESENTATIVE

SALES REPRESENTATIVE 2019 RECIPIENT OF

519-278-5888

DUFFERINCOUNTYHOMES.COM

SOLD

QUINTE WEST Fabulous is the best way to describe this 27-acre property. Situated well off the road for total privacy it features a beautifully updated and maintained 4+1-bedroom home with walkout basement, saltwater pool, hot tub and huge detached workshop with loft and room for your RV! Gorgeous views from every window. $1,495,000

CALEDON BEAUTY Situated on 1 acre in the heart of Caledon sits this beautifully upgraded and maintained 4-level sidesplit. Over 2600 sq ft of living space with multiple walkouts to a gorgeous private backyard with large deck and hot tub. Large principal rooms, attached garage, paved driveway, generator and so much more.

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GRAND VALLEY – EXCLUSIVE Remarkable opportunity to renovate your own country home. Large bungalow on nearly two acres. New roof. Bring your designs!

Basia Regan fall21_layout 21-08-27 8:43 PM Page 1

Paul Richardson fall21_layout 21-08-27 9:05 PM Page 1

705-466-2115

basiaregan@royallepage.ca www.basiaregan.com Sales Representative

Paul Richardson SALES REPRESENTATIVE

Royal LePage Meadowtowne 17228 Mississauga Rd, Caledon

RICHARDSONTOWNANDCOUNTRY.CA

866-865-8262

paul@richardsontownandcountry.ca

SOLD

SOLD

MULMUR WOODLANDS Nestled in the heart of the rolling hills of Mulmur on 12.82 private acres is this magnificent custom-built home with finely crafted details throughout. 4 ensuite bedrooms, eat-in "Downsview" kitchen with walkout to deck, separate dining room and great room with 1 of 3 wood-burning fireplaces. Relax and enjoy the bird songs from your screened-in porch.

Golf, skiing and Creemore mere minutes away. $2,999,999

MULMUR HAVEN Reno’d Century home. 4 bdrms 4 baths. Sep 2-bdrm apt w/ private deck & countryside views. Perfect for ext family, farm manager or income. Pool, barn w/ 20 horse stalls, heated tack room, paddocks, sand ring. $2,100,000

HIDING IN THE WOODS Fabulous 135-acre property between Creemore and Dunedin with wide maintained trails through a mixed forest and 2 pristine streams that are headwaters of the Noisy River. $949,000

Amir Mojallali fall21_layout 21-08-27 8:34 PM Page 1 LANDMARK CALEDON ESTATE From the moment you drive through the stone gates up the tree-lined drive you will be in love with Tweed Airigh Farms! Restored and enhanced to perfection, the main house features both formal living and country lifestyle in 5000 sq ft. Separate self-contained guest house set in French waterfall gardens. Horse barn and large bank barn awaits you. Walk the 98 acres, swim in the pool, play tennis, or simply relax in perfection. $7,399,000

235175 CONC 2, CHATSWORTH Soaring cathedral ceiling, massive o/c kit/ dining/living, 3 potential bdrms with w/o’s & a grg that opens into the great room. 86 acres all to yourself. Tons of space to snowmobile, hunt, ATV, hike or make it a quiet oasis.

LUXURY EQUINE ESTATE Beautiful stone home with board and batten addition. Approx 4000 sq ft of living space including lower level walkout suite. Large principal rooms with top quality finishes. 22 stalls with restored bank barn and new barn. 80x180 indoor arena and outdoor ring. Set on 92 acres with paddocks. Every feature an equestrian desires in a convenient location.

You can have it all; an amazing home and an incredible horse facility. $6,100,000

SOLD

498 PARK AVE, SHELBURNE Main flr w/ eat-in kit, dining/family room w/ a lrg window nook, sep family room, mud room.

2nd flr has 3 bdrms. Fully fin bsmt w/ rec room, bath, office, & bdrm for in-law suite or extra income. Large heated pool! $899,900

9504 32ND SIDEROAD, ERIN – SOLD $150K OVER ASKING Simply spectacular! This property has something for everyone. Open concept main level has 3 great size bedrooms, living rm with fp, and dining rm with w/o to the back deck. Lower level is a separate apt with large windows, bdrm, full kit, perfect for an in-law suite or extra income.

Mature trees provide the perfect amount of shade and privacy. Large shed and shop to store all your toys. The large wood beams, stone work, and high-end finishes defines country living.

REPRODUCTION FARMHOUSE Tucked away on 5 private acres, sits this immaculate custom home. Everything completed to the highest standard. Wonderful setting, complete with your own pond for summer fishing and winter skating; surrounded by mature trees. Home features 3 bedrooms upstairs and 2 in the finished lower level, high ceilings, large windows, principal bedroom with spa ensuite, enormous kitchen with centre island, quartz counters and custom window seat. $1,999,999

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ILLUS TR ATIONS JIM S TEWART

community FARMERS’ MARKETS OR ANGEVILLE : Saturdays, 8am-1pm,

to Oct 23. 90 Broadway parking lot.

Indoor winter market, Saturdays, Nov 6 to Apr 23, 9am-1pm, Town Hall Opera House. orangevillefarmersmarket.ca CREEMORE : Saturdays, 8:30am-

12:30pm, to Oct 9. Creemore Springs Brewery parking lot, 139 Mill St. creemorefarmersmarket.ca ALLISTON : Saturdays, 8am-2pm, to Oct 30. Centre St & Victoria St E. rurban.ca

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As the pandemic evolves, many familiar events have moved online while others have instituted Covid-19 protocols. When planning to participate, please check the websites or social media platforms of your favourite performers and organizations for updates.

arts+letters NOW – OC T 3 : HEADWATERS ARTS FALL FESTIVAL SHOW & SALE – R AISING THE BAR Juried

show featuring 30+ artists in various media. 10am-5pm. Free. Alton Mill Arts Centre, 1402 Queen St, Alton.

519-943-1149; headwatersarts.org NOW – OC T 30 (THURSDAYS & SATURDAYS) : WHITE FR AGILIT Y BOOK STUDY Why it’s so hard for white

people to talk about racism. Buy book at the church office $15. 10-11:30am.

Free, register. 22 Nancy St, Bolton.

905-857-0433; christchurchbolton.ca NOW – DEC 31 : PAMA OUTDOOR EXHIBIT – K ATHERINE TAKPANNIE: ONE This Inuk artist-photographer

reminisces about her ancestral home in Iqaluit, Nunavut. PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton. 905791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca

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Watch the artist create her art installation on PAMA’s front lawn.

On display until Oct 3. 8am-6pm.

PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton.

905-791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca

OC T 20 : ADULT CR AF T CLUB CULTURE DAYS EDITION: FOLDED PAPER FLOWERS Create these beauties

OC T 3 – BECOMING LEIDAH BOOK L AUNCH Talk and book signing by

using maps! Pickup instructions will be sent to participants. Zoom. Free, register. 7pm. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca

Mono author Michelle Grierson.

Free. 2pm. BookLore, 121 First St, Orangeville. 519-942-3830; booklore.ca

SEP 25 – OC T 16 : AUTUMN REFLEC­ TIONS EN PLEIN AIR CONTEST Find an

OC T 6 – 17 : 20/20 VISION – SOLO EXHIBIT Janet Simmons Sweet’s search

for a perfect vision in an imperfect Covid world. Wed-Sun 10am-5pm. Free. Alton Mill Arts Centre, 1402 Queen St, Alton.

416-797-3954; janetsimmonssweet.ca OC T 16, 23 & OC T 30 : WRITING WORKSHOP SERIES Strengthen

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Find an artist capturing King’s outdoor wonders (see Instagram or Facebook for hints). Oct 16: awards event, 1-4pm. Free. Cold Creek Conservation Area, Nobleton. 905833-2331; artssocietyking.ca

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your writing voice with Carol Good.

Zoom. 10am-noon. Free, register.

SEP 25 – OC T 16 : AUTUMN REFLEC TIONS EN PLEIN AIR CONTEST

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SEP 30 : #HOPEANDHEALINGCANADA WITH TR ACEY-MAE CHAMBERS

artist capturing King’s outdoor wonders (see Instagram or Facebook for hints).

Oct 16: awards event, 1-4pm. Free. Cold Creek Conservation Area, Nobleton.

905-833-2331; artssocietyking.ca

NOW – OC T 30 (THURSDAYS & SATURDAYS) : WHITE FR AGILIT Y BOOK STUDY Why it’s so hard for white

people to talk about racism. Buy book at the church office $15. 10-11:30am.

Free, register. 22 Nancy St, Bolton.

905-857-0433; christchurchbolton.ca NOW – DEC 17 (FRIDAYS) : ADULT COFFEE/TEA & CONNEC TION Local

guest speakers, information sessions and more! 1-2:30pm. Free. Grand Valley Library, 4 Amaranth St E, Grand Valley.

519-928-5622; townofgrandvalley.ca NOW – MAY 9 (MONDAYS) : EXPLORER’S BIBLE STUDY The Prophets

of Israel explores 17 books from the Old Testament. Newcomers welcome.

7-8pm. Free, register on the website.

Brampton Christian School, 12480 Hutchinson Farm Lane, Caledon. 905484-1263; ebsbramptonontpm2034. churchcenter.com SEP 24 – DEC 31 : PAMA PEEL TIME CAPSULE VIRTUAL EXHIBITION Submit

stories and images of a Covid Peel.

PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton.

905-791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca SEP 28 : DANCING WITH PARKINSON’S

NOV 17 : ADULT CR AF T CLUB: FRIENDSHIP BR ACELETS Give one

to a friend! Pickup instructions will be sent to participants. Zoom. Free, register. 7pm. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca

CCS Caledon Community Services

DCAFS Dufferin Child

CPCC Caledon Parent-Child Centre

DPSN Dufferin Parent

CVC Credit Valley

EWCS East Wellington

Conservation

Community Services

and Family Services Support Network

Seated dance class for all seniors, their care partners and families. Free, register, virtual program. 1-2pm.

PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton.

905-791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca

MOD Museum of Dufferin – Regular admission: $5; seniors $4; children 5-14 $2; under 5 free; family $12 PAMA Peel Art Gallery, Museum and

Archives – Regular admission: $5; students, seniors $4; family (2 adults & 5 children) $12

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NVCA Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority OAS Orangeville Agricultural

Society Event Centre SBEC Orangeville & District Small Business Enterprise Centre

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SEP 24, OC T 29 & NOV 26 : CALEDON SENIORS’ CENTRE TAKE- OUT MONTHLY DINNERS Sep 24: homemade

NOW – JUN 20 (MONDAYS) : OR ANGEVILLE TR ADITIONAL SCOUTING Program for 7- to

lasagna. Oct 29, Nov 26: TBA. $14; call two days before to order; local delivery $2. Pickup: 5-6pm. 7 Rotarian Way, Bolton. caledonseniors.ca SEP 25 : BELFOUNTAIN COMMUNIT Y GAR AGE SALE & MUSIC FESTIVAL FUNDR AISER Local musicians, food

and fun with new friends. Proceeds to the Belfountain Community Organization. Free. Community Hall, 17204 Main St, Belfountain.

519-927-3204; belfountain.ca

10-year-olds. 7-8:30pm. $120. Mono Amaranth Public School, Hockley Road, Orangeville. traditionalscouting.ca OC T 4 : NATIONAL DAY OF AC TION WALK Bringing awareness about

Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls. Meet at the court house back parking lot. Noon12:30pm. Free. Orangeville Court House, 10 Louisa St, Orangeville. dufferincountyculturalresourcecircle.org

website for parade route. Proceeds to autism awareness. 10-11:30am.

Community Living Dufferin, 065371 Cty Rd 3, East Garafraxa. Autism Speaks Committee, 1-888-362-6227 ext 206;, autismspeakscan.ca SEP 27 : OR ANGEVILLE BLOOD DONOR CLINIC The need for blood

goes on. Book your appointment on the website. 2-7pm. Best Western, 7 Buena Vista Dr, Orangeville. Canadian Blood Services, 1-888-236-6283; blood.ca

your online activities. Zoom. Free, register. 7pm. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca OC T 14 & NOV 11 : PROBUS CLUB OF OR ANGEVILLE MONTHLY MEETINGS

NOV 4 : CHURCH & CHARIT Y L AW ™ WEBINAR Tony Manconi,

Retired professionals foster friendship, activities and learning through informative speakers. Sep 9: Former Governor General David Johnson. Oct 14, Nov 11: TBA. Zoom. 10am. 519307-2887; probusorangeville.com

Canada Revenue Agency; Kenneth Goodman, Attorney General’s Office; Ken Hall, Robertson Hall Insurance Ltd. $20, call or email to register.

9am-1:30pm. Carters Law Firm, 1-877-942-0001 x230; carters.ca NOV 10 : WHAT’S NEW IN SOCIAL MEDIA New popular tools and

apps. Zoom. 7pm. Free, register.

Caledon Library, 905-857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca

SEP 29, OC T 6 & 13 : TASTE OF AUTUMN VIRTUAL CHEF SERIES 2021 Local

chefs cook on YouTube with great prizes.

Link and recipe sent on registration.

Proceeds to Family Transition Place, Rotary Community Choice Grants and the End Polio Now Campaign. 8-9pm. $45 each, tax receipt. Rotary Club of Orangeville, tasteofautumn.ca SEP 29 & OC T 20 : CALEDON SENIORS’ CENTRE TAKE- OUT SPECIAL LUNCHES

Sep 29: fish and chips. Oct 20: vegetable zucchini bake. $7; call two days before to order; local delivery $2.

Pickup: 11:30am-12:30pm. 7 Rotarian Way, Bolton. caledonseniors.ca OC T 1 – DEC 31 : NEW INSPIRING STORIES OF WOMEN IN THE PAMA COLLEC TIONS Celebrate Women’s

History Month in this virtual exhibit.

PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton.

905-791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca OC T 2 – 31 : COMPASS RUN FOR FOOD Family-friendly 5km run/walk,

10.5km run and kids’ fun run with proceeds to Dufferin County food security. Walk virtually or in-person starting Oct 2. 8am-5pm. Register.

Compass Community Church, 246289 Hockley Rd, Mono. compassrun.com 118

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OC T 28 : GHOST WALKING TOUR WITH STEVE COLLIE (“THE GHOST GUY”)

Ever had a run-in with a Brampton ghost? See website for Covid selfassessment. 7-8:30pm. $8, register.

PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton.

905-791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca

OC T 13 : PRIVACY CHECKUP: STAY SAFE ONLINE Protect yourself and

SEP 26 : OR ANGEVILLE & AREA AUTISM SPEAKS CANADA WALK ON WHEELS CAR PAR ADE See the

carriers. Rabies: $30, minimum age 3 months. Microchip: $30; email for an appointment by Oct 16. Dr. F. Walker, DVM. 10am-1pm. Premier Equipment, 8911 Wellington Rd 124, Ospringe.

519-833-2287; uppercredit.com

NOV 18 – 20 : OPER ATION CHRISTMAS CHILD SHOEBOX DROP- OFF Gift-

OC T 17 : EMP T Y BOWLS HEADWATERS

Fill a pottery bowl with local soup, keep the bowl as a reminder of those less fortunate. Proceeds to regional food programs. $45, at annranderaadpottery. com and Booklore. 11:30am-4pm. Alton Legion, 1267 Queen St, Alton. 519-9382092; annranderaadpottery.com OC T 21 – DEC 24 : THE SISTERS TOUCH OF CHRISTMAS Hand-painted

ornaments, bakery, décor and more.

Thur Fri 10am-7pm. Sat 10am-6pm.

Sun 11am-4pm. Dec 20-23: 10am7pm. Dec 24: 10am-3pm. St. Kosmas Aitolos Greek Orthodox Monastery, 14155 Caledon-King Twnln S, Bolton.

905-859-8077; thesisterstoc.com OC T 23 : UPPER CREDIT HUMANE SOCIET Y R ABIES & MICROCHIP CLINIC Dogs leashed, cats in

filled shoeboxes for struggling children in the developing world. Thur 5:308:30pm. Fri noon-4pm. Sat 9:30am1pm. Broadway Pentecostal Church, 556 Broadway Ave, Orangeville.

416-697-9999; samaritanspurse.ca NOV 20 : CALEDON SENIORS’ CENTRE CHRISTMAS BAKE SALE Stock up on

your baked goods for the holidays!

8am-1pm. 7 Rotarian Way, Bolton.

905-951-6114; caledonseniors.ca

fall fairs These fairs plan to go ahead this year, but check their websites and other local fairs for updates or virtual events.

SEP 24 – 26: BOLTON FALL FAIR Albion & Bolton Fairgrounds, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. 905-880-0369; boltonfair.ca OC T 7 – 11: ERIN FALL FAIR Erin

Agricultural Society Fairgrounds, 190 Main St, Erin. erinfair.com

NOW – OC T 9 : MAPLE GROVE FARM CORN MA ZE & WAGON RIDES

Carouse through the corn maze and choose a pumpkin. 9am-5pm.

936576 Airport Rd, Mulmur. 705435-5386; maplegrovefarm.ca NOW – OC T 31 (SATURDAYS & SUN­ DAYS) : DOWNEY’S PUMPKINFEST

Live entertainment, activities and farm animals. 9:30am-5pm. Downey’s Farm Market, 13682 Heart Lake Rd, Caledon.

905-838-2990; downeysfarm.com SEP 24 : NAT’S ROBOTICS ACADEMY

Learn computer language while programming a virtual robot. Ages 9 to14.Zoom. 4-5pm. Free, register.

Caledon Library, 905-857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca SEP 28 : FROM EH TO ZED CANADIAN TRIVIA NIGHT Family-friendly

fun. Zoom and Kahoot, need two devices to play. Free, register. 7pm.

Caledon Library, 905-857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca SEP 29 : FINDING THE OJIBWE HORSE WITH KEN MACDONALD & RHONDA SNOW Music and painting combine

to share stories of the “small horses of the big woods.” Zoom. Ages 6 to 12.

7pm. Free. Caledon Library, 905-8571400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca OC T 2 : PAINT-POURING ART FOR TEENS Make colourful works of

abstract art in person. 12:30pm. Free.

12570 Kennedy Rd, Caledon. Caledon Library – SouthFields Pop-Up, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca OC T 4 – NOV 27 (MONDAYS, WED ­ NESDAYS & SATURDAYS) : STORY TIME ONLINE! Songs, stories and rhymes

to support love of reading. Zoom. A scarf and shaker available for pickup.

Mon 9:30am. Wed 1pm. Sat 9:30.

Free, register. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca OC T 5 : KIDS’ PUMPKIN LUMINARIES (LIVE!) Brighten up your night.

Zoom. Ages 6 to 10.Free, register.

4pm. Caledon Library, 905-8571400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 121

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Find an Advertiser L I N K

D I R E C T L Y

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A D V E R T I S E R S

A T

I N T H E H I L L S . C A

a r t s + c ult ur e + t he at r e

dance

f o o d + d r ink + c at e r in g

Alton Mill Arts Centre 123 Dragonfly Arts on Broadway 47 Museum of Dufferin 123 Peel Art Gallery, Museum & Archives 123 Rose Theatre 119 Theatre Orangeville 117

Academy of Performing Arts 47

Dufferin Farm Tour 121 Jump the Fence, The Power of Counterintuitive Thinking 26

4th Line Cattle Co. 61 Calehill Farms 59 Davis Family Farm 59 Fromage 47 Garden Foods 31 Gourmandissimo Catering & Fine Food Shop 77 Heatherlea Farm Shoppe 61 Hummingbird Hill Farms 59 Landman Gardens & Bakery 59 Lavender Blue Catering 52 Le Finis 47 . 52 Lennox Farm 59 Maple Grove Farm 61 Mount Wolfe Farm 61 Ontario Honey Creations 61 Orangeville Farmers’ Market 47 . 61 Pommies Cider 52 Pure Music Garlic Products 61 Rock Garden Farms 53

in t e r i o r d e c o r at i o n + d e s i g n

f a r m + f e e d s up p l ie s

Rosemont General Store and Kitchen 19 Spirit Tree Estate Cidery 61 The Chocolate Shop 46

f o o d c l ub

in t e r ne t

Headwaters Local Food Box 61

Rogers 17

g e ne r at o r s

l a nd s c a p in g + g a r d e nin g

Tanco Group 15

GB Stone 13 Hill’N Dale Landscaping 41 Jay’s Custom Sheds 80 Leaves & Petals Garden Maintenance 69 River Ridge 45 Tucker’s Land Services 13 Tumber Landscape Design & Build 7

au t o Jaguar & Land Rover Brampton 5

be au t y + f i t ne s s Aqua Mer Medi-Spa 68 Foxy Face Lash Forever 46 Go Yoga 46 Headwaters Racquet Club 95 Hereward Farms 24 Henning Salon 72 Hockley Valley Spa 73

d inin g Forage 77 Greystones Restaurant & Lounge 75 Judy’s Restaurant 77 Mono Cliffs Inn 75 Mrs. Mitchell’s Restaurant 77 Pia’s on Broadway 75 Rustik Local Bistro 77 Spirit Tree Estate Cidery 75 Terra Nova Public House 75 The Busholme Gastro Pub 35

events

Riverdale Fitness Mill 24 Skin Appeal 47 Skin ’n Tonic 46

Sproule’s Emporium 46 The Weathervane 35

h o me imp ro v e me n t + r e pa ir All-Mont Garage Doors 102 Bolton Electrical Supply 97 Cairns Roofing 6 Caledon Tile 66 CBG Homes 26 Celtic Carpet 103 Karry Home Solutions 19 Kurtz Millworks 87 Leathertown Lumber 55 Orangeville Building Supply 83 Orangeville Home Hardware 11 Permawood Solarium Additions 30 River Ridge 45 Roberts Roofing 2 Synergy Exteriors 127

McNeil Design Group Interiors 99

Budson’s Farm & Feed Company 35

books BookLore 19 The Jagged Circle, Shelley Peterson 54

buil d e r s + a rc hi t e c t s + developers

f a r m + g a r d e n e q uip me n t Larry’s Small Engines 51

f a s hi o n + je w e l l e r y

Canadian Outbuildings 65 Classic Renovations 87 Dalerose Country 101 Devonleigh Homes 3 Dutch Masters Design & Construction 55 JDC Custom Homes 32 JDC Janssen Design 99 Pine Meadows 91 Post Farm Structures 15 Wheelwright Group 103

A.M. Korsten Jewellers 47 Gallery Gemma 66 Hannah’s 35 Scented Drawer Fine Lingerie 46 Seconds Count Hospital Thrift Store 47 Sweet B Studio 35

Caledon Community Services 88 Dufferin Community Foundation 89 Headwaters Food & Farming Alliance 59

m o v in g s e r v i c e s

McGuire Fence 93

Downsizing Diva Dufferin-Caledon 93

he at in g + c o o l in g

BMO Nesbitt Burns Wealth Management, N. Meek 78 RBC Dominion Securities, S. Roud 4

f ir e p l a c e s a l e s + s e r v i c e c y c l in g

Caledon Fireplace 101

Lynx & Hare Cycles 54

flowers Suzanne Gardner Flowers 47 120

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Avita Integrated Health 88 Dr. Richard Pragnell 88 Healing Moon 46 Karen Dougherty, Psychotherapy 68 Lia Falzon, Registered Psychotherapist 78

f e n c in g

f in a n c i a l s e r v i c e s c o mmuni t y s e r v i c e s

he a lt h + w e l l ne s s

Arseneau Home Comfort 86 Bryan’s Fuel 33

p e t s up p l ie s + s e r v i c e s Global Pet Foods 8

h o me d é c o r + f ur ni s hin g s Caledon Lighting 97 Decor Solutions Furniture & Design 35 Framed X Design 66 Granny Taught Us How 20 Heidi’s Room 20 Orangeville Furniture 128 Recovering Nicely 30

pool s D&D Pools and Spas 89

p ro f e s s i o n a l s e r v i c e s Carters Law Firm 14

C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 122

www.townofgrandvalley.ca SUBMIT YOUR EVENT

To submit your community, arts or nonprofit event: Go to inthehills.ca and select ‘what’s on’ from the menu bar.

That will take you to the listings page. Select ‘submit your event’ and complete the easy form.

For the autumn (November) issue, submit

by October 15, 2021.

For up-to-date listings between issues, click ‘what’s on’ on the menu bar at inthehills.ca.

We reserve the right to edit submissions for print and web publication.

INTHEHILLS.CA

OC T 8, NOV 12 & DEC 10 : TEEN ADVISORY GROUP Contribute to library services and programs, earn community service hours. ages 13 to 17. 4:30-5:30pm. Free, register monthly for link. Orangeville Library, 519-941-0610; orangevillelibrary.ca OC T 12 : T WEEN 3D PAPER ART (LIVE)

Create a spooky art project! Zoom. Free, register. 4pm. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca OC T 12 – 29 : PAMA @ HOME ART KITS: MINI MONSTERS Sculpt and paint your own monsters. Ages 6 up. $6, register; pick up kit Mon-Fri 9am-4:15pm at PAMA. PAMA, 9 Wellington St E, Brampton. 905791-4055; pama.peelregion.ca OC T 15, NOV 19 & DEC 17 : TEEN CHRONICLES Virtual book club. Find

your next page turner. Ages 13 to 17.

4:30-5:30pm. Free, register monthly for link. Orangeville Library, 519941-0610; orangevillelibrary.ca OC T 19 : TEEN CAFÉ @ CPL: INTER­ AC TIVE MOVIE NIGHT Complete simple challenges while watching a film. Netflix, Teleparty and Zoom. 8pm.

Free, register. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca OC T 23 : SPOOK TACUL AR SCAVENGER HUNT Follow clues, collect stamps, win

prizes (best costume and more), and take home a free pumpkin. $25 per family. Proceeds to Hospice Dufferin.

10am-2pm. hospicedufferin.com OC T 26 : HAUNTED STORY WALK C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 118

OC T 5 – DEC 21 (TUESDAYS) : COCOA CLUB Crafts, games, techy

concepts and more! Ages 6 to 9.

3:15-4pm. Grand Valley Library, 4 Amaranth St E, Grand Valley. 519928-5622; townofgrandvalley.ca OC T 6, 20, NOV 3, DEC 1 & 15 : TEEN ADVISORY GROUP (TAG) – AGES 12 TO 18 Crafts, speakers, movie

and games nights, book club and more! Ages 12 to 18. 6:30-8pm.

Drop in. Grand Valley Library, 4 Amaranth St E, Grand Valley. 519928-5622; townofgrandvalley.ca OC T 7 – DEC 16 (THURSDAYS) : SNACKS & CR AF TS Explore different

mediums, topics and technologies.

3:15-4pm. Grand Valley Library, 4 Amaranth St E, Grand Valley.

519-928-5622; grandvalley.org

Complete obstacles and minichallenges during this interactive costumed walk. Ages 12 and under, adult accompaniment required. Rain date: Oct 8. Free, register for 10-minute time slots.

4-8pm. Edelweiss Park, 320 Glasgow Rd, Caledon. Caledon Library, 905857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca

Downey Potato Farms © James O’Connor

OC T 27 : TEEN ADVISORY GROUP (TAG)

Discuss teen library programming, collections and outreach. 4pm.

Caledon Library, 905-857-1400 x228; caledon.library.on.ca NOV 20 – DEC 23 : DOWNEY’S CHRISTMAS ON THE FARM See

Santa’s world. Fun activities, scavenger hunt, Covid-safe, private meeting with Santa. Tickets on website.

9am-5pm. Downey’s Farm Market, 13682 Heart Lake Rd, Caledon.

905-838-2990; downeysfarm.com C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 122

Farming for the Future See what grows at farms in Dufferin County.

Join us for our Farm Tour video at our Facebook Watch Party on Saturday, October 2 at 7pm or any time after that at dufferinfarmtour/watch Support local food banks during our Food Drive at locations in Orangeville and Shelburne on Saturday, October 2.

www.dufferinfarmtour.com more information at dufferinfarmtour.com I N

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Find an Advertiser C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 12 0

C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 121

r e a l e s tat e + h o me in s p e c t i o n s Bosley Real Estate 32 Velvet Alcorn Century 21 Millennium Inc. 65 . 115 Amir Mojallali Century 21Millennium Inc. 12 Mary Klein, Kaitlan Klein Chestnut Park Real Estate 97 Leah Wilkins Chestnut Park Real Estate 112 Sue Collis, Sarah MacLean Clairwood Real Estate Corporation 105 Jacqui Viaene Coldwell Banker, Ronan Realty 55 . 108 Ashlyn Trevelyan Coldwell Banker, Ronan Realty 107 Britton Ronan, Marc Ronan, Sarah Lunn Coldwell Banker, Ronan Realty 72 Colleen Kearns Coldwell Banker, Ronan Realty 112 Linda Pickering Coldwell Banker Select Realty 104 Verona Teskey Cornerstone Realty Brokerage 102 Nancy Urekar For Sale by Owner 83 Scugog, Port Perry Moffat Dunlap Real Estate 106 Moffat Dunlap, John Dunlap, Murray Snider, Nik Bonellos, Elizabeth Campbell, Courtney Murgatroyd, Sean Wynn, Mark Campbell, David Warren ReMax Hallmark Chay Realty 114 Lisa Kell ReMax In The Hills 109 Chris Richie, Sean Anderson, Dale Poremba, Jennifer Unger ReMax Real Estate Centre 114 Adrian Muscat, Charsanda Muscat ReMax Real Estate Centre 83 Ann Shanahan, Bonnie Sturgeon, Sarah Anthon ReMax Real Estate Centre 18 Radha Diaram ReMax Realty Specialists Inc. 100 Sigrid Doherty Royal LePage Credit Valley 69 Rita Lange Royal LePage Meadowtowne Realty 110 Denise Dilbey Royal LePage Meadowtowne Realty 115 Paul Richardson Royal LePage RCR Realty 26 Barwell Real Estate 122

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Royal LePage RCR Realty 111 . 115 Basia Regan Royal LePage RCR Realty 81 . 108 Doug & Chris Schild Royal LePage RCR Realty 93 Jacqueline Guagliardi Royal LePage RCR Realty 111 Matt Lindsay Royal LePage RCR Realty 112 Roger Irwin, Dawn Bennett Royal Lepage RCR Realty 95 Ross Hughes Royal LePage RCR Realty 50 . 113 Suzanne Lawrence Royal LePage RCR Realty 114 Victoria Phillips & Janna Imrie Royal Le Page RCR Realty 10 . 113 Wayne Baguley Sutton-Headwaters Realty 110 Dillon Holden Sutton-Headwaters Realty 16 . 17 Jim Wallace Sutton-Headwaters Realty 14 Sarah Aston

rv sales & service Under the Stars RV 80

s e ni o r s ’ s e r v i c e s Abbeyfield Caledon East 88 Ailsa Craig at the Village of Arbour Trails 4 Avalon Retirement Lodge 9 Headwaters Home Care 18 Lord Dufferin Centre 91

ski Hockley Valley Resort 25

t o ur i s m + t r av e l Caledon Travel 102 Canoe North Adventures 36 . 37 Central Counties Tourism 22 Orangeville BIA 46 . 47 Town of Erin 34 . 35 Town of Grand Valley 121

toy s tores Marigold’s Toys 46

outdoor SEP 25 : PREDIC TION HIKE FUNDR AISER Hikers predict their time

to complete a 7- or 20-km hike. Prizes.

Cost includes event badge, donation and administration fee. $26, register.

8:30am-2:30pm. Fung Loy Kok Taoist Tai Chi-International Centre, 248305 5 Sdrd, Mono. Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club, caledonbrucetrail.ca OC T 12 : OR ANGEVILLE & DISTRIC T HORTICULTUR AL SOCIET Y MEETING Kim Delaney speaks

on Why Seed Matters on Zoom.

7-9pm. orangevillehort.org OC T 15 – DEC 31 : ONLINE WINTER MARKETPL ACE FUNDR AISER Local

artisans donate works in various media. Proceeds to the Bruce Trail Conservancy. Contact Linda Vezina at CHBTCfundraising@gmail.com to donate. Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club, caledonbrucetrail.ca

music

Love to sing classical, contemporary and traditional music? Join us on Zoom. Free, no auditions. 7-8:30pm.

Free. Achill Choral Society, achill.ca

theatre+film OC T 13 – 31 SAME TIME, NEX T YEAR

A 25-year love affair is hilariously and touchingly played out. Sun, Wed, Thurs 2 & 8pm. Tues Fri 8pm.

Sat 7pm. Town Hall Opera House, 87 Broadway, Orangeville. 519942-3423; theatreorangeville.ca NOV 5 – 18 : OVER THE RIVER & THROUGH THE WOODS Grandparents’

schemes to entice a loving grandson to stay. Fri 8pm. Sat 2 & 8pm. Caledon Townhall Players Theatre, 18365 Hurontario St, Caledon. 519-9275460; caledontownhallplayers.com NOV 24 – DEC 12: A CHRISTMAS CAROL Watch Rob Beattie of Wingfield

SEP – NOV: MUSIC AT ROSE THEATRE

Concerts recorded on the Main Stage and broadcast online, and possible live events. See website. Rose Theatre, 1 Theatre Ln, Brampton.

905-874-2800; rosetheatre.ca

P U Z Z L I N G

NOW – NOV 17 (BIWEEKLY ON WEDNESDAYS) : ACHILL CHOR AL SOCIET Y WELCOMES NEW MEMBERS

fame effortlessly transform from Ebenezer Scrooge to the ghosts of Past, Present and Future. Sun Wed Thurs 2 & 8pm. Tues Fri 8pm. Sat 7pm. Town Hall Opera House, 87 Broadway, Orangeville. 519-9423423; theatreorangeville.ca

S O L U T I O N S

A mobile fish market Prices relate to the numerical position of the fish’s initial letter in the alphabet: W (whitefish) is 23, S (smelt) is 19, etc.

F R O M

P A G E

Sweet seven 1 — conduct 2 — torment 3 — station 4 — another 5 — overate 6 — coaster 7 — protest

Alphabet country Italy, Spain, Malta.

The letter E is superfluous.

The sock drawer You’d have to pull out 59 socks.

The first 56 could all be non-heart.

You’re awake? Then try these 1. the catcher and the umpire 2. missing you (“U”) 3. candies 4. a quarter and a dime (the other one is a dime) 5. playing chess with Kate

3

6 7

1 5 2

4

1 2 6

Coming Soon

www.dufferinmuseum.com Connect

online

with

PAMA

Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives

Explore virtual exhibitions and programs

Connect with behind-the-scenes videos

Create PAMA@Home activities

www.altonmill.ca

www.pama.peelregion.ca Katherine Takpannie, Amautik (detail), 2018.

Visit pama.peelregion.ca to learn more.

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www.redhengallery.com

frank@homeenhancers.ca

www.turkishcoffeereader.com

mcarthurbessey@gmail.com

bigsmilesmobiledh@icloud.com

info@schoolofmiracles.ca

www.pvrbeef.ca

www.centurywood.com

www.honeybeeyogastudio.ca

www.broadwayge.com

www.typeandimages.ca

karena@goodison.com

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www.donatodecor.com www.thirstylawn.ca

www.megabytememories.com

www.echohill.ca www.lindascraftique.com webdesign@echohill.ca

www.ong-biz.com/dillmanseptic

www.woolandsilkco.com www.environmentalpestcontrol.ca

pjw1211@aol.com

www.joangray.ca www.theoutsideguy.ca

www.charlesemersontreeservice.com

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a Puzzling Conclusion

BY KEN WEBER

A mobile fish market When the Toronto Grey & Bruce Railway extended its line from Orangeville to Owen Sound in 1873, a Georgian Bay fisherman rented flatcar space on the afternoon southbound freight and began operating a weekly mobile fish market using barrels of dry ice to keep his inventory fresh. On the very first run he sold out of whitefish at the Shelburne station while at Orangeville, customers bought much of the pike and pickerel. Farther south at Caledon, smelt was a big hit and at the Mono Road station several people bought lampreys.

When the train reached Bolton there was just one customer at the station. She quickly noted the names of the fish and their prices shown with the barrels and calculated that bass would be only 2 cents a pound, a real bargain, so she bought the entire stock.

How did she know the price of bass?

WHITEFISH 23¢

SMELT 19¢

PICKEREL 16¢

PIKE 16¢

LAMPREYS 12¢

Alphabet country

Sweet seven

When arranged in proper order, the string of letters below will present the names of three different European countries. Each one is a member of the European Union and each can be reached by ship on the same large and storied sea. Just to make the puzzle a bit more interesting, one letter in the string is superfluous.

Use the seven clues to find and then anagram letters in the honeycomb graph to make seven regular English words, each seven letters long. The letters used for each word must be in circles of adjacent cells, as shown in the example (the answer to Clue #1).

BASS

You’re awake?

Then try these

1

Emilio is running from home as fast as he can. He makes a sharp left turn, does it again – then again – and is suddenly confronted by two people in masks! Who are they?

2

L T I N A A M P E S T Y I L A A

What’s the affectionate message here?

ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTVWXYZ

3

The sock drawer If you know that of the eight different patterns of socks jammed into the drawer, there are exactly four pairs of each pattern including hearts, then you also know the smallest number of socks you would have to pull out of the drawer, if the room is pitch black and you wanted to be absolutely sure you have pulled at least three heart ones.

You know what these are: O T T F F And these: M T W T F These too: J F M A M What are these? M I N T S Some letters will be used in more than one word. Four letters in the honeycomb are not needed. One of them is ‘W’.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

— — — — — — —

To lead an orchestra To tease persistently A stop on the way One more Consumed excessively A small pad To express disapproval

4

You have two coins totalling 35¢.

One is not a dime.

What are the coins?

5

There are five friends in Mia’s kitchen as she makes lasagna.

Kate is playing chess and Caleb is reading while Veet watches a soap on TV. What is Perry doing?

O U R S O L U T I O N S O N PA G E 122 126

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www.orangevillefurniture.ca