Spring In The Hills 2013 by In The Hills Magazine

VOLUME 2 0 NUMBER 1 2 013

M A G A Z I N E

O F

C O U N T R Y

L I V I N G

I N

T H E

H E A D W A T E R S

R E G I O N

Quarry update:

Now what?

Irish roots Coexisting with

coyotes

Tranquil gardens

A bright future for Headwaters horses

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

R O S E T H E AT R E P R E S E N T S

YOUR ENTERTAINMENT CALENDAR APRIL 15 at 8PM Featuring four of the best stand-ups straight from the world’s largest and most prestigious comedy Festival, this hilarious “best of the fest” is a comedy knockout every time. Hosted by Darrin Rose (Mr. D, Match Game) and featuring Mark Watson (BBC), Modi (Comedy Central) and Wil Sylvince (HBO, BET).

the Mikado

APRIL 26 & 27 at 8PM

THE NEW YORK GILBERT & SULLIVAN PLAYERS presents the classic comic-operetta about a strolling minstrel who falls in love with a beautiful school girl. Trouble is, she’s already engaged to be married!

Mature themes and language.

CLASSIC ALBUMS LIVE: DAVID BOWIE APRIL 25 at 8PM

Note for Note – Cut for Cut One of rock’s seminal albums and polled as one of the Greatest Albums Of All Time David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars loosely tells the story of an imaginary rock star Ziggy Stardust who is the human manifestation of an alien being. What can we say, it was the 70s!

Season 2013

summertheatre

Pavlo

MAY 2 at 8PM

EXPERIENCE IT

jazz

Enjoy the club style atmosphere IN IO and a beverage STUD WO while you watch.

Comedy

Mixing the sounds of Greek Bouzouki with Flamenco and Latin inﬂuences has proven a winning combination for Pavlo. Complete with all brand new compositions, his latest album highlights his unmatched ability to melodically unite world instruments seamlessly into his sound, all the while staying true to his distinct Mediterranean guitar signature.

Chuck Byrn April 18 at 8pm

JUL 26-AUG 3

KETS ALL TIC

E ON SAL10 APR I L ALSO ON STAGE

Diana Panton May 3 at 8pm

JULY 4 t SPIN JULY 5-27 t 12 ANGRY MEN AUGUST 2-24 t THE MELVILLE BOYS

905.874.2800 905.874.2800 www.rosetheatre.ca www.rosetheatre.ca Follow us on Twitter @RoseTheatreBram

Become a fan facebook.com/RoseTheatreBrampton IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

Ontario Grown Goodness All Year Long! Flash frozen within hours of picking, Ontario Natural’s line of seasonal organic fruit is available in your natural and organic retailer’s freezer section. Enjoyed right out of the package or in any of your homestyle recipes, taste that “just picked” ﬂavour that only Ontario fruit offers. Choose from Ontario Organic Strawberries, Rhubarb or Saskatoon Berries in a convenient 300g re-sealable bag.

Visit OntarioNatural.ca for full product listing and great recipe ideas. 6

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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Also offering services for WALL UNITS and CLOSET ORGANIZATION

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

E D I T O R ’ S

D E S K

VO LU ME 2 0 N U M B E R 1 2 013 PUBLISHER | EDITOR

Signe Ball O P E R AT I O N S M A N A G E R

Kirsten Ball GUEST EDITOR

Dyanne Rivers

Hip, hip, Hooray! It’s been our longstanding policy here to let In The Hills stand on its own legs – to put it out there and let readers judge its worthiness for themselves. However, as we celebrate the launch of our 20th volume, we have pretty much thrown that policy out the window and allowed ourselves to indulge in some shameless self-congratulation. We introduce you to some of the very talented people “behind the pages,” with more to come as the year goes by. Courtesy of longtime contributor Jeff Rollings, we also take a rosy look back at some of the highlights of the past two decades. Those years have flown by and, in discussing them with Jeff, even I was amazed to take stock of how much has changed. However, by far the most satisfying development in the life of the magazine has been the tremendous support from our readers and advertisers. It’s their ongoing enthusiasm that makes us confident the magazine has indeed woven its way into the cultural fabric of the community. As Jeff notes, there really must have been something in the water in the mid-90s. Our first issue featured a story about two new cultural institutions, Dufferin County Museum and Archives and Theatre Orangeville. And later this year, we’ll all be celebrating our 20th season together over a special weekend of exhibits and activities at the museum. But it wasn’t just the three of us who were getting started back then. Dufferin Arts Council celebrated its 20th last year. Headwaters Country Tourism Association, as it was then called, had just been founded, as had Caledon Countryside Alliance. The Headwaters Arts Festival followed in 1996, and at about the same time, the Grant brothers were beginning to formulate plans to turn the Alton Mill into an arts centre. Fundraising was already under way for a new hospital, and in 1997 Headwaters Health Care Centre opened its doors. Every one of those organizations and others have had a tremendous impact on life in the hills, and we are proud to have grown up in concert with them. On a more personal note: In his retrospective, Jeff makes much of my role in the magazine. However, as we prepared this anniversary issue, life threw my family a serious curve, and I was largely hors de combat through the production cycle. In my absence, the In The Hills team stepped forward and pulled the issue together. Their extraordinary effort, willingness and unwavering professionalism are by far the greatest strength of the magazine, and I am deeply grateful and indebted to every one of them.

EDITORIAL

Ellen Cameron | Rosemary Hasner Robert McCaw | Pete Paterson Ron Pitts | Pam Purves Wendy Webb Photography I L L U S T R AT I O N

Shelagh Armstrong | Jim Stewart DESIGN | ART DIRECTION

Kim van Oosterom Wallﬂower Design ADVERTISING SALES

Sarah Aston | Roberta Fracassi ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

Marion Hodgson Type & Images EVENTS & COPY EDITOR

Janet Dimond WEB MANAGERS

inthehills.ca l foodinthehills.ca Valerie Jones, Echohill Web Sites kidsinthehills.ca Bethany Lee, Focus on Media Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/InTheHills Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/inthehillsmag COVER

Ardmore Gwyneth (Jean Watson, owner) at Blithe Hill Nurseries by Ellen Cameron — In the Hills is published four times a year 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. Subscriptions outside the distribution area are $22.6o per year (including hst). Letters to the editor are welcome. For information regarding editorial, advertising, or subscriptions: PHONE E-MAIL FA X

519-942-8401

info@inthehills.ca 519-940-9266

MonoLog Communications Inc. R.R.1 Orangeville ON L9W 2Y8

www.inthehills.ca — The advertising deadline for the Summer (June) issue is May 10, 2013.

We acknowledge the assistance of the OMDC Magazine Fund, an initiative of Ontario Media Development Corporation. 8

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

I N

T H I S

I S S U E F E A T U R E S 20 A LETTER TO OUR EDITOR

80 DANCES WITH COYOTES

In The Hills celebrates 20 years by Jeff Rollings

Our love-hate relationship by Don Scallen

26 BEHIND THE PAGES D E P A R T M E N T S 12

Bob Cook’s great escapes by Ken Weber

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

68 HOMEGROWN IN THE HILLS

Pommies dry cider by Nicola Ross

Ellen Cameron 70 GOOD SPORT 16

MUST DO

Our favourite picks for spring

40 HIGH ON HORSES

Chicken for dinner by Dan Needles

LETTERS

Our readers write

32 THE QUARRY BATTLE SHIFTS GEAR 40

FENCE POSTS

60 HISTORIC HILLS

Proﬁles of our contributors by Jeff Rollings

Seeking permanent protection for farmland by Tim Shuff

Headwaters saddles up for the Pan Am Games by Nicola Ross

Endurance riding by Nicola Ross 72 AT HOME IN THE HILLS

A home for eclectic art by Pam Purves

49 SPRING’S WILD BEAUTIES

Early woodland ﬂowers by Don Scallen

78 HEADWATERS NEST

Shining a light on mental health by Bethany Lee

49 56 SOOTHING THE SENSES

Sensory gardens reduce stress by Michele Green

92 WHAT’S ON IN THE HILLS

A calendar of spring happenings 102 A PUZZLING CONCLUSION

62 ULSTER BOUND

by Ken Weber

Exploring Caledon’s Irish roots by Liz Beatty

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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M E M O R I A M

PHOTO GILLIAN GAUTHIER

I N

Christine Thomas Christine Thomas, who contributed her delightfully idiosyncratic blog “Red Squirrel Musings” to In The Hills’ website, died on February 22 after a brief bout with cancer. Christine had an enormous and generous spirit that she put to work tirelessly on behalf of her community, and she will be deeply missed. A tribute to Christine by her friend and neighbour Laurie May is précised below. The full tribute can be read, along with comments from others who knew her, at inthehills.ca/blogs/red-squirrel-musings.

hristine was the pulse of our Mono neighbourhood. She was the Diva of the Town Line (by her own description). She was the one who made everything happen, the one who made the mundane into an adventure. She was a chef-caterer-baker-party planner, and organizer. If there was an event going on in our neighbourhood, she was the one who tirelessly planned and executed it. A female Dr. Doolittle, she was always surrounded by an ever-changing brood of dogs and cats, both her own and the many additional pets she welcomed into her home – and she loved them all. When Christine learned about an opportunity to go to Afghanistan, she was excited and intrigued. Volunteers were being recruited to work at Tim Hortons at Kandahar Air Field. While she was away, she wrote about her experience. She did not write about bombs and jets and gunfire and helicopters. Her news was always about her personal experiences and the many people she met and befriended. She would talk about her bunk mates and the weather and the food. She would talk about how it felt to be the oldest and slowest server behind the counter. She would talk about the dog that hung around the base. Her reports were always full of optimism and humour. Christine’s last “work for hire” was as co-ordinator for the Orangeville Fair. She was truly in her element as she worked alongside animals, farmers, exhibitors and volunteers. In her December blog, she enthusiastically reported, “I have already started planning for next year and can hardly wait.” Little did she know when she typed those words that she would not be returning to the job she loved so much. Christine didn’t have time for long goodbyes. Her husband Wendall told me she would not have wanted them anyway. She was a Hello person, not a Goodbye person. She wanted people to remember her for the way she had lived. I will always remember her for her eclectic and wild sense of fun, her willingness to try new challenges, her carefree laughter, her wild mane of hair, and her huge smile. ≈

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

L E T T E R S

Saving thethat land feeds us 905-584-0234 1-888-667-8299 www.remax-inthehills-on.com

* Chris P. Richie Broker of Record/Owner

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” These words, attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead, capture the power citizens used at Soupstock in October to help stop the Melancthon mega quarry. Thanks to their support and the tireless efforts of so many volunteers, we’re now in the history books as Canada’s largest culinary protest! It was a strong message to The Highland Companies that urbanites stand in solidarity with the farmers of Ontario. Soupstock showed the company that a movement was gaining momentum, but no one predicted they would raise the white flag in defeat a month later. Although we celebrate this victory, the Ontario government must seize this call to overhaul its policies for aggregate mining. No community should have to fight so hard to ensure that prime farmland and valuable nature aren’t sacrificed to the interests of big business. Proceeds from Soupstock will fund the fight to keep proposals like this from being considered in the first place. We believe it is our responsibility, as ambassadors of the future, to work to protect our shared resources. We cannot afford to lose our precious agricultural land, water and endangered species or allow the destruction of our fragile watersheds. We will dedicate our net revenue to help continue the battle to “save the land that feeds us.” Michael Stadtländer, President, Canadian Chefs’ Congress David Suzuki, Co-founder, David Suzuki Foundation

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The day In The Hills is delivered to my mailbox is the day the chore list goes unheeded. Every issue is brimming with articles I didn’t even know I was interested in. However, the winter issue topped the stack. The “special people,” authors and event information are all described in such talented, articulate writing. Thank you for bringing to our attention the unbelievable abundance of gifted people with whom we share this area. Jane Pady, Mono

ONLINE IN THE HILLS We welcome your comments! For more commentary from our readers, or to add your own thoughts on any 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.

k Negotiated 100 successful sides in 2012. That’s an average of one SOLD every 3.65 days!

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

A R T I S T

I N

R E S I D E N C E

clockwise from top Indomitable Spirit Into the Light Bound for Glory Seraﬁna’s First Sunrise Soul of the Horse

Ellen Cameron As long as she can remember, Hockley Valley photographer Ellen Cameron has been fascinated by the challenge of capturing the majesty, power and grace of horses in drawing and painting. With a degree in ﬁne art, the former potter and sketch artist now travels with a camera as her constant companion, a tool that more readily allows her to record the subtleties of horses’ actions and interactions. “I seek to convey the remarkable spirit of the horse, with all its strength and its seemingly contradictory fragility.” In addition to this page, Ellen’s work is featured on our cover and with the story “High on Horses.” muirfarm@hotmail.com IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

must do

A highly selective guide to the picks of the season.

must

taste

Whether you’re an oenologist, an oenophile or someone who just likes to try a new wine from time to time, Wines of the World is an opportunity to taste more than 60 vintages from various countries. Selected by Steve Thurlow, senior editor of Wine Access magazine, the wines are priced for daily consumption and most are available through LCBO stores. Sponsored by the Palgrave Rotary Club, with proceeds to community projects, the event takes place on the evening of June 7 at the Caledon Equestrian Park. Tickets are $40 each and include wine, beer and cider, as well as a variety of ﬁnger foods. And volunteers with Home James, the designated driver service, will offer a ride home – in your own car. For information, go to rotaryclubofpalgrave.com or call 905-583-0200.

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

… on a rain barrel. But not just any old rain barrel. These rain barrels have been transformed from drab to dramatic by local artists and elementary students who have teamed up with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and ecoCaledon to auction some of their funkily functional art installations for home gardens. The auction is part of the Annual Artists’ Rain Barrel Collection & Water Conservation Campaign, which launches May 15 and winds up at Caledon Day on Saturday, June 15. During this month-long community challenge to conserve water, you can bid online to win a favourite painted

must

bid

barrel for your own garden. Auction proceeds support ecoCaledon’s education and scholarship programs. You can also join the challenge by sharing your own water conservation strategies on Facebook and Twitter, or by buying and painting your own rain barrel – and saving water

explore

all summer. To ﬁnd out more, go to trca. on.ca/rainbarrelcontest. You’ll ﬁnd instructions for creating your own painted barrel, locations where the painted barrels are displayed, auction details, and tips for things you and your family can do to help make the campaign a success.

The stories of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people who have called, and continue to call, Peel Region home are honoured at a permanent exhibition launched in February by the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA). Through personal tales, music and art, We Are Here – The Story of Aboriginal People in Peel Region introduces visitors to the history, traditions and beliefs of the area’s Aboriginal people. During your visit take time to explore some of PAMA’s other fascinating exhibits, as well as the art gallery and the complex of historic buildings that house the facility. These buildings, some old and some not so old, have their own compelling stories to tell. PAMA is located at 9 Wellington Street in downtown Brampton. For information, see pama.peelregion.ca.

Give your funny bone a workout and help celebrate the 100th anniversary of Headwaters Health Care Centre by booking your tickets to see award-winning comedian Steve Patterson, host of CBC Radio’s The Debaters, on Saturday, April 27, at the Orangeville Fairgrounds. Patterson is headlining the festivities at this year’s Celebrate! Dinner and Auction organized by the Headwaters Health Care Foundation to support its Commitment to Care Campaign. Funds raised are earmarked to expand existing services, replace aging equipment and add new medical services. The evening will also feature music by singer and songwriter Matt Dean, food stations stocked by Gourmandissimo, an open bar, a martini bar and an oyster bar, as well as live and silent auctions. To get yourself in the mood, go to inthehills.ca and follow the behind-the-scenes blog about activities leading up to the gala. And to ﬁnd out how to join the fun, visit the foundation’s website, hhcfoundation.com.

must

tune up

M c K EN N A P H O T O G R A P H Y

laugh

I L L U S T R AT I O N J I M S T E WA R T

must

There will be music in the air this May when Westminster United Church hosts the 16th annual Orangeville and District Music Festival. From May 6 to 8, young singers and musicians will tune their instruments and showcase their talents in a non-competitive adjudication, and on the evening of May 27 selected performers will present a gala concert. To ﬁnd out more about this great opportunity to watch aspiring young artists perform, visit the festival website, odmf.ca.

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

QUAINT SHOPS • ANTIQUES • ART • LITERATURE • BAKING • HOME DÉCOR • DINING

Holtom’s Bakery

Décor Solutions Furniture & Design A one-stop shopping resource for all your home decorating needs. Window coverings, area rugs, furniture, accessories, bedding and reupholstery. In-home & In-store consultations. 92 Main Street 519.833.2141 www.decorsolutions.ca

Hannah’s Celebrating 20 years as your “head to toe” clothing source in the Hills of Headwaters. A treasure trove of lovely things that are sure to delight for ladies & gentlemen. Friendly courteous service and wardrobe building are our specialty. Open 7 Days a week 116 Main Street 519.833.2770 www.hannahs.ca 18

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

Credit River Motor Co. Your dealership alternative. Credit River Motor Company is the stress free way, to care for your vehicle! Horse Trailer inspections & repairs. 97 Main Street 519.833.0001 www.creditrivermotorco.com

The Way We Were The Way we Were is an upscale boutique featuring New and Consigned ladies clothing, accessories, jewellery, vintage and more. 126 Main Street 519.833.0336 www.thewaywewere.ca

The Weathervane An ever-changing, vibrant mix of the latest casual and contemporary home accessories to transform your house into a home - both indoors and out. Imaginative gifts for life’s many special celebrations. Come be inspired... 74 Main Street 519.833.2596 www.theweathervane.ca

Renaissance Canadian designer jewellery; sterling, Swarovski and pearls, antique jewellery and furniture; mirrors and crystal; lotions, potions and a large selection of candles, Lampe Berger plus so much more! 60 Main Street 519.833.0872 www.renaissance-erin.com

Come Visit Us Soon! www.villageoferin.ca

Baked Fresh daily with our secret family recipes! • Whole Grain Breads and Rolls • Sweet and Savory Pies • Pizza and Sandwiches • Coffee and Doughnuts • Birthday Cakes and Seasonal Treats "Follow your nose for fresh, fabulous baking" Downtown Erin Tues-Sun 519-833-2326

Devonshire Guest House & Spa Experience the gracious ambience of this beautifully restored heritage home, set amongst lush perennial gardens. Enjoy luxurious sleep in spacious guest rooms. Start the day with a scrumptious breakfast. Indulge yourself with treatments in the elegant full service Spa. #3 Union Street 519.833.2187 www.devonshireguesthouse.ca

F E N C E

P O S T S

by Dan Needles

I L L U S T R AT I O N S H EL A G H A R M S T R O N G

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

Chicken for dinner

he other night my wife and I went out to a dinner party. On the doorstep she paused, took my arm and said quietly in my ear, “Try not to talk about your chickens too much tonight, will you?” I said, “Why not? Compared to gravel pits, wind farms and children, I thought they were a pretty safe subject.” “In your hands chickens are not a safe subject.” I suppose she has a point. Chickens have been an obsession of mine since I was eight years old. On our farm, my brothers and I raised meat birds and laying hens to feed the family and sell to the neighbours. I gave them up when I moved to the city to start a career, but when I bought my little farm and moved back here to raise a family, the first thing I did was build a henhouse. Every spring I incubated a new batch of chicks, combing through the classified section of the Feather Fancier to find exotic breeds. Chickens are a bit like stamp collecting because their names reflect the countries they come from. Every chicken is descended from African jungle fowl originally, but ships and sailors over thousands of years have carried them to every corner of the globe. In my time I’ve kept Spanish Minorcas, Araucanas from the mountains of Chile, Black Javas from Indonesia, Polish mopheads, Nanking bantams from China, game birds from India, Canada’s own Chantecler, and many others. When the days get warmer I move my birds into portable pasture huts that I drag to new ground every day so the birds can feed on fresh clovers,

trefoil, worms and bugs. Because they live in the sunshine and get dollops of fish meal and flaxseed added to their grain, the eggs and meat are jammed full of Omega 3s and… But there, I’m talking too much about my chickens again. It’s hard not to because they are addictive. The other reason I like them is because all you have to do is look at a chicken and you begin to understand how the world works. (And that’s another reason we go to dinner parties, isn’t it?)

We are a brotherhood with a secret handshake and decoder rings. We labour in solitude like medieval Irish monks in lonely outposts. An old farmer once said to me, “There’s no money ever came out of a henhouse. Every chicken I know died in debt.” That might have been true in his day, but since then the chicken industry has exploded to become one of the most quietly profitable sectors in agriculture. Today the revenue from the global chicken industry rivals what the United States spends on defence. And the genetics of the world’s broiler industry are now controlled by three multinational corporations. They only produce one breed now, a hybrid built by a committee working

behind closed doors for more than half a century. Forty billion of these mystery chickens passed through the world’s food system last year. In Canada, the industry jealously guards the keys to the fortress. I am allowed to grow a small number for my own use, but if I tried to sell the eggs or the broilers in any quantity, I would be visited by a chicken policeman in a big black Ford. You’d think by now the multinationals would be too big to worry about a playwright with a henhouse and 14 hens. But you’d be wrong. Big business has learned to be very wary of writers. I once sat beside the leader of the chicken farmers at an industry banquet and I pointed out to him that he already controlled 99.3 per cent of the chickens in the country. “Do you really need every single last chicken?” I asked. In a very genial and pleasant way he replied, yes, that is what he needed. Being a dangerous radical by nature, I continue with my henhouse and my pasture-hut chickens and my exotic breeds. I drive through the dead of night to get a space on the Mount Forest racetrack for the Fur and Feather show every spring. I meet fellow fanciers in Tim Hortons’ parking lots and furtively exchange cash for paper bags full of hatching eggs. We are a brotherhood with a secret handshake and decoder rings. We labour in solitude like medieval Irish monks in lonely outposts, copying out the sacred texts so they will not be lost in a godless era… But there, that’s enough about my chickens. How are the children? Doing well, are they? ≈

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

a Greater

Conversation A letter to our editor on 20 years of In The Hills

BY JEFF R O L L IN GS

t’s depressing” was publisher/editor Signe Ball’s typically wry comment as she gave me 80 copies of In The Hills – one of each issue ever produced – to prepare this retrospective. “Twenty years of my life, and it all fits in two shopping bags.” Well, Signe, to begin with, they’re big shopping bags. Beyond that, looking back over 80 issues of In The Hills, I can confi rm that the sum total of your last two decades is worth far more, as the saying goes, than the paper it’s written on. That fact was plainly obvious right from the start. Early reader Anna Marie Holtom wrote, “In my opinion, this is the best magazine this community has ever had the privilege of receiving. It is well written, informative, interesting, up-to-date, attractive and just plain great. I look forward to receiving each issue and read it cover to cover.” Although these sentiments have been repeated over and over again in the years since, Signe notes they are not something she ever tires of hearing. In fact, the enthusiasm of its readers is the animating spirit of the magazine. In an era when newspapers are being shuttered around the globe, and despite the oft-repeated claim that “print is dead,” In The Hills has not only survived, but prospered. Indeed, it has done more than that. Several other regional magazines have 20

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

since popped up around southern Ontario bearing a striking resemblance to the quarterly format that In The Hills pioneered. Another measure of In The Hills’ success lies in the talented team of writers, artists, photographers, designers and advertising professionals – almost all of them local residents – who year in and year out are responsible for the compelling content of a publication that can be compared confidently to any of the offerings from the glass and chrome towers in the Big Smoke. That inaugural issue, nervously sent out into the world in the spring of 1994, was a slim 24 pages – this issue is over 100 – and nearly all the ads were black and white, but it had an immediate impact. Advertisers began calling the day it hit the street, and a surprising number of those who took a chance on that first issue still regularly appear in the magazine, including some who have never missed an issue. As realtor and long-time advertiser Jamie Gairdner recently put it, “I can’t possibly think of another magazine that has the shelf life that In The Hills does. The articles are interesting, people want to read them, and so do the friends who come to visit them.”

The Three Amigos of Arts and Culture There must have been something in the water in the early ’90s. That first issue of In The Hills in 1994 included a feature about the launch of Dufferin County Museum and Archives as well as Theatre Orangeville. Since then the trio have all found a place in the cultural mainstream of the community – and have remained fast friends. Indeed, this fall all three will come together to mark their two decades joint ly at a weekend-long celebration at the museum during Headwaters Arts Festival. (As it happens, Signe co-founded the festival, and the magazine has continued to be a major sponsor.) Since that fi rst issue, coverage of local arts and culture has remained an essential editorial focus of In The Hills. Over the years, more than 250 local artists have been featured in some way in the magazine’s pages. And beyond visual arts, there has been ample coverage of music, dance, theatre, fi lm and literature. Tracey Fockler’s annual review of new books published by local authors continues to keep us abreast of what our neighbours are writing, and Lisa Watson’s annual review of new tunes by local musicians keeps us listening. As Signe says, “It’s been said so often, it may sound trite, but the truth is the arts do represent the soul

of the community, and give us a different, more expansive way of seeing and interpreting our world.”

Captives on the Carousel of Time Paying tribute to the region’s heritage has also been an editorial priority for In The Hills. “Since I began publishing the magazine 20 years ago, the population of Headwaters has nearly doubled,” Signe says. “So that means about 50 per cent of the population are relative newcomers, most of whom have made an active lifestyle decision to come here, often in search of a life more rooted in a smaller community and the natural landscape. As part of that, they seem to have a more insatiable appetite for the history of the place than many of those who have lived here longer.” Most of that history is delivered via Ken Weber’s “Historic Hills.” Ken first contributed a story in the summer of 1996, describing how the birth of Canada was celebrated in the hills – and that was the start of what has become the magazine’s longest-running regular column. He has written more than 60 of them, covering everything from a bank robbery gone awry in Shelburne, to the introduction of the first automobiles, to the day Tom Longboat raced in Erin. Ken also contributes the back page puzzles

that keep us all guessing. Among the feature stories on area history was one I wrote in 2009, marking 50 years since the cancellation of the Avro Arrow and the devastating impact that had on the many residents of the hills who worked on the project. That story garnered more response from readers than any I’ve done in eight years with the magazine, and I admit I was astounded to discover that, even five decades later, the pain of that fateful decision is still very much alive.

Amorous Amphibians, and Other Earthy Matters No subject has received as much ink in this magazine as the environment. “The trees, the hills, the wildlife, the water, the meadows and the farm fields, they are the very reasons most of us choose to live here,” Signe says. “And from day one, In The Hills has been unapologetically biased in favour of preserving and protecting them.” The magazine’s first story on concerns surrounding aggregate mining appeared in 1997. It was written by biologist Nicola Ross, who went on to cover a variety of environmental issues, often bringing a local perspective to global concerns. In 1998 she wrote a story called “The Borders of Paradise”

about the conflict between rural values and urban sprawl. In 1999 her topic was about rethinking the concept that growth necessarily equals prosperity. A witty quip by former Mono mayor John Creelman still strikes a chord: “Quality of life is not necessarily measured by the size of your sewage system.” Nicola’s story in the fall 2001 issue called “Reducing Caledon’s Ecological Footprint” won a Silver National Magazine Award. And, although it’s hard to believe now, her 2002 story on local evidence of climate change was written before “climate change” had entered the everyday vernacular – so her story took pains to defi ne it, along with such terms as “global warming” and “greenhouse effect.” Nicola continues to contribute to In The Hills, including two regular columns, “Good Sport” and “Homegrown in the Hills.” However, in recent years, Tim Shuff has picked up the aggregates beat and his thorough, ongoing coverage of the Melancthon quarry became the go-to reference material in the ultimately successful fight to have the proposal quashed. (This issue includes his latest update on the quarry battle.) Other environmental topics tackled by Nicola, Tim and other writers have ranged from perceived continued on next page IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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20 years continued from page 21

Getting Down to Business

biases at the Ontario Municipal Board, the local impact of such legislation as the Greenbelt and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, to ongoing coverage of such subjects as water, garbage and traffic. But not all the magazine’s environmental coverage has been driven by dire issues. On the lighter side, for example, there was a 2000 story called “An Ex-urbanite’s Guide to Field Crops,” written to give newcomers something to talk about with their farmer neighbours “after you’ve established that it looks like rain.” In fact, the community’s agricultural roots have been featured regularly, including a 2005 issue almost entirely devoted to the topic, and Nicola’s “Homegrown” column which profi les a local producer in every issue. Among my favourite environmental stories are naturalist Don Scallen’s regular dispatches from the wilds of our countryside. He’s covered all creatures great and small, both flora and fauna, from beavers to snakes, and from cougars (really?) to moths. I particularly enjoyed his salacious look at the love lives of salamanders in the spring 2004 issue. Don is back this issue with two features, on the disparate topics of spring ephemerals and coyotes.

A strong supporter of local independent business, In The Hills frequently covers trends in the local economy that reveal some broader understanding of the enterprise that sustains our community. The fi rst such foray, in the summer of 1994, was a story about home-based businesses, and how local entrepreneurs were using their “microcomputers” and a newfang led invention called “telecomputing.” Mulmur businessman Jim Lorriman anticipated a day when images would be sent through a modem, and “virtually the entire transaction will be accomplished in ‘high-tech style.’” Readers were sagely advised to try connecting to a local bulletin board before “tackling the Internet.” Eventually we all logged on, and In The Hills was no exception. These days, inthehills.ca is not only a place to find stories that have appeared in print, it also has web-exclusive content, and provides an easy place to comment on what you’ve read. And the online calendar is the region’s most comprehensive source of local events. The magazine has looked at the industrial growth in Orangeville, multigenerational family businesses, the role of general stores, tips on establishing a country career, and in a recent issue, the women who have taken over downtown retail.

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Much of its business coverage has focused on agriculture and food. That topic is so broad and integral to the region that in 2011, Food In The Hills was launched as a sister publication entirely devoted to all the best about local food, including who grows it, who serves it, where to buy it and how to cook it. Of the local movement that inspired the new magazine, Signe says, “Not since feminism has there been such a widespread grassroots movement with the potential to change the way we live our lives in such an intimate way. It intersects our own health and the health of the planet in a very personal place, at our kitchen tables. And it opens possibilities to put small-scale farming back at the centre of the local economy as it once was. Plus, the best part really, it’s so much fun.”

The Good, Bad and Ugly Reading through Signe’s editorials over the years, I’m struck by the dogged determination with which the magazine remains devoted to preserving our rural lifestyle and sense of community. While it’s true that our culture, history, environment and businesses are all part of that, really it’s about the people. As one subscriber said, “In the Hills has become must reading for everyone in this area. It has brought us together, and deepened our appreciation of living in this part of Ontario. Love

it!” (Signe particularly treasures that comment, not only for the sentiment, but because it came from Michael de Pencier. The former publisher of Toronto Life was Signe’s boss a long, long time ago when she was still very wet behind the editorial ears.) That sense of community has been expressed in many, many different ways in these pages, from glimpses into the lives of the rich and famous who reside here, such as Norman Jewison and Terry O’Reilly, to homages to the everyday folks who keep our lives ticking, like snowplow operators, school bus drivers and volunteer firefighters. But perhaps the best example of all that is the local heroes series. Over the last five years it has been my honour to serve as lead writer for the profi les of more than 50 extraordinary people, and several groups, who have all made a significant contribution to this place we call home. They represent a collection of talent, courage, determination and commitment that can take your breath away. And while their activities are as varied as humanity itself, they share the common purpose of making Headwaters a better place. At the same time, while many socalled “lifestyle” magazines shy away from anything less than positive, In The Hills has no qualms about tackling stories with darker undertones. continued on next page

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“In The Hills is in many ways a celebration of the best things about living here,” Signe says, “but our community is as rich and complex as any other. And that means it’s not perfect, so we also want to examine the things that concern us.” So the magazine has covered hunger and homelessness and the lack of mental health care. And it has reflected on the struggles of single parents and youth living on the street, and explored endof-life issues and hospice care. “In this seemingly bucolic setting, so many social ills can be easily hidden and ignored,” Signe says, “and those who suffer from them are often even more isolated and alone than they might be elsewhere. They are important stories to tell if we want an honest picture of life here.”

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Adlai Stevenson said, “An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.” Well, that’s not the case with In The Hills, and Signe, all of us involved with the magazine owe you a debt of gratitude for your tough editorial love. I like to tell the tale of an email you once sent me in response to a piece I submitted. The email was a concise review of my story. It read, “A lot of wind, not much content.” I threw the whole thing out and started over.

Some may think that review was harsh, but as a writer it’s very freeing to know that you’re there as a safety net, preventing me from making an ass of myself. It gives me confidence and makes me better at my craft. All of us who contribute, one way or another, are reassured by that knowledge, and it ups our creative game. Everyone, especially readers, benefits as a result. Photographer Pete Paterson points out something else your little magazine has done. “I thank Signe all the time for giving me so many opportunities to get to know the community in ways that never would have happened without In The Hills,” he told me recently. “She has enriched my life so much.” And as reader Clare Booker of Erin summarized it in a letter a few issues ago, “In The Hills is consistently thoughtful, relevant, beautiful, informative and ahead of its time. Fantastic leadership and vision, and a commitment to our global community.” Amen. So there’s just a small sampling of what’s contained in those two shopping bags, Signe. It’s much more than a few sheets of paper. They’re stuffed full with a greater conversation, representing nothing less than the lifeblood of the community. And that’s just what a good magazine should be. Jeff Rollings writes gushing tributes to his embarrassed editor at his home in downtown Orangeville.

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SigneBall

behindthepages BY JEFF R O L L IN GS

For 20 years, In The Hills has worked hard to reflect and elaborate on all the things that make living in Headwaters such a rich experience. Sometimes the stories make you smile, sometimes they bring a tear to the eye, and sometimes they’re provocative, but they always showcase the work of the most talented writers, artists, photographers and publishing professionals the region has to offer. As part of our anniversary celebrations, each issue this year will feature profiles of those who make up the In The Hills family. It’s a chance to learn a

TimShuff

DouglasPearce

little more about the people behind the pages.

Publisher and editor of In The Hills, Signe began her career writing and editing for newspapers and magazines, later spending several years in corporate communications. Since launching “the mag” in 1994, Signe has made it her mission to strengthen and promote the region’s rural lifestyle and culture, serving several terms on the board of the Headwaters Tourism Association, co-founding the Headwaters Arts Festival and Mono’s Big Day Out, and passionately working to ensure In The Hills captures what readers feel is important about living here. In 2011 she launched a twice-yearly sister publication, Food In The Hills. Eternally modest, she deﬁnes her role as chief window washer, but we know better.

Tim shatters stereotypes. Holder of no less than four university degrees, his publishing credits include The Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, and a wide assortment of outdoor recreation and environment magazines, in addition to his thoughtful contributions to In The Hills. At the same time he is anything but a sedate academic. Saying, “I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I hate sitting at a desk,” his day job is as a Mississauga firefighter. He once spent 80 days kayaking from Prince Rupert to Victoria B.C., and last year raced the Ironman in Mont Tremblant, Quebec, finishing in an impressive 11 hours, 10 minutes.

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

Doug holds a PhD in experimental psychology, specializing in visual perception, and had a 30-year career with the Department of National Defence. Drawn from his prodigious reading, his column “Countryside Digest” features excerpts meant to amuse, annoy, alarm and sometimes puzzle readers on a wide range of topics, including country life, farming and food. Normally stoic and rational, he’s been known to get hot under the collar on the topic of climate change. Domestic partner of publisher Signe Ball, Doug can be found indulging his passion for genealogy, New York Times puzzles and Guardian cryptic crosswords at their farm in Mono. Doug was ill this spring and “Countryside Digest” is absent from these pages for the ﬁrst time in 11 years – with apologies to those readers who say it is always the ﬁrst thing they turn to.

KimvanOosterom The first remark we often hear about In The Hills is “It’s so beautiful!” – and a lot of that is down to Kim van Oosterom. Kim has been practising graphic design for almost 20 years, the past six through her own company, Wallflower Design. She has been the designer/art director for In The Hills since the spring 1999 issue. She recalls it featured ferns, and says, “Every issue is a joy to work on, but you always remember your first!” Kim lives in East York, and relishes forays into the world with husband Andrew, most recently to Buenos Aires. She has a longheld dream to be a passenger on a trans-Atlantic freighter, and closer to home can be found geocaching – treasure hunting via GPS.

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PetePaterson Over a career spanning 45 years, Pete has photographed everything from cars to fancy office furniture, famous people to fashion, even exotic chickens. His ﬁrst assignment for In The Hills in 1998 was for a story about designer cattle. Though Pete often thanks publisher/editor Signe Ball for exposing him to the community in a way he wouldn’t have experienced without In The Hills, we at the magazine thank him for bringing stories to life with his vivid images. Pete lives in Caledon, and is an avid volunteer with Theatre Orangeville, Caledon Community Living, Headwaters Health Care Centre, Headwaters Human Library and the camera club at Community Living Dufferin. continued on next page IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

KirstenBall DonScallen

As In The Hills’ operations manager, Kirsten says one of her key roles is that of sounding board for editor/publisher/mother Signe Ball. The rest of us might argue her most critical role is that of cheque writer. With a degree in architecture, Kirsten spent 15 years in commercial design and construction in Toronto. She left that world in 2004, returning to her rural roots to have daughter Kate and join the In The Hills team. Kirsten enjoys travelling, but most of the time she can be found in Mono, riding horses or participating on Mono’s Heritage Committee. She also enjoys working on personal design projects such as the recent residential conversion of the old Burns United Church in Mono Centre.

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Both as In The Hills’ nature guy and as an elementary school science teacher, Don shares his deep love of all things wild. His elegant writing speaks not only to the wonders of the natural world, but also of the threats we impose upon it. An avid kayaker, he has paddled the entire Grand River from Kitchener to Lake Erie, and all the marshes, river mouths and embayments from the Niagara River to Presqu’ile Provincial Park on Lake Ontario. While he is passionate about anything that ﬂies, crawls, swims or photosynthesizes, Don claims a particular afﬁnity for the romantic proclivities of moths, and for caterpillar wrangling.

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Art Galleries Academic, author, historian and public speaker, Ken Weber has achieved much in his 72 years. As a professor at the University of Toronto he focused on special education, and many of the textbooks he wrote on the subject remain in use in over 60 countries. He is perhaps best known, however, for his Five Minute Mysteries series, which has sold more than ﬁve million copies and landed on bestseller lists around the world. Beyond bringing local history to life in the pages of In The Hills, Ken also offers talks on Canadian history to community groups. And if that weren’t enough, his back page feature in the magazine, “A Puzzling Conclusion,” is hugely popular with readers and used by teachers in their classrooms.

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DanNeedles Raised in the hills of Mono near Rosemont, Dan Needles is the playwright who gave us the story of stockbroker-turned-farmer Walt Wingﬁeld and all the two- and four-footed characters of mythical Persephone Township. A one-time editor of The Free Press & Economist newspaper in Shelburne, he won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2003 for his book With Axe and Flask: The History of Persephone Township from PreCambrian Times to the Present. Dan’s latest play The Team on the Hill debuts at Theatre Orangeville on May 10 and tells about a farm family wrestling with the future of their 200-acre farm. His plays and books examine life at the edge, where city and country meet. continued on next page IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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A one-time student of Northrop Frye, Liz Beatty is today a writer, media consultant and travel photographer. She is a regular contributor to National Geographic Traveler and has also appeared in Toronto Life. Her In The Hills stories aim to forward her own experience with the magazine when she ﬁrst moved here, providing an introduction to the “people and places I’d probably want to know in a warm, human, authentic way.” She shares her home in Brimstone near the Forks of the Credit – a location she describes as “at once totally inconvenient and utterly glorious” – with husband Tim, two sons and a pair of basset hounds. ≈

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Before the fight to stop the mega quarry attracted national attention, it began in local farm kitchens such as the Armstrongsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Now snug in his motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arms at the table with three generations of his family, baby Derek attended his first anti-quarry rally when he was just three weeks old. He is the latest addition to a family that first tilled soil in the area in 1853, and he represents the hope for the future as his grandfather Ralph Armstrong and other activists turn their attention beyond Melancthon to secure permanent protection for prime farmland and source water for Derek and generations to follow.

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With the mega quarry shelved, opponents say they’ll keep fighting until they get permanent protection for farmland in Ontario

P H O T O P E T E PAT ER S O N

BY T IM S H U FF

Clockwise from left: Kate Martin with Derek (at six weeks), Steve Martin, Mike Watson, Peter Watson (5), Nicholas Watson (1o), Ralph Armstrong, Mary Lynne Armstrong, Anna Armstrong, Margaret Armstrong, Sarah Watson

n a cold February evening in Honey wood, at the Taters Not Craters party held to celebrate the demise of the mega quarry, a cheer erupts when threeweek-old Derek Martin is held aloft like a newborn king. As the grandson of Redickville farmers Ralph and Mary Lynne Armstrong, tiny Derek represents the seventh generation of the family who took up farming here in 1853. The Armstrongs were among the original few farmers bordering the proposed Melancthon mega quarry who refused to sell to The Highland Companies and formed the North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce (NDACT) to oppose it, trading lottery-sized buyouts for a new life of activism. So it’s fitting that the family’s newest member should be here, to celebrate the protection of his home turf and water. On November 21 The Highland Companies, with little explanation or fanfare, withdrew its application to build a 2,316-acre quarry in Melancthon and cancelled its ambitions to rebu i ld t he ra i lway bet ween Orangeville and Owen Sound, noting there was insufficient community and government support to continue. A significant understatement, considering that just a month earlier the

Soupstock anti-quarry protest at a public park in Toronto had drawn a crowd 40,000 strong. Highland’s final tweet, October 19, was “We’re listening, Soupstock attendees.” But nobody expected the announcement that the quarry was dead, or the news that John Lowndes, the engineer from Alton who had launched the scheme, was fi nished with the company. The company hastily unplugged its PR machine, pulling down its Melancthon Quarry website and replacing HighlandCompanies.ca with a blank page. Calls to the company’s media hotline went unanswered. And Lindsay Broadhead, vice-president of Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Toronto, said her PR firm is “not really” working with Highland anymore, although she insists the company would have nothing more to say: “Everything that was stated at that time holds. At the end of the day they’re going to continue farming.” With that, the dragon retreated – without a peep to allay the many fears that it will re-emerge with new plans to make money from wind, water, rock or rail. “We have to remain vigilant because the laws haven’t changed, the same people own the property, and the limestone is still there. We’re continued on next page

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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still at risk,” says local resident and NDACT volunteer Norm Wolfson. Many believe that if Highland – or any company it sells to – were to apply for a smaller quarry, it would likely win approval under current legislation. So NDACT’s party at the Honeywood arena on February 16 was half celebration for what NDACT’s chair Carl Cosack calls the completion of job one. But it was at least as much a pep rally for act two: seeking permanent changes to two key documents governing aggregate development in Ontario – the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) and the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) – so class 1 to 3 farmland and source water areas province-wide are off limits to quarrying forever. “We want to change the policy regime in Ontario so that no other community ever faces the nightmare that Melancthon faced,” says Faisal Moola, the Ontario director of the David Suzuki Foundation. NDACT has enough money to carry on without further fundraising. “So we’re going to keep the pedal to the metal and keep pushing,” says Cosack. He believes they can fi nish the job in one, maybe two years. NDACT, along with the David Suzuki Foundation and others in the broad alliance of environmental, First Nations, and food and farming groups that came together under the banner “No Mega Quarry” have remobilized around the slogan “Food and Water First.” Expect to see the slogan on more lawn signs, as well as possible reincarnations of the massive autumn Foodstock and Soupstock happenings. NDACT members insists it’s a small thing to ask: a simple legislative change that places prime farmland off limits to aggregate development. But the request has massive implications: sweeping changes not only to aggregate legislation and current industry practices, but also to the underlying land use policies that drive aggregate demand – our addiction to urban sprawl.

Where do we get a billion tonnes? The Melancthon quarry would have provided a billion tonnes of limestone – enough in a single quarry to fuel the GTA’s building boom for another decade and a half. “Before Melancthon we already had

Ontario so that no other community ever faces the nightmare that Melancthon faced.”

a supply crunch,” says Moreen Miller, the aggregate’s industry spokesperson as CEO of the Ontario Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (OSSGA). She points out that the government’s 2010 State of the Aggregate Resource in Ontario Study (SAROS) predicted supply shortages in the GTA within a decade. “We’re five years into that 10-year period now. In that five years the provincial government and the Ontario Municipal Board have turned down licences for 140 million tonnes of high-quality stone supply. There is definitely a supply shortage coming. There’s no question.” Environmentalists cite contradictory evidence that there is enough aggregate reserve in licensed pits, especially if demand is trimmed through conservation and recycling. The true state of the supply is unclear, in large part because the PPS works against any clarity on the issue by directing aggregate development to proceed with no consideration of need or “any type of supply/demand analysis.” What is certain about aggregate supply, says Ric Holt of the provincewide group Gravel Watch, is that “right now, we’re using it at such a phenomenal rate that it won’t keep up indefinitely. The cost of gravel is somewhere around eight dollars a tonne, so if I’m getting some for my driveway, I might as well get 10 tonnes because I have to pay for the truck. That’s the way construction has been going in Ontario.” The Toronto skyline bristles with construction cranes, the suburbs march on. The SAROS report recommended mega quarries as the supply solution and Melancthon was supposed to be the aggregate pot of gold. Its demise puts pressure back on communities like pit-riddled Caledon, the GTA’s old friend-with-aggregate-benefits. There, Blueland Farms is expected to reapply any day to mine below the

NDACT, along with the David Suzuki Foundation and others in the broad alliance

of environmental, First Nations, and food and farming groups that came together under the banner “No Mega Quarry” have remobilized around the slogan “Food and Water First.” Expect to see the slogan pop up on new lawn signs.

water table at the old McCormick Farm property on Heart Lake Road. REDC (People for Responsible Escarpment Development Caledon) took a cynical view of the Melancthon win, writing on their website: “What’s the lesson here? Massive large-scale, single-site development gets massive public pushback. But the tried and true methods of large-scale aggregate mining continue to work: Start with a licence to mine a few hundred acres. Add to the operations incrementally through amendments to existing licences. And it’s under the public radar. The result is the same – the creation of colossal sites that eventually exceed the acreage of a proposed Highland Farms development and keep going.” REDC notes that Caledon’s 3,800 acres of licensed quarry lands already surpass Melancthon’s proposed 2,316. Add proposed pits and unlicensed lands already owned by gravel interests in Caledon and the number jumps to 4,600. A satellite photo shows a lunar garland of bare grey pits and manmade lakes in the heart of the Greenbelt, what a 2007 study by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council found to be “the largest series of gravel pits in North America.” It’s a classic case of the frog in the pot – we accept incremental change. Had all 3,800 acres come forward in a single application, as in Melancthon, would it ever have been approved? REDC is trying to change the dialogue for future projects. “Size and cumulative impact need to be addressed,” writes REDC president Christine Shain. Meanwhile, in January Arbour Farms reapplied for its pit in Mulmur on Airport Road near County Road 21. Arbour’s company spokesperson called their 103-acre proposal “the fly on the elephant’s backside” compared to the mega quarry. By the time you read this, the ARA-mandated 45-day

window for public comment on the Arbour Plan will have closed. The primary objections to both Arbour Farms and the Heart Lake Road pit are not about farming at all, but the impact of gravel trucks on local roads. Ironically, if all the local options are rejected, gravel will be travelling farther to feed the GTA’s 60-million-tonne-a-year appetite for aggregate.

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supply is that “right now we’re using it at such a phenomenal rate that it won’t keep up indefinitely.” “The further-from-market options are increasingly troublesome,” says OSSGA’s Miller. “We can’t even get our communities to work every day, let alone put more aggregate trucks on the road. Are we willing as communities to balance that additional load in terms of greenhouse gases and traffic?”

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from most land uses. Class 1 to 3 farmland – it’s virtually all we have left – and we’re asking that land to do a lot, feed a lot of people, or produce aggregate, or produce wind or allow people to live on it. Going through lists of land uses and saying yes, no, maybe. I don’t see that as a long-term sort of comprehensive, balanced approach. The folks from NDACT have said there’s lots of material available elsewhere. We’d like to know where that is.” Miller would prefer to see the aggregate industry continue to be recognized – as it is in the legislation today – as an “interim land use,” one that can dig up farmland under the assumption that it will one day put it back. “From the perspective of our industry, agricultural land is renewable,” says Miller. “The people in Melancthon didn’t get a good taste for that.” It’s hard to believe The Highland Companies ever could have made good on its preposterous plan to farm Melancthon’s aquatic depths (which would have required roundthe-clock pumping – forever), and one gets the sense that the industry at large wants the company’s bravado claim forgotten.

quarry acreage already surpasses Melancthon’s proposed 2,316.

Miller says in Wellington County there are quarry sites where farmland has been rehabilitated and even improved – from class 5 to class 3, for example – over a period of not decades, but just two or three years. Nevertheless, the aggregate industry has a poor track record in Ontario. From 1995 to 2005, it only rehabilitated one acre for every 2.3 it dug up. Still, it wants another chance with the land that remains – prime farmland included.

Farmland in crisis Food and Water First activists say the farmland that’s left is too precious to risk on more promises. They are working to get the word out that Ontario’s $33 billion agri-food sector

Green Gravel Update: Cornerstone Standards Council The Ontario Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (OSSGA) is working with environmental groups to develop a “green” certification standards for gravel similar to Forest Stewardship Council standards for forest products (see In the Hills autumn 2011). Named the Cornerstone Standards Council, it formed in 2012 with the merging of two groups that were working independently: the Aggregate Forum of Ontario (AGO) and Socially and Environmentally Responsible Aggregates (SERA). Cornerstone almost certainly won’t place prime farmland off limits, but it’s discussing the issue, and there’s potential for compromises, such as a “net gain principle” that sacrifices some farmland in exchange for protection of better farmland elsewhere.

Until we quell our crushing appetite is the province’s biggest economic driver – greater than the auto sector. T hey repor t t he sec tor employs 250,000 and is growing at 10 to 20 per cent, but depends on a tiny and rapidly shrinking land base. Only 5 per cent of Canada’s land is suitable for agriculture and only 0.5 per cent is class 1 farmland. In the three decades from 1971 to 2001, Canada paved over prime farmland at a rate of one Melancthon mega quarry every two weeks. And it continues. A David Suzuki Foundation study found that development in the “whitebelt” (undesignated land) around the Golden Horseshoe is on track to consume natural lands twice the size of Mississauga in the next 30 years. All that development will require aggregate. And until we quell our crushing appetite for stone, implementing the kind of long-term changes that render another mega quarry unnecessary, the issue of aggregate supply will pop up again and again. “Today, most of Canada’s towns and cities are at a crossroads,” wrote David Suzuki in a late-February oped piece that broadcast the Food and Water First message nationwide. “Our political leaders and citizens must seize this opportunity to embark on a visionary path to grow our communities smarter and protect Canada’s near-urban nature and farmland.”

People power If such wholesale change to land use in Ontario seems unlikely, it’s worth remembering where the No Mega Quarry movement stood just a few years ago. The giant pit in Melancthon looked like a fait accompli. Legislation lined up in its favour. The province needed the aggregate. The land fell outside such barriers to development as the Niagara Escarpment, Greenbelt and Oak Ridges Moraine. The rock could even be shipped out by eco-friendly rail. Unlike hotly contested Caledon to the south, there was a scant population in Melancthon to oppose it – and who else had even heard of the place? One can imagine John Lowndes rubbing his palms over a PowerPoint presentation in a Boston boardroom. Then along came YouTube and Twitter and the Arab Spring – social media activism’s coming out party. Foodstock, on a Sunday afternoon in

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for stone, the issue of aggregate supply will pop up again and again.

October 2011, was the farm-field equivalent of inviting the entire planet to a block party on Facebook, physically putting enough voting bodies into a potato patch to get it on the political map. The organizers are convinced something has shifted in the public consciousness, that a policy window has opened – a golden opportunity to reform legislation that protects the sources of local food and clean water. “Timing is just as perfect at it’s going to get,” says Cosack. Until prorogation last fall, the Legislature was in the midst of reviewing the ARA, and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is currently leading a review of the PPS. (The public comment period has officially ended, but the ministry says further comments emailed to PPSreview@ontario.ca will still be considered.) Our new premier Kathleen Wynne is also the minister of agriculture. Before winning the position, she met personally with Food and Water First activists. At the Taters Not Craters party, sometime after the appearance of baby Derek, Guelph agriculture professor Rene Van Acker summed up this political moment in a speech: “There is a wave building of a food culture in this country that links urban people to the farm, and this is an example of how that’s going to drive legislation.” Dave Vander Zaag, the potato farmer who hosted Foodstock’s 28,000 visitors, saw this phenomenon for himself in the form of a long thread of traffic leading out of the city right to his doorstep. “It was like something out of the movies – cars as far as you could see and people just streaming across the field coming in. I had a friend who said it brought tears to her eyes. ‘People finally get it,’ she said. ‘People finally realize how important this is.’” ≈ Tim Shuff is a freelance writer whose first story on the Melancthon quarry appeared in this magazine in 2009.

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

As Caledon prepares for the 2015 Pan Am Games,

High onHorses BY NI CO L A ROSS | PH OTO GR A PH Y BY EL L EN C A MERO N

Last October 18, about 150 horse lovers gathered at Hockley Valley Resort for the Headwaters regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first Equine Forum. Local politicians sat down with landowners, and bureaucrats broke bread with business owners, but they all had one thing on their minds: horses. The keynote speaker at the day-long affair was John Nicholson, executive director of the Kentucky 40

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

Horse Park, the publicly owned, 1,229-acre (497 ha) equestrian competition and theme park that is the centrepiece of a state that has become globally synonymous with all things equine. His comments were heady stuff for the audience assembled to assess the opportunities for tourism and economic development as Headwaters emerges as a major equine destination in its own right.

Headwaters is saddling up for the ride of its life

P H O T O P E T E PAT ER S O N

Ross Millar with Frosty

The forum was hosted by the Headwaters Equestrian Leadership Group (HELG), a committee formed by The Hills of Headwaters Tourism Association to support, grow and advocate for the local horse industry. For HELG chair Ross Millar, the event marked a breakthrough. “The response,” he says, “was wonderful. We found a lot of common ground.” Of course, there have always been horses in Caledon, Dufferin and Erin, and local municipalities have long seen potential in developing the equestrian sector. But “common ground” has been another matter. The trouble, says Millar, is that the horse world is so segmented by loyalties to breeds and disciplines. What do dressage riders have in common with barrel

racers? Belgian breeders with miniature horse farms? Hunt clubs with rodeos? “There are so many horse lovers here,” he says, “but they’re all doing their own thing.” Still, he notes that for those who provide direct support services – the veterinarians, blacksmiths, feed suppliers and the like – a horse is a horse. Now, with the news that the 2015 Pan Am Games equestrian events will be held in Palgrave at the Caledon Equestrian Park (CEP), all those disparate interests are beginning to realize they have one important thing in common. And if they can all find a way to pull together, the region seems poised to become a major equestrian centre, not just for the duration of the Games – July 10-26, 2015 – but for decades to come. continued on next page IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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It’s not only horse people who stand to gain, Millar says. Business interests and services, from fuel dealers to restaurateurs to contractors, have a stake too. They just need to see themselves as part of the picture. HELG’s mandate is to provide that unifying force. And the Equine Forum brought together for the fi rst time a cross section of property owners, business people and politicians. People such as Roy Bryan of Bryan’s Fuels sat on a panel with realtor and Royal Winter Fair president John Dunlap and horse lover/children’s author Shelley Peterson to discuss the impact of horses on the local economy. This kind of enthusiasm plus a $119,000 Trillium grant has enabled HELG to hire Kelly Counsell as project co-ordinator. One of her first tasks will be to put together a full inventory of local equine industry participants – stables, services and events. “We are trying to get the industry united and collaborating instead of working in their own silos,” she says. All this activity is now assembled under the new umbrella brand of “Headwaters Horse Country.” And it comes with a new website: headwaters horsecountry.com. The immediate impact of the Pan Am Games is already evident at the Caledon Equestrian Park, where the dressage, Grand Prix and stadium jumping will be held. Operated for the past 30 years by the Equestrian

Management Group (EMG), the park currently holds an average of 16 equestrian events annually – including eight international competitions, the Canadian Show Jumping Tournament in September, eight dressage shows, as well as Trillium and quarter horse events. With five international competition rings and involving 10,000 horses a year, it is one of the top competition venues in Canada. Nevertheless, EMG managing partner Craig Collins admits the 98-acre facility had been in its “twilight years” and sorely in need of an upgrade. Now, as a result of its selection as the Pan Am site, it’s getting just that. The existing Grand Prix ring will have new synthetic footing to bring it up to international (FEI) standards. The existing stabling will be relocated and improved, and 200 new permanent stalls added. It will also get new warmup rings and training areas, as well as infrastructure improvements such as grading and converting the well system to regional water. Additional audience seating and 140 temporary stalls will also be added for the duration of the Games. But it’s not just the CEP that stands to benefit. It is anticipated the broader community will also see significant economic development both during and beyond the Games. A November 2011 report by the Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance on the economic impact of the equine industry on Caledon predicts that over the 11 days

of equestrian events at the Pan Am Games, 88,000 people will come to watch some 140 competitors from more than 40 countries. It’s anticipated they will drop almost $9 million in Caledon over that short period. The report noted the CEP currently injects about $11.5 million annually into the local economy. As a direct result of having the eyes of the world focused on Caledon and its first-class equestrian facilities during the Games, the annual economic contribution from the CEP is expected to double after the Games are over. With prospects like that in mind, in 2009 the Town partnered with EMG and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA owns about a third of the property) to submit the bid to bring the Pan Am Games to Caledon. The parties also negotiated two back-to-back 20-year leases on the park land. Now that they have won their bid, Collins sees the arrangement as a win-win situation. “This is a great deal for the sport and the community,” he says. The federal government will pick up 56 per cent of the $11.7 million tab for the improvements to the CEP. The rest is split among Caledon, TRCA and EMG, with the Town’s portion totalling $1.7 million. The payoff, says Marc Seguin, senior capital asset manager for Caledon, is that the Town will have a real stake in the increased tourism, employment and economic activity that an interna-

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tional-level equestrian facility will bring to the community. Local businesses have been encouraged to register to provide goods and services for the event, and some contracts have already been awarded. For instance, Sierra Excavation of Caledon won the $1.275 million contract to design and install the new ring footing at the park. In another economic spin-off, Hampton Inn & Suites will build a five- to six-storey hotel with 93 rooms at the corner of Highway 50 and McEwan Drive to help accommodate the inf lux of visitors during the Games and beyond. And it is hoped that spillover effect will ripple through the rest of Headwaters. “From a tourism perspective,” says Michele Harris, executive director of Hills of Headwaters Tourism, “we are looking at a legacy of this well beyond the Games.” The association is working now with local art galleries, retailers, B&B operators and restaurants to help them take advantage of the expanded tourism opportunities. “The Pan Am Games is a short period of time, but we see it as a springboard into the future,” says Harris. The CEP notwithstanding, Caledon was not a shoe-in in the race to grab the Games. Cedar Run in Thornbury and Guelph’s Ontario Equine Centre, among others, were also considered. In his 2008 study of the horse industry in Ontario, Dr. Bob Wright, a lead continued on next page

Since the renowned Kentucky Horse Park opened nearly 25 years ago, the state-owned, 1,229-acre (497 ha) equine theme park in Lexington has become the self-described “epicenter of equestrian life, sports and business.” Over the years, the KHP has developed attractions, programs and activities that may provide a rich source of ideas for similar initiatives here in the hills. So John Nicholson, the park’s executive director, seemed like a natural choice to deliver the keynote address at last fall’s Equine Forum organized by the Headwaters Equine Leadership Group to develop the local region as an equestrian destination. The KHP is home to the headquarters of more than 35 equine-related organizations, including the United States Equestrian Federation, the country’s governing body for equestrian sports. In 2010, the park was the site of the World Equestrian Games, and every year, it hosts many large and small events, from the prestigious Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event to hunter and show jumping competitions, carriage classics and even a steeplechase. It also provides venues for training clinics and judging seminars. But the KHP is also a working horse farm that is open to the public, who can stroll the grounds, visit one of two equestrian museums, take a tour in a horse-drawn trolley, watch a parade of horse breeds, and enjoy many other horse-themed activities. A campground, as well as on-site restaurants and a combined gift and tack shop, enhance the park’s image as a tourist destination. These attractions help draw nearly a million visitors a year to the Lexington area, and those visitors have, in turn, helped the Bluegrass State weather the recent recession. For more information, see kyhorsepark.com.

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veterinarian with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) reported that of the approximately 380,000 horses in Ontario, only about 22,000 are here in the Headwaters region – 6,496 in Caledon, 9,309 in Dufferin and 6,131 in Erin. Still, according to Wright’s report, Headwaters horses manage to pump some $40 million annually into the local economy. So what is it that makes Headwaters such an obvious candidate to become Ontario’s equine capital? One of the main reasons, says Ross Millar, is its central location – 72 per cent of Ontario’s horses are within a two-hour

drive of Orangeville. And the region’s proximity to Toronto and the airport gives it the potential to draw unlimited weekend riders and equine tourists. Millar also cites the extensive network of trails in the area, horsefriendly sandy soil, beautiful scenery and hilly grazing lands. Proximity to the exceptional equine veterinary services at nearby University of Guelph is also a bonus. There is an existing critical mass of top-notch equestrian facilities and the hills are already home to many private breeding, boarding and training stables, two hunt clubs and three Pony Clubs. Along with all that, many of Canada’s top international riders live here, in-

racing toward an A major challenge bedevilling Ontario’s equestrian industry is the province’s controversial decision to cancel the Slots at Racetracks program, which pumped about $345 million a year into the racing industry’s coffers. Though $50 million in public money has been promised to help the industry end its reliance on slot revenues, even the government-appointed transition panel, which endorsed the cancellation, warned that the sum is inadequate. In the meantime, racetracks, breeders, horse owners, workers and others who rely on racing are struggling to cope with an uncertain future. Introduced in 1998, the revenue-sharing SAR program placed slot machines at Ontario racetracks. Through the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., the government collected 75 per cent of the proﬁts, which amounted to more than $1 billion a year. Of the remaining 25 per cent, 10 per cent went to racetracks, another 10 per cent to racehorse owners through enhanced purses, and 5 per cent to the municipalities where the tracks are located. Amid warnings that up to 12 of Ontario’s 17 racetracks could close, triggering widespread job losses and the destruction of thousands of horses, the OLG has recently reached new agreements with many tracks, including Woodbine and Mohawk. These deals mean that slot machines will remain at the tracks for a time – but under lease agreements rather than a revenue-sharing partnership. The agreements have done little to reassure the industry, said Larry Drysdale, manager of Winbak Farm’s Caledon operation. Based in the United States, Winbak is the largest standardbred breeder in North America and took over the Highway 10

cluding Jim Elder, Jay Hayes, Torchy Millar (no relation to Ross) and eventer Peter Gray. Millar himself mounts the Ram Rodeo Weekend in Orangeville every summer, an extravaganza of bucking broncos and calf roping that draws as many as 5,000 people. “In the Orangeville catchment area,” he says, “there’s lots of interest in gaming events, including rodeo, barrel racing, pole bending and roping.” And this spring Millar migrated his annual Can Am All-Breeds Emporium from its original London venue to Orangeville. The Emporium (held March 28–31), which Millar describes as “like the auto show, only for

horses,” is an educational weekend featuring talks and demonstrations by 35 clinicians and dozens of exhibits. The Can Am embraces many different equestrian disciplines with such events as farrier team trials, a horse anatomy workshop and a parade of different breeds. According to Millar, the weekend was completely sold out and hotels in Orangeville were booked up. “We moved it here because it is in the heart of Canada’s largest equestrian centre,” he says, “and we’re thrilled with the response.” The Can Am Emporium also provided HELG with its first opportunity to introduce the new regional brand

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uncertain future property left vacant when the storied Armstrong Bros. farm closed shop in 2004. Winbak originally set up in Ontario because it was the best place in North America for standardbred racing, said Drysdale. But Winbak’s future here is now anything but assured, he added, noting that the OLG’s two-year agreements with Woodbine and Mohawk have not changed the outlook. That’s because it takes three years from the time a mare is bred until a foal is ready to start racing. Dr. Bob Wright, a Belwood veterinarian and equine consultant who has studied the economics of horse racing, said the uncertainty is already affecting the industry. More than 40 per cent of standardbred mares were not bred in 2012, he said, and the value of yearling sales was down by more than $5,000 a horse. This, he added, translates into an immediate $20-million loss for the horse industry. These losses have created a domino effect that is being felt in many quarters. “The racing industry wants the best hay, the best saddlery, the best vets, which beneﬁts the entire industry,” said Dianne Graham, executive director of the Ontario Equestrian Federation. “We’re going to lose the best vets to the U.S.,” she added. “[Racing] is a huge industry, it’s environmentally friendly and creates a lot of rural jobs.” More information on the economic impact of horse racing in Ontario is available on Dr. Bob Wright’s website at horsenewsandviews.com. The report by the Ontario government’s transition panel on the horse racing industry is available online at omafra.gov.on.ca.

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– handing visitors buttons bearing the slogan “Welcome to Headwaters Horse Country.” But Millar isn’t the only one who has recently shifted a major event to the region. Two-time Olympic equestrian and Mono resident Jay Hayes moved his $75,000 Grand Prix jumping competition, now called the Orangeville Show Jumping Tournaments, from Ottawa last August to take advantage of what he describes as “the great facility” at the Orangeville Agricultural Society Event Centre in Mono, and to be part of what he says is already the “epicentre” of show jumping. Hayes hopes to draw some of the international field of Pan Am competitors to the tournament in 2015, and realizes if ever there was a time to attract sponsors and spectators, this is it. Also in Mono, Will O’ Wind Farm will host the cross-country portion of the Pan Am three-day event. It has previously hosted numerous crosscountry and horse trial events, and like the CEP, the venue will be brought up to international (FEI) standards for the Games. Meanwhile, the Town of Erin has set up the Erin Equine Task Force, which, among other things, is looking

into the benefits of a fully integrated trail system and a year-round equestrian centre for the Town. “The task force,” says co-chair Brian Gentles, “has completed a survey of the Town’s equine attributes, which it will use to build the sector in our own backyard.” Angelstone Farms is one of those attributes. The Erin-area farm has hosted hunter and pony shows since 2007 and held its first Grand Prix event in 2011. All in all, if you’re a horse lover, Headwaters is horse heaven. And, as no small bonus, Wright’s report points out, “The equine industry is environmentally friendly.” Rather than converting agricultural and ecologically sensitive land into quarries or other industrial uses, the equine sector has a happy marriage with the hills and valleys, forests and wide-open spaces of Headwaters. And because horses need room to roam, a horse-friendly environment is a hedge against urban sprawl. Still, there are challenges. The region’s high real estate prices are an issue. John Dunlap, veteran realtor and son of Canadian equestrian team member Moffat Dunlap, would like to see smaller, more affordable land severances allowed for horse farms. He likes a model he’s seen in the U.S.

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where a large horse facility is shared by surrounding 10-acre horse farms. Then there’s the ongoing threat of urban sprawl. A 2009 study, “Rural Ontario’s ‘Hidden Sector’: The Economic Importance of the Horse Industry,” prepared by two University of Guelph researchers, found that loss of agricultural land to sprawl poses the greatest threat to the horse industry, greater even than rising overhead costs. Another blow to the equine sector was the decision last year to cancel the 15-year-old Slots at Racetracks program, a provincial revenue-sharing deal that pumped over $300 million annually into Ontario’s standardbred and thoroughbred racing industry, which is now feeling the pain with job losses, race track closures and the euthanization of as many as 13,000 horses. An aging population is also affecting the equestrian industry. According to Vel Evans, a researcher with Newmarket-based Strategic Equine Inc., the median age of equestrians in Canada is between 50 and 59. In Ontario there are almost twice as many adults riding horses as there are children, and if the sport is to grow, more needs to be done to attract young people to it.

In response, “a youth engagement program is a priority for this group,” says HELG’s Kelly Counsell, adding, “We definitely have plans to link the sport through school programs.” Millar’s Can Am Emporium is also doing its part: Friday, March 29 was proclaimed Youth Day at the event, complete with pony rides and Easter egg hunts for the kids. And at the CEP, Craig Collins is likewise taking steps to connect with young people. He envisions the park being used for young competitors as well as established ones. “You’ll see kids on the lead line right next to Ian Millar [one of Canada’s most accomplished show jumpers],” he says. With the impetus of the Pan Am Games and so much else going for it, Headwaters does seem poised to become Ontario’s horse central. “If we don’t capitalize on this opportunity now,” says Counsell, “we’ll have missed a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shine the spotlight on Headwaters’ equine sector.” Ross Millar is certain it will happen. “We all have one thing in common and that’s the good of the horses. If the horses are happy, we all will be.” ≈

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Spring ’s Wild Beauties The heart-gladdening beauty of early wildflowers is a signal all is right in the woodland. BY D O N S C A L L EN | P H OTO S BY R O B ER T M c C AW

n April, hepatica and bloodroot open their blossoms to welcome the warm caress of the spring sun. Trilliums and many others quickly follow, creating a glorious pantheon of woodland beauty. But there is more to woodland wildflowers than their inspiring appearance. Their ecology is fascinating. They are inextricably entwined with other organisms – with the trees that provide shade and drop the leaves that create rich, loamy, nourishing earth, and with a suite of small creatures that pollinates their flowers and disperses their seeds. Catharine Parr Traill’s spirits were buoyed by these wildflowers. In 1836, Traill, an immigrant to Upper Canada, published The Backwoods

of Canada, a treasure of early Canadian literature. Like other pioneers she faced the hardscrabble realities of wresting a living from the land, but she took solace in the beauty of the natural world. Of the springtime wildf lowers she wrote: “Our woods and clearings are now full of beautiful flowers … which are here flung carelessly from Nature’s lavish hand …” A quotation from Traill’s book precedes each of the descriptions that follow. A short article can scarcely do justice to the exquisite diversity of wildf lowers Traill celebrated. Please share your favourites at continued on next page inthehills.ca.

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“A very beautiful plant of the lily tribe abounds both in our woods and clearings … the flower is either deep red, or of a dazzling white, though the latter is often found stained with delicate blush-pink …”

The white trillium (T. grandiflorum), the familiar symbol of the province of Ontario, is a tri-petaled beauty that even confirmed urbanites know well. A walk in a local woodlot in May is sure to turn up these spectacular wildflowers, sometimes in sweeping carpets of snowy white. The antiquity of some trilliums is remarkable. Their life span can rival our own, and they may not reach sexual maturity until their teenage years. Also surprising is that the squadrons of springtime bees and flies largely ignore them. Botanists who study trilliums have observed few pollinators aside from the occasional bumblebee. More research is needed to uncover the secrets of wildf lower pollination. So if you are a wildf lower enthusiast with time to spare, why not stake out a patch of trilliums and tally the visitors? Trilliums and many other wildflowers employ ants to disperse their seeds, and the way they achieve this is quite extraordinary. Attached to each seed is a small, fleshy offering called an “elaiosome.” This structure, rich in fats and proteins, entices ants to carry the seeds back to their colonies where the elaiosome is consumed. Then, in a stunning evolutionary feat described by Carol Gracie in her superbly informative Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast (Princeton University Press, 2012), the trillium seeds, now bereft of elaiosome, emit a scent identical to that of dead ants. The final resting place for dead ants is a rubbish heap beyond the colony, and

that’s where ants dump the trillium seeds as well. There in a rich fertilizer of mouldering ant bodies, the seeds stand a better chance of sprouting and thriving than if they were discarded deep in the tunnels of the colony. The red trillium (T. erectum, lower left) is not as plentiful as the white trillium, but is by no means uncommon. It has a lovely, deep red blossom that, according to most wildflower reference books, emits a foul odour. In fact, a common name for this trillium is “stinking Benjamin.” But judge for yourself. I’ve bent and sniffed many times and quite like the scent. It is musty to be sure, but not unpleasant. The colour and “unpleasant” odour of the red trillium have long been assumed to mimic dead meat, leading to the conclusion that carrion flies help pollinate this plant. Perhaps, but Gracie watched red trilliums carefully and saw only small native bees touching down. Two other trillium species live here in the Hills, but both are rare, one exceedingly so. The nodding trillium (T. cernuum, lower centre) is a delicate beauty that blooms a little later than the white trillium. Look for it along trails in Palgrave Conservation Area. The painted trillium (T. undulatum, lower right), with white petals splashed by striking red in the centre, is a common trillium of the acidic soils of the Canadian Shield. Here in Headwaters it occurs sparingly in one or two boggy venues. If you find this plant, local conservation authorities would like to hear from you.

Jack-in-the-pulpit Arisaema triphyllum “Then we have the Indian turnip; this is a very handsome arum … the leaves of this arum are … slightly tinged with purple. The spathe is of a lively green, striped with purple …”

The jack-in-the-pulpit or “Indian turnip” is a truly beguiling flower. Its remarkable form trumps showiness. “Jack,” standing tall in his sheltered pulpit, gives this unique plant a distinctive look, and the ability of this wildflower to switch genders adds spice to its personality. This plant demonstrates that diverse sexual expression is not a trait unique to humans. Gender switching is part of the jack-in-the pulpit’s survival strategy. When times are good and resources rich, Jack will be Jill and produce seeds. When times are lean, Jack will bide his time, producing pollen but not fruit. Jacks, like other plants, defend themselves from herbivores with chemical weaponry. Their tissues are laced with sharp calcium oxalate crystals that cause misery to the soft palates of grazing rabbits, groundhogs and deer. The name “Indian turnip” suggests Aboriginal people ate jack-in-thepulpit – and they did, in fact, consume the bulbs, properly known as “corms,” but only after drying, grinding and cooking them. And to prove their mettle, some Aboriginal men did allegedly eat these corms raw, a practice best left in the past. The calcium oxalate can cause the throat to swell, leading to asphyxiation.

Mayapple Podophyllum peltatum “There is a plant in our woods, known by the names of man-drake, may-apple, and duck’s-foot … the fruit is oblong; when ripe, of a greenish yellow … when fully ripe it has the flavour of preserved tamarind, a pleasant brisk acid …”

Apples in May? Well, June or July here. And of course, not apples at all, but certainly tasty, edible fruit. Mayapples unfold graceful parasols in April. These leaves, often watermarked by splashes of bronze, shelter a single immaculate white blossom underneath. After pollination, the ovary expands to produce a low-hanging fruit about the size of a plum. Mayapples, like all fruit-bearing plants, have co-evolved an elegant reciprocal bargain with animals. The animals benefit from nutrition contained in the fruit; the plants by having their seeds dispersed. The seeds pass through the digestive tracts of birds and animals to be deposited, ideally, well away from the parent plant. That the seeds are deposited

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within a dollop of natural fertilizer enhances their chances of success. This arrangement cannot benefit a plant, however, until the seeds inside the fruit are ready for planting. That is why unripe apples pucker the lips. And that is why green, unripe mayapples are poisonous. Yellow in mayapples signals edibility. I find their mushiness a little off-putting, but the taste is pleasant. Mayapples, of course, did not evolve to have their seeds dispersed by Homo sapiens. But they do seem to have forged a rather interesting alliance with eastern box turtles. Box turtles relish the fruit and are particularly well suited to find it. Though hidden from human eyes by the plant’s umbrella leaves, the fruit is quite obvious to a turtle. Studies in the eastern United States have found seeds that pass through the gut of a box turtle germinate far more readily than seeds that don’t. Perhaps here in Ontario a more likely seed disperser was once the wood turtle. Fruit is part of the omnivorous wood turtle’s diet, and these turtles once ranged across much of southern Ontario. Alas, this species is spiralling toward extinction in our province. If it once played a role in planting mayapples, that role is now sadly diminished.

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Hepatica Anemone americana and Anemone acutiloba “The hepatica is the first flower of the Canadian spring: it gladdens us with its tints of azure, pink, and white, early in April, soon after the snows have melted from the earth.”

In the astonishing warmth of March last year, I spotted my first hepatica bloom on the 19th. More often, as Traill noted, these flowers debut in April. And what a debut it is. Hepaticas have a knack for tucking themselves into especially picturesque settings – a cleft in a moss-covered rock or nestled against the base of a gnarled tree trunk. A floriferous hepatica with deep purple or pink blooms can be breathtaking. The stems and new leaves of hepatica are swaddled in hair-like fibres that probably help it endure the cool temperatures of early spring. The three-part leaves are often subtly variegated, which only adds to this plant’s overall appeal. Small beetles and solitary bees visit the flowers, but hepatica is also an accomplished self-pollinator, meaning it can produce seeds without the help of animals in transferring pollen. The downside of this strategy is the production of seedlings with diminished genetic diversity. The upside is the ability to produce seeds when the cold of early spring grounds flying pollinators. 52

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Bloodroot Sanguinaria canadensis “The leaf springs singly from a thick juicy fibrous root, which, on being broken, emits a quantity of liquor from its pores of a bright orange scarlet colour: this juice is used by the Indians as a dye, and also in the cure of rheumatic, and cutaneous complaints.”

Bloodroot captivated me as a child. Not surprisingly, this had much to do with its name, which hints at dark intrigue. When I read about Aboriginal people using bloodroot’s orange sap as body paint, this plant acquired even more mystique. In Nebraska, bachelors of the Ponca tribe believed if they daubed the sap on their hands, then shook the hand of a girl they fancied, she would fall hopelessly under their spell. Enclosed by protective wraparound leaves, bloodroot blossoms push through the leaf litter on the first warm days of April. Then, energized by the sun, the starry blossoms open to nestle like white spangles on the woodland floor. But theirs is a short-lived beauty. Mere hours after being pollinated by solitary bees, flies or honeybees, the petals drop. Traill noted Aboriginal people used bloodroot as medicine. They were onto something. Gracie writes: “Laboratory testing of secondary compounds in [bloodroot] have shown antimicrobial, anticancer, and antifungal effects that might be of value in modern medicine.” These chemicals probably evolved to discourage insects and fungi from attacking the plant. They are poisons, of course, and should never be used by laypeople.

Trout lily Erythronium americanum “The dog’s tooth violet, Erythronium, with its spotted leaves and bending yellow blossom … delicately marked with fine purple lines on the outer part of the petal, proves a great attraction in our woods …”

When I was a boy, everyone I knew used Traill’s moniker “dog’s tooth violet” to refer to this wildflower. At the time I had no idea that “dog’s tooth” referred to the shape of the plant’s bulb, but I was delighted by

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the name nonetheless. I also like “trout lily,” which is more commonly used today. “Trout lily” speaks to the resemblance of the leaves to the mottled flanks of brook trout, which inhabit streams in the same sylvan haunts where trout lilies flourish. Trout lilies occasionally produce spectacular drifts of flowers. They provide a banquet of pollen and nectar for early insects. Fat queen bumblebees, searching for the perfect spot to establish nests, will put that search on hold to refuel at trout lilies. The roots of trout lilies are sometimes colonized by a fungus that feeds on nutrients stored in the bulbs, and this provides another extraordinary example of the complex interplay between different organisms. Carol Gracie writes: “[Trout lilies] that have been invaded by mycorrhizal fungi benefit from the ability of the fungus to aid in the absorption of nutrients, resulting in a growth rate that is double that of plants not so ‘afflicted.’”

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Columbine is another drop-dead gorgeous wildflower. As Traill mentions this plant does not necessarily confine itself to shady woodland habitats. It will grow even in full sun where competition is limited, such as on rocky shorelines or outcroppings. There is a stark contrast between the life strategies of columbine and a wildflower Methuselah such as the trillium. Columbine is short-lived, but produces an abundance of viable seeds that grow to become flowering plants in a mere two years.

If the reproductive strategies of columbine differ from those of other wildflowers, so too does its “choice” of pollinator. Columbine flowers are red, the favourite colour of hummingbirds, and the nectar pools in the bases of long spurs, accessible to hummingbird tongues, but out of reach of most insects. But hummingbirds are not the columbine’s only pollinator. Gracie notes that the pollen “is particularly sought after by queen bumblebees, which must provision their nests for the young of the year.”

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Woodland invaders to watch for

ildflower populations, along with myriad other life forms, have been reduced greatly by habitat loss. Trilliums, hepatica and other wildflowers don’t grow in parking lots or lawns. Invasive species also pose a serious threat to cherished native wildflowers. Dawn Renfrew, co-ordinator of Credit Valley Conservation’s Natural Areas Inventory Project, cites garlic mustard (top left) as a particular concern. Allegedly introduced by contemporaries of Catharine Parr Traill for its culinary value, this pungent plant is now rampant in woodland verges, especially where human activity has disturbed the soil. Garlic mustard is “allelopathic,” meaning its root exudes chemicals that impair the ability of other plants to grow nearby. Ominously, garlic mustard has begun appearing within woodlands, where it thrives in the same conditions as trilliums and other native plants. Caroline Mach, manager of the Dufferin County Forest, seconds Renfrew’s concern about garlic mustard and mentions county forests are under attack by another foreign invader with the menacing name “dog-strangling vine” (top right). A more recent arrival than garlic mustard, dog-strangling vine twines around native vegetation, hogging light and competing for nutrients. Introduced worms (see In The Hills, autumn 2o11) are also a threat because they consume the fallen leaves that protect and nourish wildflowers. And here garlic mustard rears its leafy head again. This plant’s seeds germinate readily in bare soil, like that left in the wake of worm activity. In the Credit River watershed, Renfrew has observed sites she suspects have been compromised by these worms. The sites “look like they’ve been flooded,” she says, “like everything has been washed away.” While worms threaten wildflowers from below, deer attack from above. Deer particularly enjoy trilliums, and many wildlife biologists believe there are far too many deer in eastern North America. Human settlement has provided the mix of habitat that deer favour while also eliminating their major predators. Botanist Dan Barcza, owner of Sage Earth Environmental/Restoration Services, has witnessed the negative impact of deer browsing. “Deer can have a huge impact in areas where they are overabundant in the fall, winter and spring,” he says. When Barcza purchased property in Hockley Valley five years ago, he was struck by the lack of spring wildflowers and understorey shrubs in his deciduous woodland. Since then, he has regularly exercised his dogs in the woods. They pee, as dogs do, to mark their territory. The deer, sensing “predators” in their midst, have reduced their browsing in the area. And the wildflowers? “They’ve rebounded,” says Barcza. ≈

Don Scallen is a naturalist who teaches elementary school in Brampton. Robert McCaw is an internationally acclaimed nature and wildlife photographer based in Moffat, Ontario.

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The sensory garden at Community Living Dufferin’s facility west of Orangeville (above) includes an art exhibit and offers an oasis away from the sometimes noisy indoor environment. The ﬂower beds at Jesse’s Sensory Garden at the Caledon Centre in Bolton (below) are raised to wheelchair height. The garden provides a safe, barrier-free place for all ages and abilities.

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Soothing theSenses Sensory gardens engage the senses and reduce stress BY MI C HEL E GREEN

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ander through a garden, any garden – large, small, manicured, au naturel, pampered or neglected – and experience a sensual feast. See, touch, smell, hear and taste Mother Nature’s offerings. A sensory delight to be sure, but more significantly the experience can be therapeutic, helping to balance circadian rhythms, lower blood pressure, reduce stress and increase absorption of Vitamin D. The notion that gardens enhance well-being and stimulate the senses has been embraced by two local service agencies. Both Community Living Dufferin and the Caledon Centre for Recreation and Wellness have created sensory gardens designed specifically to be accessible to everyone, regardless of age and ability. Jesse’s Sensory Garden at the Caledon Centre in Bolton was created in 2002 as a result of the passion and inspiration of Lisa Farquharson. Lisa’s two-year-old son Jesse, whose vision was impaired by retinal cancer, was learning to use a white cane and needed a safe, barrier-free place to walk, as well as access to the centre’s recreational facilities. So Lisa spearheaded the project with the help of volunteers, friends, extended family and enthusiastic sponsors. In 2006, when construction of the centre’s new wing required moving the garden, it was carefully dismantled for the duration. Two years later, when the building project was complete, the garden was just as carefully reassembled and reopened in a new, larger and more visible location. “The garden is designed to accommodate everyone – all ages, all abilities – and we have a variety of people who come and use it,” said Catherine McLean, who was the Caledon Centre’s supervisor for customer service. “It is a calm and relaxing place. A lot of our patrons will come and do an aquafit or fitness class in the morning and then sit

outside and have a coffee with friends.” Sensory gardens differ from most gardens in some significant respects. In Jesse’s Garden, for example, hard, even pathways make the area accessible for people using wheelchairs, walkers and assistive equipment. To stimulate all the senses, flowerbeds are raised to wheelchair height and contain only non-toxic, edible plants that vary in colour, size and scent. Textures, such as the soft, furry leaves of woolly lamb’s ear, encourage touching and exploration, and the scent of lavender released by a simple brush across the flower stalk is immediately rewarding. The tranquil sound of wind chimes and a babbling water feature with colourful fish provide aural and visual stimulation. Safety is also important. The garden is located in a protected space surrounded by fences and natural barriers. Last summer, day campers with special needs frequently used the garden as a place for games, lunch and storytime. The children also planted annuals and made garden stones for the flowerbeds. “Some children who come here have autism and tend to be ‘runners,’” Catherine noted. “They like to run and if they are contained, they just run to the barriers and are still safe.” The sensory garden at Community Living Dufferin’s state-of-the-art facility west of Orangeville is still working out the kinks after its first summer last year, when drought-like conditions made new gardens a challenge for even seasoned gardeners. CLD creates opportunities for people with developmental disabilities through recreation, support services, creative programs and jobs at QPAC, its internal packaging plant, which specializes in custom assembly contracts. When the facility was built in 2009, the area the garden now occupies was designed to feature only a cement pad continued on next page

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and a tree. Sheryl Chandler, CLD’s executive director, suggested some grass – and the project snowballed from there. “I had an idea in mind, but I’m not an architect,” Sheryl said. Through Theatre Orangeville, which shares the building with CLD, she was introduced to Bohdan Petric, a local artist who contributed to the outdoor design at Toronto’s Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. “He was right on board from the moment he arrived,” she says. After assessing the strong west wind that swirls around the protected area, Bohdan suggested a circular stonework pattern to mimic the wind, along with raised beds and a sun shelter.

Because a garden had not been included in the initial budget, Sheryl secured the financial support of several local companies and foundations. A foundation was also set up to generate annual funds to enhance plantings. When the garden officially opened in 2012, it quickly became a favourite spot for relaxing lunches and summer camp activities, as well as a tranquil oasis where people whose senses felt overloaded could take a break from the sometimes noisy indoor recreational environment. One unique aspect of this sensory garden is the unexpected art gallery created by the people CLD supports. A kiln, purchased for recreational use, became the catalyst for them to create a collection of clay masks and

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Willow trees are powerful symbols in many cultures, and the healing properties of willow leaves and bark have been known for thousands of years. So it is ﬁtting that a wall of living willows has become the latest addition to the Serenity Garden at Headwaters Health Care Centre. In the fall of 2010, members of Headwaters’ Shelburne Hospital Auxiliary created the stunning garden that can be admired through windows lining a busy hallway between wings. But in the background the view also included the loading dock, garbage cans and the parking lot. Since 1998 the gardens at Headwaters have been evolving under the guidance of Lynn Sinclair-Smith and a group of dedicated volunteers. Garden guru David Warburton was instrumental in designing the original gardens and in 2011 he suggested commissioning his associate Barbara Guy Long to create willow panels to mask the Serenity Garden’s unsightly backdrop. Barbara is a multimedia artist who, among other things, creates willow wattle installations. Wattling is an ancient art that involves weaving long, thin, ﬂexible branches through a foundation grid to make such items as fences, trellises, walls and furniture. Barbara’s willow installations currently grace spaces throughout Canada, the United Kingdom and the Bahamas. Barbara’s contribution to the Headwaters’ Serenity Garden began with the idea of using willow branches to create three or four wattle panels. “These were panels that I had woven quickly at my home, and they were still very green, so in the right soil conditions I thought they might grow,” she said.

birds that have become features of the garden. “We did the basics, but the people we support are claiming the space for themselves,” said Sheryl, adding the artists take great pride in seeing their work displayed. During a summer camp young adults with disabilities spent hours in the garden enjoying music and making clay jewelry, which they sold at Christmas. This summer’s plans include creating scented sachets with lavender from the garden. The garden also became the venue for a photography exhibit. Previously, the CLD group called Click Connect had exhibited its work at the Alton Mill, but the garden provided a perfect space to display photographs for family and friends.

And the garden isn’t finished yet, said Sheryl. “We want to add a water feature, tall grasses for their soft feel and movement, and we’re looking for ways to produce sound – maybe on big cylinders that they can gong.” Naturalist and award-winning writer Edward O. Wilson believes human beings have an “innately emotional affiliation … to other living organisms,” a phenomenon he dubbed “biophilia.” In a broad sense, this means we human beings need gardens, not only to keep us well, but also to help make us well and improve the quality of our lives. If Wilson is right, physicians might do well to start offering this advice: “Take a walk in the garden and call me in the morning.”

L A N DSCAPE S

it started with a green thumb

Barbara Guy Long created the living willow wall in the Serenity Garden at Headwaters Health Care Centre to mask the parking lot and loading dock.

Plugs of live willow were also inserted in a trench along the wattle structure. Not only did the plugs begin to grow, but some willow branches in the panels also took root. The result was so successful that Barbara created more panels to form a backdrop for the entire garden. She also built two other three-panel structures: one to mask a utility panel and another, created under her guidance by participants in a wattle-weaving workshop, behind the new specialist clinic adjacent to the hospital. In their ﬁrst summer, the willow stalks grew more than 10 feet tall, waving in the summer breezes and creating a vibrant, living wall. Barbara’s history with willow dates back to 1994 when she attended a workshop on building willow chairs. “It wasn’t the chair that inspired me as much as the medium,” she said. “It was the feeling of the willow in my hands that drove me on.” Years later Barbara met Judith Rosenberg, founder of Spark of Brilliance, an organization that provides opportunities for people with mental illnesses to enhance their recovery by engaging in the expressive arts. Soon the two embarked on a project dear to both their hearts. Barbara harvests her willow stalks at Ignatius Farm, part of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre north of Guelph, and she nurtured the dream of creating a living structure in a grove of willows on the centre’s grounds. In 2003 her dream became reality when she and participants in a Spark of Brilliance program built the Living Willow Room. The structure’s wall, 20 feet high and 20 feet around, consists of live willow saplings bent over to create a dome with harvested willow stalks woven laterally through them. At ﬁrst, Barbara said, some of the participants Judith brought to work on the structure were too timid even to leave their vehicle, but “When they got out and started working with their hands, it was just magical.” Dedicated to the Guelph community for quiet and contemplative use, the Willow Room has since become a regular stop for hikers and cross-country skiers, as well as a place for celebrating birthdays, dancing, writing and just relaxing. “There is a spiritual feeling inside the room,” said Barbara, “A feeling of safety. It has been described in many ways – some people say ‘God.’ I don’t know what it is, but when I go there I feel good, too.” ≈

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Michele Green is a freelance writer who lives and gardens near Belfountain. IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

H I L L S

by Ken Weber CO U R T E S Y D U F F E R I N CO U N T Y M U S E U M & A R C H I V E S

H I S T O R I C

the GREAT ESCAPER

The Orangeville Sun called him Robert the Bold. Local police called him ‘armed and dangerous.’ His neighbours called him ‘misunderstood.’ Bob Cook’s story fits all these descriptions – and then some.

ust about everyone in these hills, with the notable exception of the local constabulary, chuckled when the story of Bob Cook’s latest escapade made the rounds in 1906. At the Grand Valley fall fair, Bob got into a fight. Not all that rare an event at a fall fair and certainly not rare for Bob, whose tally of assault charges that year was already up to four. But this particular scrap landed him in the village jail. When he escaped a few hours later, Bob took a bar from his cell with him – then mailed it back to Grand Valley, express collect. Days later, some of the chuckles turned to frowns when Bob upped the ante on Broadway in Orangeville. Three local constables had tried to arrest him for the Grand Valley incident, but succeeded only in enhancing his reputation when all three were left in the dust, one of them cut by Bob’s knife. After hanging out in plain sight for a few days in rural Amaranth, Bob discreetly headed for the lumber camps of Northern Ontario. 60

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

But he didn’t stay long enough it seems, for on his return to Orangeville in March 1907 the police tried again. Once more, the arrest failed. Bob had upgraded his knife to a pair of revolvers that frightened off the arresting constable. The escape was effective, but again Bob had to leave for distant parts. This time he added a twist to his developing saga – before boarding a train for Saskatchewan, he married 19-year-old Florence Reid.

The Reputation Builds In Oxbow, Saskatchewan, where the newlyweds eventually disembarked, yet another “escape” was added to the list. The Mounties were waiting and quickly arrested and jailed Bob – but then threw open the prison door when Orangeville declined to pay the rail fare to bring him back. To no one’s surprise Florence returned, though not right away, and she came alone. By t he time Bob returned to Orangeville in 1909, he had added an escape from jail in Boise, Idaho to his

resumé, as well as scoots from lockups in Colorado, Minnesota and Alberta. Whether all these jailbreaks really happened is moot. By now newspapers across the country were exaggerating his escapades. In 1912, for example, Toronto’s Globe noted Bob was “considered the most widely known jail breaker in the United States and Canada.” His story was acquiring a romantic glow, but the reality was becoming much darker. Upon his return from the West, Bob went directly to the Orangeville home of Florence’s mother to pick up clothing he had left behind. The visit turned into a violent confrontation, with smashed furniture and fists hammered through walls. Within hours,

a warrant for his arrest was handed to a pair of officers from the team that had failed to bring him in two years earlier. Chief Constable Sam Speers and Constable James Halbert approached him in a clothing store on Broadway. Bob parried Halbert’s baton with a knife while Speers stood by. The constable emerged from the struggle with a serious wound to his hand, the chief constable continued to stand by, and Bob strolled down Broadway twirling the baton. For the next two weeks there was mass excitement. A heavily armed posse rushed around Orangeville and into the rural townships responding to “Bob sightings,” much to the amusement of local citizens and the

A RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION? When Bob was sentenced in 1912 for stealing sheep and in 1927 for seducing a minor, his lawyers were delayed in getting to court but both times the judges refused to wait for them. The harsh sentences were thus handed down without defence counsel present.

A COMPLEX CHARACTER If the test of a man’s character is how others see him, the fact Bob’s neighbours organized a petition calling for a reduction of his ten-year penitentiary sentence is revealing. It’s curious too that every time he departed for Kingston, a crowd of well-wishers gathered at the train station to see him off. Modern psychologists would also have an opinion, for Bob’s friends – and even Orangeville police ofﬁcers – consistently described him as “mostly normal,” though given to episodes of extreme behaviour. “His temper was like ﬁts,” said a boyhood friend. On his trip to the Pen in 1927, Bob himself said, “I tried my best but things never worked. My farm was mostly swamp. After the war, us soldiers were ignored in spite of what was promised … Those sheep, all I did was drive the wagon. And now Etta, I wanted to marry her. I’ve always played the man. Now everything’s shot.”

delight of the Orangeville Sun, whose “Robert the Bold” headlines drew national attention. The town council offered a reward – and began evaluating the worthiness of Speers, who was not reappointed chief constable in 1910. Meanwhile, Bob’s soon-to-be-exwife, Florence, went right to the top, confronting Ontario’s attorney general, Hon. J.J. Foy, who promised to send provincial officers to help. As it turned out, the reinforcements were unnecessary because although Bob had taken off once more, he soon managed to get himself arrested again, this time in Sault Ste. Marie. In March 1910, in the Orangeville court where Bob had stood many times before, he was sentenced to two years’ hard time in Kingston Penitentiary.

The Penalties Build There was no escaping Kingston Pen, so Bob didn’t reappear in Orangeville until January 1912. Unfortunately, he was soon back in the limelight. With a partner, he stole three sheep from a Caledon farm and sold them to a butcher near Toronto. Because the theft was a desperately amateur affair, the two were caught almost immediately and Bob went back to the Pen. For three sheep he got seven years. In mid-1915, with the help of J. M. Deagle, a prominent citizen of Cataract, Bob was released under a First World War dispensation that allowed him to enlist for service overseas. It was thought soldiering would be ideal for a man like Bob, and it was. He fought in several battles during the Somme offensive and was recommended for a medal, but in 1917 was invalided out with a serious hand injury. Even this meritorious service was not without an escape. Bob first enlisted with the Wellington Battalion, but deserted after getting into a fight with an officer. As usual, he took off, but signed up again in Winnipeg. Bob’s mangled right hand seems to have diminished his penchant for

brawling and he faded from public view – except for a couple of arrests in 1924 for operating illegal stills while Prohibition reigned in Ontario. When the first still was discovered near Bob’s farm west of Orangeville, a Prohibition official noted it was the largest he had discovered in several years. Then in 1927, Bob’s story took a complex, controversial and much more sordid turn, and although it included one more escape from the Orangeville jail, the tale ended with Bob’s conviction for abducting and seducing a minor. Although Etta, the minor in question, testified she was a willing participant who wanted to marry Bob, she was only 13 years old at the time of the trial. He was sentenced to 10 years and 30 lashes.

Down but Not Out A side of Bob no one had ever seen was revealed as he walked to the gate of the Kingston Pen to serve his sentence. With tears running down his cheeks, he hugged his mother and said, “I’ll never see you or my poor old father again.” Indeed, by the time he was released both parents had died. Nevertheless, even that long sentence had an “escape” element. In 1935, Bob got out early thanks to a general pardon that was part of King George V’s Silver Jubilee celebrations. And he barely missed a step. By 1936, he was back to making illegal whisky and brawling. A still on his farm earned him a five-month jail sentence, but he got a pass on an assault charge because the brawl was so tame. It seemed perhaps that “Robert the Bold,” at age 58, was becoming “Robert the Mellow.” ≈ On Sunday, May 26, Ken Weber will present “An Amusing Journey through the Orangeville Sun,” a review of the wit, wisdom, strengths and failings of the local populace, as reported in the Sun’s pages from 1861 to 1933. His presentation takes place at 2pm at Dufferin County Museum & Archives.

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

A trip to explore their Irish roots brings three generations closer to their Caledon home

BY L IZ B E AT T Y

faint, throaty “cuhh” marks each of my mother’s slumbering inhalations, like a slow, breathy metronome. “That’s amazing,” my son Mack says. He is looking on from the next seat in genuine, 11-yearold wonder, his gaze about 10 inches from my mom’s open mouth. Despite the cheek-by-jowl throng of chattering passengers settling in for the long flight to Dublin, his 85-year-old grandmother has fallen deeply, blissfully asleep in the five minutes since our early boarding of the plane. “How are we going to do this,” sighs my husband Tim, bag in hand and peering into the already packed overhead bin. I, too, had been pondering

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

this question, though not about our carry-on. If there is such a thing as shared genetic memory, the idea of three generations of my family travelling together to explore our Irish roots had just seemed important – at least that had been the thought after two drinks on a date night three months earlier. And no sugar coating – transporting five people spanning three generations across the Atlantic and then squeezing everyone into a mid-sized Renault Mégane hatchback to drive 600 kilometres of remote Irish coastline is a big, messy ordeal. But as the metal tube hurled us ever farther from our Brimstone cottage, this faraway adventure was about to bring us inexorably closer to home.

In Ireland, Ben Bulben deﬁnes the Sligo landscape. “I step into the shoes of the Hamilton & Northwestern Railway worker, an Irish immigrant who in 1877 saw the Niagara Escarpment’s similar silhouette and declared, ‘Sligo.’”

I’m not a native of the Caledon Hills, just a resident of nearly 20 years. Still, in my bones, these hills have always felt like home. Now, I might know why. It turns out that Caledon village, Northern Ireland, is slightly more than 20 kilometres from the farm of my great-great-grandfather William Beatty senior. But when the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was drawn in the early 20th century, the former Beatty farm ended up on the Irish Republic side. It’s a region of luxuriant rolling hills, hardwood stands, streams and rivers brimming with trout. It’s a bucolic fly fisher’s haven, just beyond the Pale in medieval Irish terms, about an hour northwest of Dublin in Ulster. The area known as Ulster comprises three counties now in the Republic of Ireland, as well as all the counties of Northern Ireland. Ulster is a region with no political standing, often riven by religion, but bound forever by deep roots in ancient Ireland. This is where our road trip begins – in a sense, back home. At the family homestead, we fi nd there isn’t much left in the way of buildings. The house is gone, but low stone fence lines still snake along rolling, impossibly green pastures, and there’s the ruin of an old dug well. Structures aside, little seems to have changed. Indeed, it is unnervingly easy to envision what William Beatty senior glimpsed for one last time in about 1835 as he set off with his young family for the Canadas. This was ten years before the potato famine devastated Ireland. I watch as Mack and his older brother James help Mom select small cut stones from the well, treasures to take home with us. We hold these stones as if, as they warm in our hands, they will divulge the stories we’ve travelled so far to know. It’s hard to fully grasp what steeled our ancestors’ resolve to leave such beauty for so many unknowns. We’ll look for answers on the road ahead.

Surveying our now drizzle-soaked Michelin map – I prefer to navigate old school – I recognize the Irish roots of many Caledon communities back home: Tullamore, which straddles the former Chinguacousy, Albion and Toronto Gore Township lines; Kilmanagh in old Chinguacousy Township; and the Dingle, southeast of Mono Mills, among many others. Our Irish Ulster connection to Cale-

don, however, is a little more complicated, much like Ulster itself, and I don’t fit all the pieces together until we dig up details from some of the most reliable local sources. “The best stuff I learn here comes from the pub,” Mack tells the Mullen’s Lounge barkeep between sips of ginger ale. An odd declaration from an 11-year-old, but utterly true. Sitting on the next stool, a regular of this Cootehill pub and funeral home directs Mack to two gravediggers in neighbouring Scotshouse for more intel on the local Beattys. We find the two at their place of work, and with shovels in hand they point us to Dermot Beatty, who reportedly sips his fi rst pint every day at about this time – 4:45 p.m. – just yards down the street at Connolly’s Wines and Spirits. And as predicted, that’s where we find him. “You must be Dermot.” His ruddy 40-something face blanches somewhat as a five-foot octogenarian sidles up to his stool at the otherwise empty bar. Emboldened by our mission, Mom soon has Dermot corroborating our research. He confi rms that our people arrived in this area in about 1609 via the Scottish Protestant “plantation,” the beginning of a raw chapter in Ireland’s conflicted Protestant-Catholic, Anglo-Irish history. Dermot adds that precisely 101 Beattys were “planted” here in County Cavan. Others of our horse-thieving clan along the Scottish borders were killed off by King James I of England. I take odd comfort in the knowledge our ancestors were decidedly of the underclass at a time when many native Irish chieftains lost control of their land to Protestant aristocrats loyal to the British throne. True to human nature, some of the new landlords were benevolent to their leaseholders and some were not. Eventually, both rich and poor Scottish transplants became known as Ulster Scots. Now, the connection to Caledon, Ontario, becomes clear. The name “Caledon” – a shortened version of “Caledonia,” the Latin name for Scotland – always seemed an obvious nod to the area’s Scottish pioneers. But the headstones of many early settlers in the Caledon village cemetery on Highway 10 suggest another possibility. There’s Edward Clark, an immigrant from County Monaghan, who was laid to rest in 1847 at age 116. David Laughlin was from County Tyrone. There’s a McNeil from County Antrim, and a Dodd from County continued on next page

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C A N A D I A N PA C I F I C A R C H I V E S N S 112 3 4

The Prince of Wales (left) and Edward W Beatty on the deck of the Empress of France, October 13, 1923. facing page The dry-stone famine wall on Binnion Hill.

ulster continued from page 63

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Monaghan. There are Potters, Nisbets, Adams, Lindsays, Maxwells, Wigginses, Crookshanks, Stubbses, Raeburns and others – all from Ulster, and as archival research confirms, many were Ulster Scots. Of course, the much-loved Caledon politician, historian and volunteer Alex Raeburn, who recently died just after his 100th birthday, was the greatgrandson of Ulster Scot pioneer Robert Raeburn from County Monaghan, very near Ulster’s Caledon village. Indeed, Ontario’s Caledon village was once known as Raeburn’s Corners. Perhaps Alex had his Ulster roots in mind when he championed the Town of Caledon’s official naming in 1974. One thing seems certain: Caledon’s presumed Scottish connection is in no small measure via Ulster, Ireland.

Heading west from Cavan, I begin to appreciate the love/hate thing the Irish have with their land. I’ve driven in Paris and Rome during rush hour, on sunbaked dirt roads in Provence and up the steep cobbled lanes of medieval Umbrian villages in a minivan with a stripped first gear. But nothing prepared me for the singlelane, hedge-rowed twining goat paths that are the road from Cavan to Sligo. Scenic or not, lorries and buses blow by at 100 km/h. Somehow our side mirrors survive. Ulster road crews would surely buckle in laughter at the 50-km/h speed limits on the Forks of the Credit Road back home. Through it all, my mother sleeps, her default response to stress. Perhaps it’s the five hours in the car, but for some reason this surrender instinct is now pissing me off, as if somehow we should all be fretting and bracing.

Then, just as I’m about to act on my bad mood, our labyrinth-like roadway opens to a broad, verdant plain with Sligo harbour and the vast blue Atlantic before us. This is William Butler Yeats country. I think immediately of the repeated refrain of his poem “Easter, 1916.” “A terrible beauty is born,” Yeats wrote, conflicted about a bloody Irish uprising against British rule. Still, the phrase also fits the aching beauty of this northwestern countryside he loved so dearly. Imbued with the turmoil of British overlords, Scottish colonists, English persecution of Irish Catholics and Ulster Scot Presbyterians, and the famine, the Irish connection to their land is complicated, but never, ever indifferent. As we motor north into Donegal, I try to imagine how you could forever leave behind a homeland like this. Then, looking up to the view ahead, I realize suddenly, you don’t. I had only heard about Ben Bulben, the imposing tabletop mountain that for many defines the Sligo landscape. As Ben Bulben rises before me, I find its f lat-topped silhouette strikingly familiar. Then I see it – the reason Inglewood, Ontario, was originally named Sligo Junction. I step into the shoes of the Hamilton & Northwestern Railway worker, an Irish immigrant who in 1877 saw the Niagara Escarpment’s similar silhouette and declared, “Sligo.” Like Ben Bulben in Yeats country, the Escarpment defines our region. Its flat-topped profi le, viewed from Highway 10 near the Grange Sideroad, always tells me I’m almost home. English settlers in the thriving H&NW railway village soon changed the name of Sligo Junction to the more Anglo Inglewood, and the name Sligo migrated north to the post office that once

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existed near the intersection of Forks of the Credit and McLaughlin Roads. These myriad little connections linking the old to the new open my heart and eyes to the signposts created by the early immigrants to Caledon, and their yearning to make an unfamiliar landscape feel like home.

Some “aha” travel moments sneak up on you. But you go looking for others, as we do near the northwestern coastal village of Dunfanaghy. In one stunning, no-granny-left-behind mission, James and his dad half carry Mom up a steep rocky trail to the highest lookout of Horn Head. Our perch here feels as if we’re at the edge of the universe, the Atlantic stretching beyond the horizon. On this spot it’s no stretch to imagine the tug of the New World on a young Irish heart. Still, for us there’s even more to the dazzling view. A few miles offshore rests another family link: the wreck of the Empress of Britain II, a luxury liner turned Second World War troop transport, bombed by a German plane, then torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1940. In a recent truth-is-stranger-than-fiction revelation, we learned that Sir Edward Wentworth Beatty, great-great-grandfather’s great nephew, had commissioned the building of the Empress. By the 1860s, Sir Edward’s father, nephew of the immigrant William Beatty senior, had joined the thriving shipping and timber business William and his sons had built from nothing after arriving in Upper Canada. Their success led to dealings with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and young Edward grew up around ships and railways.

By 1918, Sir Edward became the first Canadian-born president of the CPR, then one of the largest privately owned transportation networks in the world. He launched grand ocean liners, including the Empress of Britain II. He built the Royal York and rebuilt the Banff Springs Hotel into a Canadian icon, all to put Canada on a global stage. He spearheaded sweeping immigration strategies for Canada’s West. He was chancellor of McGill University. He directed the shipping of allied troops and goods in World War II. He started CP Air. He was befriended by kings and queens. But most remarkable to me, he had the opportunity to do all this because of the courage and industry of my great-great-grandfather, William, once an Ulster farmer born near Caledon village, Ireland.

As we travel north and east, dry stone walls climb the hills and cross the broad, treeless valleys of Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula, at once stunning and desolate. Here and at home, I feel a primal connection to stone. Stone walls evoke for me a sense of permanence, hard work, accomplishment. When I was a kid, they were one of the things I loved most about the Caledon countryside – chunks of dolomite piled along property lines by pioneer farmers. Some show the best of Scottish and Irish dry-stone walling, like the restored Patullo wall on Mississauga Road at the Grange Sideroad, or the Coulterville wall at Charleston Sideroad and Main Street. What I see here near Clonmany, however, is a wall like none I’ve known. “What’s with that?” I ask Tim as we sip morning coffee looking out the window of our B & B. Far across the

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Ruth Beatty sings “Danny Boy” to great acclaim. facing page Tim Peters, Mack Peters (then 11), Liz Beatty and James Peters (then 18).

ulster continued from page 65

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valley a stone wall climbs 250 metres straight up Binnion Hill, so steep and craggy in places that a wall there seems to make no sense. It seems to divide nothing from nothing. And indeed, separating properties or herds was not the point. This is a famine wall, a make-work project run by landlords during the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s. Seemingly futile, this wall, a resident tells us, gave a purpose to many here who had lost the will to live, a job in exchange for a scrap of food each day. It is a sad, desperate reminder of those horrific times. Still, I can’t help but think that the wall also provides a glimpse of our humanity – of the primal need to maintain even a shred of dignity and self-determination. In the end, I believe this need, above all, is what steeled the resolve of William Beatty senior, and so many other brave immigrants before and after him.

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After 200 more kilometres, one whiskey-soaked octogenarian at a Bushmills Distillery tour, two birdies and one slice into the North Atlantic, we find ourselves with eight hours to kill before our flight home at dawn. “Well I’m not sleepy,” insists Mom. Really? And with that we do what any self-respecting Irish progeny would – we go to the pub. A crush of drunken Gaelic football fans decked out in blue and white sing heartily to live Irish music at the Oliver St. John Gogarty pub in downtown Dublin. After a 16-year drought, their beloved Dubs are today champs again. In the midst of the mêlée, Tim gets an idea. “Ruth Beatty from Ontario, Canada,

will now sing ‘Danny Boy,’” announces the banjo player, tucking a fiveeuro note into his shirt pocket. “Oh!” says Mom, surprised, but at once sliding off her barstool. “I don’t really know the words,” she repeats, pushing steadily toward the stage. There’s polite drunken applause, but the sideways glances suggest a buzzkill is imminent. “You can’t sing the song if you don’t know the words,” says the banjo player. Mom grins, adjusting the mike. “I say, you can’t sing the song if you don’t know the words,” he repeats, louder and less patient. Mom taps the mike and points to her hearing aid, “It’s unidirectional, dear, just say the words here.” Eyes roll, the familiar intro ensues and the banjo guy begins barking lyrics into her left ear. What follows is a total Susan Boyle moment. Leaning into her audience, scanning left to right, Mom slays this Celtic gem with the power and passion of a true classically trained diva. When it’s over band members embrace her, a large Texan behind us weeps, and drunken young Irishmen line up to shake her hand. “Imagine what she could do if she knew the feckin’ words!” shouts the banjo guy over a deafening chant: “Ruth! Ruth! Ruth!” Back home now in Caledon, Mom has adopted “Danny Boy” as her new party song at family gatherings. Still, I prefer replaying in my head that Dublin-pub version – for her performance, yes, but even more so for her pluck. For her absolute daring to seize the moment – and to provide an unscripted end to a journey that was, in essence, all about courage. Along the way, knowing better the grit of loved ones long gone has drawn our three generations forever closer together, forever closer to home. ≈

P H O T O S CO U R T E S Y L I Z B E AT T Y

The mark of Irish pioneers can be found across the Headwaters region. According to the Town of Caledon’s Heritage Committee, northwest Albion Township, aka Irishtown, was settled primarily by Irish Catholic immigrants between 1823 and 1840. Irishtown referred to the general area bounded by Palgrave, the hamlet of Cedar Mills on Old Church Road, Caledon East and Sleswick, a largely forgotten hamlet centred near the intersection of Charleston Sideroad and Airport Road. Today, many descendants of the original settlers still live in the area. Ironically, Erin – the Irish word for Ireland – was settled largely by Scots, although the town’s early provider of cheap whiskey, William Cornock was indeed Irish. The early pioneers of Cheltenham, Inglewood and Belfountain were, by and large, Scottish and English. Other Irish immigrants, primarily Ulster Protestants, ﬂooded to Ontario’s settlement frontier in northern Caledon and Dufferin County from about 1820 into the 1840s, before the mass exodus caused by the Great Potato Famine. An atlas created around the turn of the last century colour-coded Ontario townships according to residents’ place of origin – and Dufferin County came up 75 to 80 per cent Irish. Frontier land was cheap, but not free. Settlement duties had to be performed and patent fees paid. Fortunately, as former leaseholders, most Ulster Irish arrived with at least a small nest egg from selling their leases to neighbours or back to the landowners. And though they were not destitute like later famine immigrants, they were still economic refugees, escaping the ﬁnancial slump that gripped Ireland after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815. Dufferin Country Museum archivist Steve Brown says Irish pioneers were drawn to the region’s fresh, cholera-free water and familiar rolling hills, which they used to full advantage to extend the growing season. Clear-handed signatures on most land grants suggest, too, that most immigrants were literate and probably wrote home to urge other family members to come. A Dufferin County native, Brown comes by his remarkable expertise on early Irish settlers honestly. He claims he may be related to most of them. A grateful resident of Brimstone, Liz Beatty is a writer, editor and consultant (lizbeatty.com). In her new In The Hills blog, read about The Gathering Ireland 2013, calling “home” all Irish families from around the world, and check out Liz’s list of things to see and do, as well as places to stay and eat in Ulster. IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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ohnny Appleseed, the eccentric dogooder of American lore, may be famous for introducing apple trees to the wild frontier, but early settlers valued the tart fruit of these trees more for making hard cider than for eating. Indeed, the idea of eating an apple a day to keep the doctor away didn’t take hold until the early 20th century, when the growing temperance movement prompted market-savvy apple growers to rebrand their product. A hundred years later, Nick and Lindsay Sutcliffe are riding a wave that has seen a resurgence in the popularity of hard cider. It isn’t that

the Sutcliffes don’t like to bite into a juicy apple, they just prefer to consume Malus domestica in its liquid form. Born in Yorkshire in 1970, Nick came to Canada when he was 13, but he had been drinking cider for years before that. “I had my first cider when I was four,” says the gregarious and knowledgeable owner of Pommies Dry Cider in Bolton. His wife Lindsay, who grew up in Caledon, is also a fan of the elixir made from fruit well suited to Ontario’s cool, sunny climate. Nick and Lindsay picked an auspicious time to launch Pommies,

their dry, crisp hard cider with an alcohol content of five per cent. Cider sales in Canada have risen for eight consecutive years, making the beverage one of the fastest-growing alcoholic drinks on the Canadian market, according to a 2012 report by Euromonitor International. Every year, Canadians consume some 23 million litres of cider. This is a long way from the 840 million litres sold in Britain in 2010, but it isn’t bad for a country with little history of consuming a beverage that dates back to Romans times and beyond. Making cider had been a lifelong dream for Nick, but he hadn’t done

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Nick and Lindsay Sutcliffe with daughter Madeline at 3 weeks; their cider is made exclusively from fresh Ontario apples at the Southern Cliff bottling plant.

much about it until Lindsay challenged him one day in 2009. Exasperated, she said, “Stop talking and do something.” So Nick climbed into his car and drove to Prince Edward County. Unannounced, he pulled up at the County Cider Company and strolled inside. Before he left he had become fast friends with the owners, who helped him work out a recipe. Nick and Lindsay’s cider had to be crisp, clear and dry. It had to be made exclusively from Ontario apples – no apple juice concentrate – and apple had to be the dominant taste. It’s the way the two of them like their cider, and they believed their preference would also appeal to women in their 20s and 30s. “After university spent drinking ‘alcopop’ (sweet, mostly vodka-based coolers), we thought young women would f lock to Pommies,” Lindsay explains. She was right. But she and Nick were surprised to find Pommies is also very popular among the mothers of these 20- to 30-year-olds. An estimated 65 per cent of Pommies’ customers are women. “Our fan base is very faithful – and growing,” adds Lindsay, a communications expert. Even in colder weather customers love Pommies’ combination of five local apple varieties, a bit of sugar, water, naturally occurring acids and carbonation. The apples destined for Pommies are pressed at Caledon’s Spirit Tree Estate Cidery, then fermented and bottled at Southern Cliff Brands, the couple’s Bolton bottling plant, which also bottles cider for Spirit Tree. Pommies is available at more than 120 Liquor Control Board of Ontario locations. “The LCBO has been very helpful,” says Nick. When he approached the LCBO, the crown corporation immediately added Pommies to the selection at the 100 stores where cider is a top seller. Through Nick and Lindsay’s efforts, along with several Toronto locations, Pommies is also available at local liquor stores. “Its sales are fantastic for a beginner,” says Sam Meli, manager of the Bolton LCBO. “We push local products. Local means a lot.” And a clerk who answered the phone at the Erin LCBO said she doesn’t usually like cider because it’s too sweet, but she likes Pommies because it’s “a nice dry cider.” Pommies’ packaging complements

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the effort Nick and Lindsay have put into getting the taste just right. It is sold in an eye-catching four-pack, and the clear 355 ml bottles have the rounded shoulders of miniature wine bottles. “Cider is made like wine, but drunk like beer,” says Nick, who prefers to quaff Pommies straight from the bottle, though one of the trends in cider drinking is to serve it on the rocks. If all goes according to the Sutcliffes’ five-year plan, their bottling facility will soon be working at full capacity, producing some 1.2 million litres of Pommies a year. Though Pommies is currently available only in Ontario, Nick and Lindsay hope to expand distribution across North America. They also hope to build a destination cidery that will help cider become to Caledon what wine is to the Niagara region. “Apples are a much better crop than grapes for Ontario,” Nick says, his eyes sparkling. “Cider is the perfect product.” ≈

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often long to walk down to the barn, saddle up and head out to the hills on horseback. But I don’t own a horse, nor do I have a barn – and years can pass between my riding expeditions. So, helmet in hand, I was both excited and a tad nervous when I entered Teresa Finnerty’s barn near Palgrave and took in the familiar musty smells. Bella, an energetic German shepherd, announced my arrival. As she did a pair of shiny grey goats checked me out, and three kittens skittered up the stairs to the loft. Down an aisle cluttered with a wheelbarrow, buckets and a rich

assortment of halters, saddle blankets and other tack, Teresa was grooming Thistle, officially known as Just Unexpected. She is a competitive endurance rider, and her hopes are pinned on the 10-yearold dapple grey. Most endurance horses are Arabs, but Thistle is half Arab and half Clydesdale, a breed best known for its ability to pull a plough – and the reason this horse is fondly nicknamed the Plough Beast. Thistle’s lineage makes him something of an anomaly in one of the fastest growing equine sports in the world, but he seems to have what it takes to cover the distance of 100 miles

(160 km) in less than 10 hours. That’s the minimum requirement if Teresa is to land a spot on the Canadian team at the 2014 World Equestrian Games in France. Standing in the cross ties was my mount, 20-year-old Curly, who nuzzled my pocket as I scratched his chin. “He’s retired from endurance riding,” Teresa explained, “but he still likes to get out for a hack.” We led the horses outside, mounted up and walked past the brick farmhouse that has been in the Finnerty family for generations. As we travelled deep into a hardwood forest, the trees dampened the roar of traffic along Highway 9. I settled

P H O T O W EN DY W EB B P H O T O G R A P H Y

Endurance riding is one of the fastest growing equine sports in the world

– on horseback Teresa Finnerty and Thistle competed together for the ﬁrst time three years ago at the Canadian endurance-riding championships. The team is now aiming to win a spot on the Canadian team at the 2o14 World Equestrian Games in France.

into my saddle, gave Curly an appreciative pat and immediately felt like a kid again. Thistle broke into a lively trot, and Curly responded when I closed my legs around his belly. Fortunately, riding a horse is like riding a bicycle – you never forget how. As we cantered up a track, Teresa explained that most endurance competitors stick to a brisk trot, but she prefers Thistle’s rocking-horse canter. I found it hard to imagine trotting for ten hours; cantering was beyond my comprehension. But do the math: covering 100 miles in ten hours calls for an average speed of ten miles an hour, and winners generally complete the distance in eight hours or less. The famous Pony Express riders of the American West travelled at the upper end of this pace, but they changed horses eight to ten times in 100 miles. Walking again, Thistle settled into a stride worthy of an African cat. Teresa explained this ability to relax quickly is what makes him exceptional. The winner of an endurance event must be the fastest horse on the course and demonstrate a required level of fitness at checkpoints along the way. Arabs are famous for their combination of speed, physical strength and ability to recover quickly. “I’m bucking the system with Thistle,” said Teresa. One in three international equestrian events is an endurance ride, and every year the Headwaters region hosts three distance-riding competitions at the Dufferin County Forest’s Main Tract near Mansfield. Two of these competitions include sanctioned endurance events. Sue Downing of the Ontario Competitive Trail Riding Association manages all three competitions and along with OCTRA volunteers helps maintain the forest’s system of permanent

trails in co-operation with forest manager Caroline Mach. In 2012 the three weekends attracted more than 200 competitors. For some riders, Downing noted, competitive trail riding is a stepping stone to endurance events. Though both disciplines involve long-distance rides, competitive trails rides are shorter than endurance events and the rules are different. Both disciplines are well suited to those who start later in life – if Teresa makes it to the Worlds, for example, she will be in her mid-50s. It isn’t necessary to mortgage your house to buy a suitable horse, and training is fun. Who wouldn’t enjoy riding along forested trails? And it’s the fun, not the competition, that draws Jessica Davis to competitive trail riding. Jessica and her grey thoroughbred, Distinctly Western – aka Earl – are a common sight around Caledon East, and the two have completed many competitive trail rides, both locally and farther afield. The longest distance Jessica has ridden is about 50 miles (80 km), which she said was tough. “You can’t believe how tired I was at the end.” “I love getting out into the forest,” she said. “I just want to cover the distance. It doesn’t matter whether I’m first or last.” Besides, she added, the sport is competitive, but not cutthroat. “If your saddle breaks during a competition, people will stop and help you.” For Jessica, the distance rider’s mantra sums up the sport’s appeal: To finish is to win! ≈ The Ontario Competitive Trail Riding Association hosts the ﬁrst of three annual events in the Headwaters region on April 27 and 28 at the Dufferin County Forest Main Tract. In addition to an endurance event, the weekend includes competitive trail rides of various distances. See octra.on.ca. For more information about endurance riding, go to Equine Canada’s website: equinecanada.ca. Thistle’s Facebook page can be found at PloughBeast Finnerty.

Nicola Ross has just completed an extended adventure riding a criollo horse through the Argentinian Andes and across the South American pampa. IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

A T

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I N

T H E

H I L L S

by Pam Purves

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A Pre-Columbian ﬁgure is one of many treasured ﬁnds.

his is a home for people with curious minds and catholic tastes. What appears from the outside to be a romantic’s ideal of a country house in a bucolic setting cleverly conceals a curiosity shop’s worth of art and artifacts. Visitors go from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens just by stepping through the door. The owners are a creative couple with a successful advertising agency in Toronto and an abiding and generous interest in the craft of others. They don’t think of themselves as collectors in the formal sense. They are, instead, aesthetically oriented people who are excited by beauty wherever they find it. This is also a home for people who love country life. The landscape is well groomed – the green rolling paddocks, large ponds, mature woods and immediate access to walking trails suggest the long reach of Capability Brown. The home is close to city life and culture, but set in splendid isolation, providing accommodation for horses, dogs and sometimes cats. And it is a natural home to coyotes, foxes, herons, frogs, fish and birds. It is the perfect setting for a sophisticated art collection, riding to the hunt and bird watching.

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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scale abstract paintings or an African totem. Other pieces reflect the sporting life of the 19th century, and some, t he war-related travels of another generation. Drawings and paintings by internationally recognized artists such as Milton Avery, Picasso and Canadian abstract painter William Perehudoff are displayed right next to humble pieces of no particular pedigree but of great charm. From a collection of santo figures, religious carvings of

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at home continued from page 73

saints often used in Catholic processions in the Spanish-speaking world, and densely painted or appliquĂŠd Mexican crosses covered with healing charms called milagros to tall African totems and masks, there is a subtle sense of history and human striving. Model ships and hunting prints seem right at home alongside more primitive objects.

Utilitarian items are also treated as objects worthy of notice. Welldesigned boots, hats and fly rods, for example, are not so much stored as displayed. The homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colour scheme is from nature. The walls are large blocks of browns, greys or taupes and serve as ideal backdrops to the art. Fabrics are natural and sometimes have animal continued on page 76

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top A small, well-lit space serves as library and ofﬁce. The deer antler light ﬁxture is made of shed antlers. No animals were harmed in its making.

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right The house sits amid manicured lawns and paddocks in gently rolling land.

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motifs. It is a warm environment. Although large, the collection never looks like clutter. Nor is it showy. Perhaps the simple colour palette knits it all together, or maybe it’s the way the objects are so carefully and artfully arranged. The effect seems private. Not everything is immediately visible, but once a visitor’s eye is drawn to one object, it is very hard to stop looking at others. All reveal something about the character of the owners. This is also a home for people who

right A group of santo ﬁgures contrasts strikingly with a bold abstract by Bill Perehudoff.

love food and cook well. The kitchen, a bright, efficient and antique-punctuated space, is almost square, with preparation and cooking areas never more than a couple of steps apart. A major renovation has created a totally up-to-date space for preparing meals out of The Joy of Cooking, The Silver Palate Cookbook and websites like Epicurious.com. The window in a small kitchen/dining area is dominated by an antique rocking horse. The other windows overlook the back garden and pond, a view that played a significant role in the deci-

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sion to buy the house. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The day after we moved in, I spent the whole day looking out the window and thinking this is the place I want to spend the rest of my life,â&#x20AC;? says one owner. The house was not always like this. Although first seen on a snowy winterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s day and looking every bit the romantic country home, it needed work. A lot of work. But it had everything the buyers wanted: fields, water and a place for horses. The stuccoed interior was reminiscent of a childhood home in Wales. Over time the tired older building yielded to its new

ownersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tastes and needs. A new roof, studio, interior courtyard, kitchen and bathrooms transformed it year by year into a beloved gem. The move from downtown Toronto to rural Caledon required an adjustment that was not always easy. At first, the ownersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; would gaze out the w i ndows a nd say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh my gosh, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nobody out there.â&#x20AC;? But this has changed. Now, they see a car and ask, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Who the heck is that?â&#x20AC;? â&#x2030;&#x2C6; Pam Purves is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Caledon. IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

H E A D W A T E R S

N E S T

by Bethany Lee

light

I L L U S T R AT I O N S H EL A G H A R M S T R O N G

shining a on mental health

Youth Perspective Allies for Kids Mental Health, Duﬀerin Child and Family Services’ recently launched mental health awareness initiative, has already sponsored several presentations designed to help adults understand the mental health challenges faced by children and youth. Allies is interested in tailoring additional events to meet the speciﬁc needs and interests of community groups and welcomes inquiries and suggestions. For more information, contact Laura LaRocca at 519-941-1530, ext. 344, or e-mail laura.larocca@dcafs.on.ca.

Talk-in Clinic The Talk-In Clinic at Dufferin Child and Family Services works like a walk-in medical clinic – but with trained counsellors on hand to help solve immediate problems and to provide information and support. Clinic staff can also help you connect with other DCAFS and community services. Just walk into the clinic at 655 Riddell Rd, Orangeville, or call ahead: 519-941-1530. You can also go to the DCAFS website, dcafs.on.ca, to download a questionnaire that can be filled out ahead of time. The clinic operates on Tuesdays between 1 p.m. and 8 p.m., but summer hours are in effect during July and August when the clinic is open from 3 to 7 p.m.

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

few months ago I was invited to an evening event in Orangeville. The invitation was the fourth or fifth I had received that month, and I was tired after a long day at the office, the rush to get dinner on the table and a stressful week around the house. I longed to simply collapse on the couch.

But the invitation glowed on my iPhone screen, calling my name and telling me to

muster the energy to get up and go. So I dabbed on some lip gloss and headed for the high school gymnasium. There, the crowd buzzed. Some people had their heads down, some seemed nervous. Moms and dads arrived with their arms around gawky teens. Finally, the special guest appeared on stage. She did not disappoint. Clara Hughes is a six-time Olympic medallist in cycling and speed skating. She is the only athlete in history to win multiple medals at both the summer and winter Olympic Games. And there she was, in my high school gym! With her long, flaming red hair and infectious smile, she won my heart instantly. Her slight frame, draped in a soft creamy blouse, belied her strength, both physical and mental. Two years ago Hughes decided to tell her personal story as part of Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk campaign, which focuses on the need to break down barriers and support mental health programs. She was in Orangeville to help launch Allies for Kids Mental Health, an innovative new program offered by Dufferin Child and Family Services. As Hughes spoke of her childhood, what a rough go it was, of drinking and trying to fit in with her teenage crowd, it was obvious that many

in the audience could relate. She spoke of her insecurities, her triumphs and low points. And then, incredibly, she spoke of her battle with mental illness – and again, it was obvious that she had struck a chord with many. If you have been held hostage by overwhelming self-doubt, the kind that saps your spirits to the point where you can’t summon the energy to do so much as wash the dishes, or if a friend or family member is experiencing this, you can probably relate too. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research says that one in five Canadians will experience a form of mental illness at some point. And according to the Canadian Medical Association, two in three will suffer in utter silence because they fear judgment and rejection. As Hughes spoke, the crowd laughed, and cried. We enveloped this radiant young woman who was at once a triumphant Olympic medallist and someone who had been brought to her knees by personal demons. You could have heard a pin drop as several young women took the stage to share the reasons they were grateful to Hughes for coming to speak in our town. The first person to stand up during the subsequent question period

was a man who may have been in his 50s. As he spoke, his voice broke and a small sob escaped. He thanked Hughes for putting words to her story. The audience nodded in unison. Putting words to her story. That was what was most important to me that night, and when I later spoke with Hughes, I thanked her for the words. Not just because I am a writer, but because many people close to me live with mental illness. Yes, that’s right – people all around me. The thing is that my generation, and generations before, have not had the words to describe things like depression, compulsions, serotonin uptake, anxiety, attention deficit, autism spectrum disorders and so on. There were no words for even the simple things we sometimes needed to say, such as, “I need help. I don’t think I can manage on my own.” Now, we are learning the words. They are not perfect, and conversations about mental health may still falter. Expectations may collide, and the words may provoke crying jags, anger and blame. But once the conversation starts, barriers can be broken down, and I can attest that things can get better. Our children will grow up with the vocabulary, and discussions about mental health will become normal. To support families, community resources, such as the Allies for Kids Mental Health program, have been mobilized. Mental health and wellness programs are available, and front-line educators have been trained to identify problems early. Did you know that Orangeville has a Talk-In Clinic? It’s like a walk-in clinic, but for immediate mental health needs. Above all, brave people like Hughes – and you and I – can speak up about mental health. I am not afraid to say that a number of my friends and family members struggle with mental health challenges every day. My goal is to always be willing to talk and listen, and to learn from their experiences. It’s the words that help me do this. ≈ Bethany Lee is the online editor of kidsinthehills.ca, a sister site of inthehills.ca, where she also writes a regular blog.

Check your relationship Healthy relationships are the foundation for the mental health of the entire family. On April 9, the Duﬀerin Parent Support Network, in partnership with Family Transition Place, is hosting a free workshop designed to help you identify healthy – and unhealthy – relationships and to develop tools to deal with issues such as boundaries, anger and self-esteem. The workshop takes place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Princess Margaret Public School, 51 Wellington St, Orangeville. For information, call 519-940-8678 or go to the DPSN website: dpsn.ca.

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Trellis and CMHA Peel Trellis is a client-driven organization committed to helping individuals and families facing mental health and developmental challenges. For information, call 519-821-2060 or visit the Trellis website at trellis.on.ca. Residents of Peel Region can access support through the Canadian Mental Health Association Peel, which oﬀers a range of programs and services. Comprehensive information can be found at cmhapeel.ca.

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Do you like to LOL? The Caledon Parent-Child Centre presents Yuk Yuk’s comedians Jeff Elliot and Pete Zedlacher at the 2013 Laugh Out Loud! comedy event on Friday, April 19. Proceeds will benefit infant development and parenting support programs. Last year LOL raised $27,600! The event – for women only – features live comedy, fab prizes, a silent auction, an antipasto bar and … wait for it … a waffle station! If this doesn’t brighten your day, I’m not sure what will! Doors open at 6:45 p.m. at the Royal Ambassador Event Centre, 15430 Innis Lake Rd, Caledon. Advance tickets are $75. For more information, go to cp-cc.org.

Stay up to date will all kinds of kid- and family-friendly news and events at our website, devoted entirely to family life in Headwaters. And stay healthy! —Bethany

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

h u m a n s h av e l o n g h a d a l o v e - h a t e BY D O N S C A L L EN

P H O T O R O B ER T M c C AW

“Some coyotes kill sheep, and some people rob banks.” Wayne Grady

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n August 2009, four coyotes were found dead on the 10th Line of Amaranth. A local farmer told me the animals were intentionally run down. A driver, cresting a rise in the road, surprised a family of five and accelerated, striking and killing four of them. If true, this story illustrates the hostility that has tended to characterize attitudes toward coyotes since European settlers first encountered these wily predators on the plains of western North America. To many newcomers, coyotes were “vicious beasts,” “skulking varmints” and “sneaky vermin” – and this mindset has persisted. But many Aboriginal people had a different view of coyotes. To them, coyote was the “trickster” and the “transformer.” Some First Nations people, inspired by coyotes’ nocturnal chorusing, called them “song dogs.” Others, beguiled by coyotes’ ingenuity, revered them as “God’s dogs.” Like humans coyotes are highly resourceful, able to live just about anywhere, to respond creatively to environmental challenges and eat just about anything – including at times domestic animals. The human response to this predation has often been violent. Coyotes have been shot, poisoned, burned, trapped and in Amaranth in 2009, run down by cars.

The case for coexistence From the West, coyotes gradually migrated eastward, and their yipping and howling can now be heard from the heights of Melancthon to the Peel Plain. The coyote has become the dominant predator, not only in the Headwaters region, but also throughout most of North America. Unlike other large predators coyotes thrive in human-dominated landscapes. Possessed of the same resolute determination to survive as people, these animals are here to stay. So we must learn to coexist – and we humans could start by getting to know these predators better. Coyotes are canids, belonging to the same family as dogs, and people who have studied coyotes see in them many of the traits often admired in dogs: loyalty, compassion, courage and co-operation. For those who celebrate family values, the coyote family could serve as a model. Coyote parents are devoted to each other and to their pups. Coyotes entered southern Ontario in the early 20th century, a colonization aided and abetted by human settlement. Forests were thinned out to create a mix of field and woodland where these animals could thrive, and people largely eliminated the coyote’s mortal enemy the wolf. As coyotes became the new chief predator in the province, something interesting happened. The few wolves that remained embraced the love-the-one-

PHOTO RON PIT TS

r e l at ionsh ip w i t h t h e se i nge n ious cr e at u r e s “Pouncin’Around” by Ron Pitts, a panorama created from a sequence of photographs illustrating time and motion.

Looking past the headlines you’re-with philosophy, and wolf/coyote hybrids were born. Coyote “the transformer” became bigger and stronger than the full-blooded coyotes of the West, better able to take down larger prey such as deer. So when the opportunity arises or when hunger drives them, Ontario coyotes often behave like wolves, co-operating with pack mates to subdue large prey. But the hoofs and antlers of deer are weapons coyotes prefer to avoid. More often coyotes hunt smaller prey and this continues to be a solo endeavour. Coyotes are expert mousers with highly sensitive ears that can pinpoint the faint footfalls of mice under snow or mats of grass. Coyote cuisine also includes lots of insects and fruit. In the fall, for example, I frequently come across coyote scat consisting largely of wild grape skins. Top predators like coyotes are essential to the well-being of the natural environment for they keep populations of prey animals at sustainable levels. Coyote predation on rodent, rabbit and deer populations also helps keep native plant communities healthy and protect crops grown by humans. Coyote predation may even help birds. A California study found coyote-rich habitats have more birds than those with few coyotes, apparently

because coyotes control small predators such as foxes, which feed on birds and their eggs. Foxes also fall prey to coyotes and in response some foxes are proving that coyotes aren’t the only smart canids. Every spring on Keith Lamont’s sheep farm in Erin Township, foxes dig dens inside the protection of his electric fencing. Foxes are small enough to move with impunity through the fencing, while the larger coyotes are kept outside and away from vulnerable kits. Groundhogs aren’t as resourceful as foxes in avoiding coyote predation. For people of my vintage, who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, the sight of groundhogs, or woodchucks, standing sentinel in fields was common. Groundhogs are now seen only infrequently, and their burrows, once the bane of horse and cattle owners, are of less concern. Coyote predation may even benefit the health of humans – and their pets – by controlling deer populations. Deer host the ticks that carry Lyme disease, a malady that has recently attracted considerable attention. Decreased deer populations may help reduce the incidence of this potentially disabling disease.

While the role of coyotes in the ecosystem receives little popular attention, these animals’ misdeeds often make headlines. Take the Toronto Star’s coverage of an incident that occurred in a city park on a July evening last year. According to the Star, a man practising yoga in the park was “charged” three times by a coyote. The man “began to yell, clap his hands and jump up and down,” successfully driving the animal away. News reports like this sometimes stoke anticoyote hysteria – but fail to ask a critical question: Why would an animal normally very wary of people approach someone so boldly? Lesley Sampson of Coyote Watch Canada, an Ontario-based coyote advocacy group, said the answer may be straightforward. “Some of our parks have become hot spots for feeding coyotes,” said Sampson. “And there are photographers who routinely bait coyotes and other wildlife to lure them near.” A coyote that is fed by humans soon learns to view all people as potential food dispensers, Sampson added. It thinks, “These two-legged creatures are going to feed me.” The death of Taylor Mitchell, a Toronto folksinger killed in 2009 by coyotes in Cape Breton Highlands continued on next page

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

National Park, shocked a continent. Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado and a member of the advisory board of Project Coyote in the United States, was deeply saddened by Mitchell’s death. Still, Bekoff noted, coyote attacks on people are “extremely rare.” In fact, the deaths of Mitchell and a young California child in 1981 are the only recorded North American fatalities attributable to coyote – ever. Yet millions of people and tens of thousands of coyotes share the same territory. This proximity, Bekoff said, means “the opportunities for such aggressive encounters amount to hundreds, or even thousands, in North America each day.” The precise circumstances of Mitchell’s death are unknown, but according to Sampson evidence suggests that, for a long time, coyotes in the Cape Breton park had frequented campsites in search of food. This close contact may have caused the animals to lose their fear of humans. Does this mean that coyotes now pose a significant risk to people? No, said Brent Patterson, a research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and an adjunct professor at Trent University. “Like all large predators,” he said, “coyotes need to be respected, and proper precautions need to be taken, but beyond that, we should keep in mind that the risk of being harmed by a coyote is very small relative to the many common dangers we all face during our daily lives.” In my hundreds of solo walks through the Headwaters region over the past four decades, I’ve frequently come across coyote scat and coyote tracks – though I’ve rarely seen a coyote. But these creatures have undoubtedly seen me many times. Their healthy fear of people has kept them in the shadows.

The key to coexisting with coyotes Humans must ensure coyotes’ natural fear persists. The actions of those who feed coyotes intentionally or even inadvertently leave garbage accessible in their yards, weaken this fear, which protects both people and coyotes. In consultation with Sampson, Niagara Falls has implemented a program of non-lethal coyote control, an initiative the city takes very seriously. Feed a coyote in Niagara Falls and you could face a $5,000 fine. Other communities would do well to follow this lead. People must also learn how to deal 82

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coyotes continued from page 81

with coyotes that have become habituated to humans. Like many other canids, coyotes live in family structures governed by dominance and submission. When meeting an emboldened coyote, humans must demonstrate their dominance. Screaming and running away will not work. If you encounter a coyote, Coyote Watch Canada advises following five steps: stop; stand still; shout, wave arms and throw something; back away slowly; share the experience – others may learn from it. To persuade coyotes to leave a particular area, Sampson recommends a technique called “hazing.” Hazing, described in detail at coyotewatch canada.com, involves a variety of strategies, such as yelling and banging pots and pans, to restore the coyote’s natural fear of humans. Though coyotes sometimes attack pet dogs, predation is not usually the motivation. Like all canids coyotes are strongly territorial. They will also actively protect their young from other animals. In his book Coyote, Wyman Meinzer relates the story of a coyote that repeatedly appeared whenever this Texas photographer walked a friend’s Labrador retrievers. The coyote would “dash in and bite the Labs on their hips,” wrote Meinzer. The animal wasn’t harbouring delusions of killing the much larger retrievers, it was simply defending its territory. Cats are more likely than dogs to fall victim to hungry coyotes. But most cats killed by coyotes are those permitted to roam freely outdoors. As these cats participate in the food chain by hunting small birds and animals, coyotes in turn hunt the cats. This is fundamental ecology and there’s a simple solution: keep cats indoors. Along with free-roaming cats, lamb is sometimes on the coyote’s menu, and those who raise sheep react with understandable ire. This antipathy has a long history, stretching back to biblical times when shepherds watched their flocks by night. The sheep farmers I have met delight

in the natural world. Lamont enjoys watching the painted turtles that bask in his pond and the foxes that prowl his fields. And John Henstock, who has been farming sheep in Amaranth for many years, is a longtime member of the Upper Credit Field Naturalists. Neither Lamont nor Henstock despise coyotes, and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs does compensate farmers who lose livestock to predators. But no amount of compensation can assuage the anguish of a sheep farmer who wakes in the morning to find the grisly remains of coyote-killed lambs. In the fall Henstock now allows hunters onto his property to kill coyotes.

Non-lethal control measures Is it possible to deal with coyotes’ sheep predation in non-lethal ways? Can humans outwit these predators? Or is killing them the only recourse? For former Progressive Conservative MPP Bill Murdoch (Bruce, Grey, Owen Sound), killing is the answer. In early 2011 Murdoch pushed for an Ontario-wide bounty of $200 on coyotes. Now retired from the provincial legislature, Murdoch told the Owen Sound Sun Times that he regrets that the bounty was never adopted. And Larry Miller, federal MP for the same area, has publicly stated, “the only good coyote is a dead coyote.” But not everyone supports bounties. Some find the idea repugnant, while others argue bounties are expensive and don’t work. Patterson, for example, maintained bounties “have never been shown effective at reducing coyote abundance. Despite the presence of a province-wide bounty on coyotes until 1972, coyotes expanded greatly in number and range across Ontario during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.” Coyotes compensate for losses to trapping and hunting by having more pups. In addition, the death of alpha males and females can open breeding to lower-status coyotes in the pack, continued on page 90

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MAD RIVER GEM, AVENING Enter the foyer and you are greeted by the magnificent great rm w/ a wall of south facing glass and w/o to huge deck, river and 32 acs. 3 levels of living space w/ 6 bdrms. Perfect for Mansfield or Glen skiers. $950,000

BIG TREE CIRCLE...MULMUR Quality throughout. 1-acre forest setting near Mansfield Ski Club. Dramatic wall of windows in great room. Granite and maple kitchen. Bright lower level with 2 bdrms, family room and walkout to enclosed hot tub. $499,500

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FOXCREST Set on just over 5 wooded acres with a magnificent pond and stunning landscaping, this tastefully renovated and decorated house has impeccable quality and style. Sep 2+ car garage with a lovely garret on the 2nd floor with a 3-piece ensuite and cathedral ceilings, completely private. The house boasts reclaimed beech floors as well as heated slate floor, library with wood-burning fireplace and formal dining room with cathedral ceilings and bar. Main floor master bedroom with a romantic spa bathroom overlooking garden. 2nd floor has three bedrooms. $1,450,000 Jamie Gairdner**

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

* Chris P. Richie Broker of Record/Owner

Philip Albin Broker

Dale Poremba Sales Representative

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138 ACRE WORKING FARM Rolling hills, valley with stream, trees, open fields – ideal for crops, cattle and horses. Bank barn. Orig brick farmhouse w/ country porch sits back from road and overlooks hills and valleys south of the Village of Erin. $1,299,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

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EXQUISITE SETTING Long paved driveway leads to this beautiful home w/ i/g pool, large deck, bush, drive shed, mini barn w/ stalls & paddocks w/ ponds. Fabulous lr/dr features incredible cathedral ceiling, flr-to-ceiling fp & massive windows. $749,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

FILLED WITH CHARACTER Tree-lined driveway to 5-bedroom stone/ board & batten charmer with wood floors, beamed ceilings, deep window sills and more. 10+ acres with gardens, woods, bank barn, drive shed and workshop in Erin. $769,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

90 ACRES - INCREDIBLE VIEWS 4 bdrms, awesome living rm with fp, vaulted ceiling & wood floors open to eat-in kitchen w/ granite counters, breakfast bar & w/o to deck. Lower level rec rm w/ w/o to patio. Paddocks, pond & restored 1800s barn. $1,799,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

COUNTRY RETREAT IN MONO 6 bdrms, 6 baths, eat-in kitchen, lodge-like living & dining areas, main flr games room. Unspoiled bsmt with walkout and 3-pc bath. 26.99 acres – the back is rolling & forested with trails. 86’x40’ steel outbuilding. $749,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

SPECTACULAR PROPERTY! Gated entrance to 126 acres with open fields, trees, 5 large ponds, streams, waterfall and artesian springs. 5-bedroom main house, pool, drive shed, stone stable + 3-bedroom tenanted house. Halton Hills. $1,995,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

SKI, SKATE, SWIM & FISH Gorgeous 32 acres in Erin with trails, huge pond with dock, stream, bush, open land and barn. Custom-built raised 3-bedroom bungalow with finished walkout basement with kitchen, family room, bdrm & full bath. $859,000 Wayne Baguley* 519-941-5151

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

PARADISE AWAITS ON 23 ACRES A rare collection of hardwood forest, meandering lawns and large ponds. Exceptional estate home with extensive landscaping plan by Cornerstone Landscaping. So many special features to list including granite counters, gas fireplaces, heated limestone floors, fabulous indoor pool and spa area, tennis court, cobblestone court yard, detached 4-car garage/ workshop and more. Unparalleled Caledon retreat. $3,450,000

COUNTRY HIDEAWAY The gated entry leads down a long private drive to this wonderful, natural log home. Tucked away on over 24 acres with det 4-car garage/shop. Several recent upgrades, granite tops and heated floors to name a few. Caledon. $1,100,000

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NATURE LOVER’S SANCTUARY Beautiful, post & beam, home overlooking a pond on 28 acres with fabulous det, heated, shop plus loft. A unique package with loads of charm and character. Hardwood forest, stream, bridges and hiking trails. Caledon. $1,125,000

MONO FARM Family owned since 1922, approx 90 acres, this picturesque property has been organically farmed with over 50% workable land. Suitable for horses and cattle. Well maintained, brick & stone bungalow. Several outbuildings in good condition. $1,499,000

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SMALL SCALE IMMACULATE EQUESTRIAN ESTATE Architect designed-built residence with quality and an eye for modern styling and comforts. An immaculate 4+ stall horse barn with run-in shed and large fenced paddocks. Ride past the pond and through wooded trails. A small equestrian park. $826,000

SO MUCH CHARM & FUN TO BE HAD Absolutely delightful country setting. Walk in...enjoy. 2-storey living room opens to large dining room. Modern kitchen overlooks alfresco dining deck. Pond with guest bunkie. Tennis court. English style gardens. $779,000

NATURE SURROUNDS YOU... A real country lodge filled with great open living spaces. Bright and very appealing on 45 acres. Cosy for two - room for 20. Outbuildings, privacy. Immaculate condition. New steel roof. $699,000

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IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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HEART LAKE RD & ESCARPMENT 126 acres, 2 houses, tennis court, inground pool, pond, views of Toronto. $2,900,000

MULMUR FISH & HOBBY FARM 132 acres, 20-acre pond. $2,250,000

NEW CONSTRUCTION IN CALEDON 17+ acres, 5,600 sq ft living space, custom built home. $1,649,000

CUSTOM HOME & GUEST HOUSE Mono, open concept, 68 rolling acres, i/g swimming pool, tennis court. $1,279,000

ESCARPMENT SD & HEART LAKE RD 10 acres, 10+ car garage or workshop w/ office, 3 bedrooms, 2,500 sq ft. $1,099,000

RAVINE LOT IN BRAMPTON 3,900 sq ft, 5 bedrooms ensuite, finished basement with kitchen. $949,000

BUILD YOUR DREAM HOME Caledon, private road, 3-car garage and finished loft with kitchen. $799,000

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THRIVING RESTAURANT/BUILDING Erin, 2-bedroom apartment, 58 seats, outdoor patio. Reduced. $699,000

HOCKLEY & 4TH LINE 1,800 sq ft bungalow, in-law suite, walkout basement, wrap-around porch. $599,000

DOMINION STREET, CALEDON 2,000 sq ft, 3-bedroom, 2-car garage, stunning sunsets. Dead end road. $529,000

SOLD

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

HISTORIC PALMER HOUSE Caledon, 5 rental units available for commercial or retail, 780-1,300 sq ft. $16 per sq ft rental

HORSE FARM IN TERRA COTTA Lovely stone home and handsome 17-stall barn combined in one remarkable package. All privately positioned on picturesque 50 acres, arena, paddocks, drive shed, stream. Restored home circa 1866 with old world charm. $1,595,000

CUSTOM CRAFTED NEAR TERRA COTTA Gracious atmosphere, efficient home, lovely principle rooms, hardwood, fp, new kitchen, bthrms, many updates. Solarium, the perfect place for private enjoyment of fabulous property. This is a find and super value. $695,000

SOPHISTICATED HOME CALEDON Superb quality 4 bdrms w/ ensuites + 1-bdrm in-law suite w/ separate entrance. Gorgeous kitchen w/ granite overlooking fabulous family room. Spacious mstr bdrm w/ 6-pce ensuite and fireplace. Beautiful landscaped property, saltwater pool. $989,000

OLD GEORGETOWN GEM Remarkable home and property < 3/4 acre on ravine on very quiet street. Home is impressive with open floor plan, fab views from all the windows, updated with gorgeous kitchen, bathrooms, shingles, provides distinctive energy. $898,000

PARADISE IN BELFOUNTAIN AREA Beautifully landscaped 5.4 acres with pond, mature trees and gardens. 4-bdrm home features reclaimed Beech and heated slate floors, gourmet kitchen, gracious principle rooms. Main floor master bedroom with romantic 6-piece ensuite. $1,450,000

PRESTIGIOUS CALEDON LOCALE Fabulous 62-acre property, meadows, paddocks, pond, hardwood forest, delightful heated barn. Very charming home with open concept and tons of charm. Huge workshop/ studio with bath, kitchen, stone fireplace, great granny suite. $2,400,000

BEAUTIFUL 54.84 ACRE PROPERTY Spectacular property, great variety of topography with mature trees, gorgeous pond, wet land, many walking trails, workshop and well on property. South of Belfountain. $525,000

MAGIC IN MONO ON 6 ACRES Lovely home w/ main flr master bdrm plus kitchen addition and w/o bsmt, all overlooking incredible property with pond and stunning long views. Stunning gardens, close to Bruce Trail. If you want a view, this is it! $619,000

D L O

Sales Representative

Susan Brown

Royal LePage Top 1% in Canada, 2009

519-925-1776 1-800-483-7740 Serving Mono, Mulmur, Caledon and Orangeville

View Full Details On All Our Listings At:

www.susanbrown.com

RCR REALTY Brokerage

SUPER EXTENDED FAMILY HOME Large bungaloft on 18 acres. Open concept main level. Nanny suite. Lower level separate apt. Barn/workshop. KING TOWNSHIP $749,900

EXTENDED FAMILY HOME ON 19 ACRES Over 5,000 sq ft with cathedral ceilings, spacious chef’s kitchen, separate in-law suite, indoor pool, 3 patios, mixed bush. MULMUR $699,900

SUPERB LOG HOME ON 50 ACRES WITH GORGEOUS POND Live & work in a country setting. Open concept 20 ft to peak. 5 bedroom, 3 bath. Large separate workshop. NEAR SHELBURNE $655,000

VICTORIAN GEM ON 1.9 ACRES Beautifully restored. Outbuildings can be for horses, business or hobby. Country kitchen and gracious dining room. 1 hour to GTA. NEAR ALLISTON $579,900

IMPECCABLE COUNTRY BUNGALOW ON 10 ACRES Gorgeous ranch style with bush and trails. House upgrades; granite counters, hardwood floors, new bathrooms. Walkout basement with workshop. MULMUR $569,000

DELIGHTFUL BUNGALOW ON 5.7 WOODED ACRES Open concept, cathedral ceilings, large windows. Detached garage/workshop. Pool, private. Weekend or full-time home. MULMUR $509,900

SUPERIOR BUILT ON 1.27 AC LOT Blue Max construction with infloor heating throughout. Bungalow 3,000+ sq ft on each level, backs onto woods and golf course. Possible in-law suite for extended family. NEAR ALLISTON $669,000

EXECUTIVE STYLE HOME ON 1 ACRE LOT In a desirable neighbourhood. High ceilings, bay windows, chef’s kitchen, triple garage, patio, gardens, privacy. NEAR MANSFIELD $449,900

EXCEPTIONAL VIEWS ON A ONE ACRE LOT High on a hill top this chalet style home has spectacular views of the Pine River valley, access to Mansfield ski hills. 2,000 sq ft. MULMUR $429,900

DELIGHTFUL VICTORIAN REPRODUCTION ON 1 ACRE LOT A country parcel with old fashioned porch and gingerbread trim. Loft studio. Basement with media room and walkout. NEAR HORNINGS MILLS $429,000

MOVE IN CONDITION Delightful open concept brick bungalow on huge private lot with mature trees. Approx 1,700 sq ft finished space includes basement and 4th bdrm. Upgrades incl windows, bsmt, bathroom. Great value. NEAR ALLISTON $299,000

COUNTRY CLASSIC ON 9.7 ACRES Attractive 2-storey home with huge wrap-around porch, gazebo, open backyard, mature trees, perennial gardens, heated greenhouse. MULMUR $389,900

DELIGHTFUL BUNGALOW ON 2.3 ACRES Beautifully decorated interior with bonus 4th bedroom and bathroom on finished lower level with large windows. Located near HORNINGS MILLS $374,900

CHARMING BUNGALOW BACKING ONTO CONSERVATION On mature half-acre lot. Open concept with high ceilings, huge windows, finished walkout basement, deck. SHELBURNE $299,900

HIGHLY SCENIC BUILDING LOT One road over from Mansfield ski hills. Many building sites to take advantage of the surrounding views. In magnificent MULMUR $399,900

NEWLY SEVERED 50 ACRE LOT Rare parcel of land ideal for homestead or hobby farm. Short walk to Saugeen River. 660 ft frontage with groomed trails. BRUCE COUNTY $299,000

D L O

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

Basia Regan

Sales Representative 705-466-2115

RCR Realty, Brokerage

basiaregan@royallepage.ca www.basiaregan.com

INDEPENDENTLY OWNED & OPERATED

SUTTON’S OVERALL TOP PRODUCER, 2012 11th Consecutive Year, Based on Gross Sales

143 Mill Street, Creemore

Kaitlan Klein & Kelly Klein sales representatives

MAGNIFICENT CALEDON ESTATE Exceptional estate in Caledon featuring 8,000 square foot main house, guest house and manager’s house. This stunning property also boasts a private, spring-fed, stocked lake, tennis court, pool and exquisite gardens. $4,374,000 CALEDON CUSTOM - 2.24 ACRES Superior finishings in 2,900 sq ft 3+2 bedroom, 5-bathroom bungalow w/ walkout basement games and rec rooms. Great room w/ gas fireplace open w/ cherry wood kitchen, granite counters. Hardwood on main flr. 9 ft ceilings throughout! $948,900

CALEDON 4.75 ACRES Stunning spacious 3+1 bedroom, 3.5 bath bungalow, slate & hardwood flrs. 4 fireplaces, new kitchen, centre island & granite. Walkout bsmt rec, family, games rm, wet bar, sauna, 2nd kit. Natural gas. 20x30 ft outbuilding. 5,500 sq ft finished living space. $938,900

MULMUR AWAITS YOU! Exceptional 12.75-acre parcel of land with stunning views of Pine River Valley. Private setting on quiet country road. Bruce Trail at your doorstep. Build your dream house and enjoy country life while only 1.5 hours from Toronto. $299,900 INGLEWOOD VILLAGE - 1.06 ACRE Custom 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath (+ bsmt 2-pc), 2.5 garage and hot tub. Great room with cathedral ceilings, hardwood floors, open concept dining, kitchen w/ granite counters, basement family room w/ gas fp and walkout, workshop & cold room. Town water. $828,900

CALEDON ACRE + STREAM Ever-flowing stream with lush gardens and woods. A unique mix of old and new in 3 storey (4,800 sq ft) 5 bedroom, board & batten with geothermal heating, metal roof, pine galley kitchen, hardwood and newer windows. $668,900 Andrea Kary Sales Representative & Licensed Assistant

CALEDON 2.7 ACS - SHOP/BARN, PADDOCKS, MAPLE BUSH Immaculate 3+1 bedroom, 2 bath brick bungalow. Separate entry to finished bsmt. Country location with natural gas htg, new septic, hydro in shop/barn. Towering spruce & maples. Parking for over 11 cars. $624,900

HOCKLEY VILLAGE BUNGALOW Over half acre, mature lot, private backyard, 4 car insulated/htd garage. Immaculate 3+3 bedroom, 3 baths, huge great room addition, oak pegged floors, 5-pc master ensuite, basement rec room, laundry, workshop/ storage area. Newer shingles. $548,900

Gillian Vanderburgh Sales Representative

www.gillianv.com 519-941-5151

MONO PRIVACY Raised bungalow on 10 ac along a tributary of the Nottawasaga. Inlayed wood flooring, large rooms & w/o from the main floor master. Det 2-car garage with living/office space above. Video tour at gillianv.com. $859,000

ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN EAST GARAFRAXA Beautifully updated family home on 10 acres. Energy efficient and picture perfect. Hobby farm or weekend getaway. Video tour at gillianv.com. $757,500

COUNTRY CLASSIC IN SOUTH MONO 4-bdrm Century farmhouse mins from town. 20+ acres & a 2-acre pond! 4-stall barn/tack room. Det 3-car garage with living/office. Video tour at gillianv.com. $849,000

SPECTACULAR VIEWS OF MONO Picture perfect Gothic reproduction home. Stone fireplace in the dining room, high end kitchen appliances, custom built-ins, elegant master ensuite. Views go on for miles! Video tour at gillianv.com. $839,000

CALEDON 15.9 ACRES + CREDIT RIVER Building lot with mixed forest and open fields in quaint hamlet of Melville. 900+ feet of Credit River. $474,900

CALEDON NEW TOWNHOME Strawberry Fields open concept, 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath stone/brick townhome. Living room with gas fp, coffered ceilings combined with dining. Galley kitchen with appliances. California shutters. Master 4-pc ensuite with jacuzzi. $414,900

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

CALEDON VILLAGE 1.7 ACRES Residential building lot in town corridor with fabulous potential for future development. $224,900 CALEDON VILLAGE COMMERCIAL Formerly The Outback ladies’ clothing boutique in busy downtown core location. $308,900

MOFFAT DUNLAP REAL ESTATE LIMITED, BROKERAGE

905-841-7430 www.moffatdunlap.com Moffat Dunlap*, John Dunlap**, Peter Boyd, Murray Snider, George Webster, Peter Bowers*** PARKMOOR AVAILABLE

*Chairman, **Broker of Record, ***Sales Representative

COUNTRY HOUSE HOTEL, CALEDON Magnificent 2,800 sq ft main house. Tennis, pool, sporting clays, trout pond. 3 other houses. May suit conversion to country house hotel. $19,000,000

STEELHOUSE, CALEDON Architect designed 5-bdrm home on 23+ acres between Belfountain & The Grange. To the south, the home and decks overlook a spring-fed pond with fountain. Huge entertainment patio with pool, hot tub and outdoor dining. $2,750,000

THE RANKIN HOUSE, CALEDON Exceptional Bill Grierson designed bungalow on a cul-de-sac in the Terra Cotta countryside. Balconies that wrap around the south and west sides were created to take full advantage of the views all the way to the CN Tower. $1,190,000

RENOV CENTURY FARM, CALEDON 5-bedroom century farmhouse, waterfall. Deep swimming pond. 57 rolling acres, trails and maple woodlot. New luxury kitchen with eat-in breakfast room and solarium with heated slate floors. 11-stall barn. $2,495,000

KINGSBORO FARM, NR PALGRAVE Picturesque farm with updated century farmhouse + new coach house. Fully renovated equestrian complex with 19 stalls, huge indoor arena, new paddocks + sand ring. 74 acres. Land for hay. $1,900,000

HIGH HOCKLEY, MONO Set on 148 rolling acres. The BC Cedar clad 3+2 bedroom home is perfectly sited to capture the magnificent endless vistas. Kilometres of trails traverse the hills and dales. $2,775,000

NATURAL STONE, ERIN Exceptional quality 8-year-old stone house on 50 acres. Cherry hardwood floors. Exceptional chef’s kitchen. Exterior is Owen Sound Ebel ledge rock. Mix of open meadow, hardwood, pine, cedar woods, trails. $1,750,000

ACTON TROUT CLUB Established in 1928. 126 acres. Multiple ponds, meadows and fields. Walk to downtown Acton. Original 5-bdrm stone lodge building, 3-bdrm stone tenant home, stone stable. Your chance to restore this piece of history. $1,995,000

YELLOW BRIAR, MONO 48-acre property with tastefully updated 4-bedroom farmhouse. Lovely long views from the broad veranda. Indoor arena, 9 stalls, 8 paddocks, 3-car detached garage. $1,495,000

MONO HILLS GOLF CLUB Opportunity to acquire one of the last golf course lots. Enjoy the private club. Distant views, deep ponds, wooded fairways. 2 lots available. 10 minutes to shopping. $335,000

RON THOM HOME, CALEDON Architectural gem by Ron Thom. Superb views, pool, cabana + 1,000 ft of Credit River frontage. Tennis court. Very private. Near Caledon Ski Club and Belfountain. $2,300,000

CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE FOR MORE: • 110 acres, Caledon • Glen Williams, Executive Home • 100-acre building site, Caledon • 50+ acre building site, Hockley Valley

GRANDE FARMS, MONO 100-acre horse farm. Fully renovated main house with luxury kitchen and master suite. 24-stall barn, arena, staff house. Immaculate paddocks.

CENTURY BARN, MONO A great opportunity to turn this Mennonite refurbished structure into your country retreat. Lovely western views towards dramatic escarpment ridgeline. 6 acres.

PINE RIDGE FARM Exceptional quality throughout this 3+2 bedroom executive residence. Paddock, run-in, salt pool, geothermal heating/cooling. 33.8 acres.

FOX PARK, HOCKLEY VALLEY Charming country property. Approx 13 acres. Large deep pond. Small solid brick bungalow overlooks the pond to the south and long country views to the east.

D L O

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

coyotes continued from page 82

resulting in more coyotes, not fewer. Dufferin County council hasn’t imposed a general bounty on coyotes, but councillors have adopted a bylaw to control “problem coyotes.” Stock owners can invite licensed hunters or trappers onto their property to kill coyotes that have been involved in livestock predation. From 2010 to August 2012, 157 coyotes were killed as part of this program, which pays hunters $50 for each dead coyote. This focused approach is preferable to a general bounty, but its effectiveness remains to be seen. Bekoff compared the removal of coyotes from a property to what happens when guests check out of a hotel room. The guests leave in the morning, but by the afternoon, new guests are likely to occupy the room. There will always be some coyote predation on sheep, regardless of measures taken to discourage it. So instead of killing coyotes, perhaps it’s worth trying alternatives that minimize losses while offering enduring results. Installing electric fencing is one of the most effective measures. Guard animals such as llamas and donkeys, which have an inherent dislike of canids, can also help protect flocks. And large dogs such as the great Pyrenees, if raised with sheep, will bond with and guard their charges. Electric fencing and guard animals are expensive but as Lamont said, leaving a sheep farm unprotected is like walking away from home without locking the door. No protective measure is fail-safe. Even Lamont, with electric fencing and a llama named Leo on guard, still loses sheep to coyotes. But evidence confirms that nonlethal control measures can significantly decrease coyote predation. Marin County, California, which once paid trappers to catch and kill coyotes, has documented the benefits of nonlethal methods. The money saved has been redirected to help farmers by, for example, subsidizing the cost of electric fencing and of guard dogs.

Sheep and lambs are still lost to coyotes, but at a much lower rate. For sheep farmers, another challenge is disposing of dead stock. The farmers I spoke to bury or compost dead animals in accordance with regulations set by the Ontario agriculture ministry. But coyotes have been in the business of cleaning up dead animals for thousands of years. The scent of a dead sheep is probably as alluring to a coyote as the aroma of a barbecued steak is to many humans. Not surprisingly, a study in Alberta found that sheep farmers who remove dead animals from their property suffer less coyote predation. The cost of picking up dead sheep is not high, but for an operation already running on tight margins expenses can add up. Funding the removal of dead stock may be a way for governments to help farmers reduce coyote predation, especially as the cost of the program is likely to be offset by reduced compensation payouts for sheep killed by coyotes.

Celebrating coyote encounters Last April, at an event at the Dufferin County Museum, Michael Agueci of the Dufferin Circle of Storytellers entertained guests with his tale of a coyote encounter. While walking his dog one wintry afternoon, Agueci moved toward a pair of calling barred owls in an effort to spot the elusive birds. The owls were forgotten, however, when he stumbled upon coyotes feeding on a deer carcass. When the animals became aware of his presence, “the pack was spooked,” Agueci said, and the coyotes fled. Agueci’s coyotes were playing a predatory role that has been keeping ecosystems healthy for millions of years. And they acted as they should in the presence of humans – with fear and withdrawal. And Agueci? Though he was “awestruck” by the admittedly grisly scene, the final line of the story summed up his feelings: “What a fantastic walk.” ≈

Creemore Hills Realty Ltd

Brokerage

Austin Boake, Broker of Record/Owner 705.466.3070

www.CreemoreHillsRealty.com

“FERN HILL” 32 ACRES MULMUR Spectacular views, privacy, forest, trails, meadows, and stream. Stunning, professionally designed. 4 bedrooms, 3 baths. Perfect porches. Year round recreation at your doorstep. $995,000

CREEMORE RED BRICK Custom, quality “Quanbury” home. 4 bedrooms, 4 baths. Main floor master. Living room with fireplace. Large, private, landscaped backyard. Lower level games room. Double garage. $498,000

TOP OF MANSFIELD SKI CLUB Ski in or ski out. Spectacular views. Open concept, bright spacious chalet/custom home. Living room with vaulted ceilings and fireplace. 5 bedrooms, 3 baths. Walkout lower level. $489,000

1.24 ACRES WITH BARN Great location, at the base of Mansfield Ski Club. Brick bungalow 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, new kitchen with walkout. Inground pool with cabana. Barn with shop and loft apartment. $419,900

**Broker of Record *Sales Representative 122 Main Street, Erin

For more on how humans can coexist with coyotes, check out the following. coyotewatchcanada.com and projectcoyote.org The online publication Coyotes in Our Midst, by Camilla Fox and Christopher Papouchis is an excellent resource. Find it at projectcoyote.com God’s Dog: A Celebration of the North American Coyote, by Hope Ryden (universe, 2oo5), one of the ﬁrst books to lament the long history of attempts to exterminate coyotes, presents a strong case for building a new relationship with these animals. Coyote, by Wyman Meinzer (texas tech university press, 1996), offers fascinating insights into coyote behaviour, as well as a gallery of photos.

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

LISTED AND SOLD BY JAMIE GAIRDNER WOLFFDALE FARMS Imagine a huge sunny indoor riding arena in your 240’x82’ main barn with 11 brand new custom designed stables for your thoroughbreds or hunter jumpers. Plenty of room for 41 more indoor stalls to keep 52 horses indoors year round. 3 outdoor riding areas, 124 acres, 2 hayfields, 8 outdoor waterers, 7 paddocks, 3 huge pastures plus 15-acre forest. Completely renovated century home, heated inground pool with outdoor shower and stone stream. Cedar deck embracing an 8-person hot tub. Located just 2 minutes north of Caledon Town Line. 45 minutes north of Woodbine Racetrack and the GTA. Offered at $1,395,000 Jamie Gairdner**

See Virtual Tours at MarcRonan.com ***Marc Ronan Sales Representative/Owner

Ronan Realty Brokerage

*Sales Representative **Broker ***Sales Representative/Owner ****Broker of Record An independently owned and operated broker member of BRER Affiliates LLC Not intended to solicit clients under contract or contravene the privacy act.

Alliston Barrie Nobleton Orangeville Tottenham Wasaga Beach

1-877-435-4336 705-725-8255 905-859-4477 1-888-943-0860 1-888-936-4216 705-422-2350

A Proud Sponsor of

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CUSTOM BUILT EXECUTIVE HOME NEAR HWY 9 & 50 Sprawling 5-bdrm home w/ multiple walkouts on 25 acres w/ pond, steel barn and workable land. Fin lower level w/ kitchenette, rec room. $829,900 Marc Ronan*** 1-888-936-4216

EXCLUSIVE COUNTRY ESTATE ON 150 ACRES IN HOCKLEY VALLEY Property features 5 homes/cottages, 9-acre lake, trails & approx 50 acres of spruce trees. Ideal corporate retreat or family compound. $2,900,000 Marc Ronan*** 1-888-936-4216

ENJOY COUNTRY LIVING IN THE ROLLING HILLS OF MONO! Exec 10-ac estate w/ manicured lawns, gardens, stocked pond w/ aerator. Fully fin bungalow w/ multiple walkouts, det 20’x40’ heated shop. $789,900 Marc Ronan*** 1-888-936-4216

ENJOY THE BREATHTAKING VISTAS OF THIS SCENIC PROPERTY Uniquely designed home on 60 acres with Nottawasaga River, boxcar guest quarters, pond, grdns & trails. Geothermal heating, indoor pool. $999,900 Marc Ronan*** 1-888-936-4216

DREAM HOME NEAR GOLF AND SKI HILLS! Custom bungalow set on private 7 acres near Mono Cliffs. Open concept w/ beautiful finishes. Mature landscaping & grdns. $774,900 Marc Ronan*** & Monica Delisle* 1-888-943-0860

2.7 ACRES NEAR MONO CLIFFS Custom built 3,000 sq ft open concept home with 3 bedrooms, 3 baths. Enjoy the sunset from your private back deck! $825,000 Marc Ronan*** & Michelle Ziniuk** 1-888-936-4216

101 ACRE EQUESTRIAN FACILITY - ADJALA/PALGRAVE Fabulous horse farm with custom bungaloft, paddocks, indoor arena with viewing area, round pen, sand ring, 10+ stalls, pond & trails. $3,500,000 Marc Ronan*** 1-888-936-4216

48 ACRE ADJALA FARM WITH FABULOUS VIEWS! Sprawling farm home, 2 bank barns, drive shed and workshop! 45 minutes to Pearson Airport, excellent gentleman’s farm. $899,900 Marc Ronan*** 1-888-936-4216

Top 5% in Canada

519-941-5151 or 1-800-268-2455 mgrime @ thegrimeteam.com www.thegrimeteam.com

jacquelineguagliardi.com

for Royal LePage 2008-11

519-833-0569 • 800-268-2455

RCR Realty, Brokerage Independently Owned & Operated

BROKER

TOP 1% IN CANADA *

*in Royal LePage Real Estate Based on Commissioned Earned **Sales Representative and Licensed Assistant

Margorie Grime, Broker

Kathey Hooper**

Dave Grime**

Cathey Szabolcs**

DON’T FENCE ME IN Extraordinary lushly landscaped 2 acres in Cedar Valley. Open concept Cape Cod with Bruce hardwood, a kitchen to please any chef, master retreat with 2-person jet tub and finished lower level. $629,000

EXCEPTIONAL ERIN ADDRESS Homes of Distinction, 9-yr young 3,300 sq ft 4-bdrm exec home with granite, hardwood, 9’ ceilings on 1 acre professionally landscaped with inground pool. Backs onto green space. Pristine condition! $844,900

ADULT LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY BESIDE CONSERVATION & TRAILS +$200K in upgrades on the largest conservation (or ravine) lot in the area (0.34 acres), absolute privacy is ensured. Dream kitchen has stainless steel appliances, gas cooktop, granite counters. Huge centre island is the gathering place for the open concept great room. Hardwood, cathedral ceilings, b/i speakers. 2 master suites with 5-pc ensuite. Huge finished walkout lower level with games room, exercise area and infrared sauna. A must see! $749,900

16 ACRES - EDGE OF FERGUS 5-bedroom stone Century home with 3-year new propane furnace, new baths and main floor master with ensuite. Bank barn with 9 stalls. 4 fenced paddocks, 8 acres farmed and 2 road frontages. $750,000

ERIN’S BEST VIEW - 2 ACRES Custom built in 2011 with fine finishes and exquisite entertaining areas. Finished, open concept walkout lower level with 9’ ceiling and self-contained 700 sq ft nanny suite. Oversized insulated triple garage. $799,000

TRULY UNIQUE! Extraordinary Victorian brick home (circa 1890) on 7 acres with perennial gardens, pond and 2 barn foundations converted into gardens. +3,000 sq ft including various additions. Charming living room and dining rooms with wood floors, extra high trim and unique mouldings. Year-round sunroom showcases spectacular views through tall windows, vaulted ceiling with skylights. Pool room with Hydropool for perfect swim year-round. $649,000

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

I L L U S T R AT I O N S J I M S T E WA R T

What’s on in the Hills A

C A L E N D A R

arts+crafts NOW – APR 18 : IVANO STOCCO

Colourful, abstracted cityscapes. WedSun 10am-5pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. Crimson Feather Gallery, 519-2173370; crimsonfeather.com NOW – MAY 19 : MARS, VENUS AND THE LANDSCAPE Four painters look at the

natural world and the built environment. Special rates until April 1. Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA), 9 Wellington St E, Brampton. 905-791-4055 x3632; pama.peelregion.ca APR 3 – 28 : PASTEL ARTIST OF CANADA

Annual members’ show in the Falls Gallery. Wed-Sun 10am-5pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. 519-940-0935; altonmill.ca APR 5 – MAY 3 : BRUSHFIRE ARTISTS – SHOW AND SALE Paintings by 12

artists including Roslyn Levin, Randi Lockhart, Theresa Minten, Lori Smither. Apr 5: reception with Larry Kurtz Blues Band, 6-9pm. Tues-Fri 10am-6pm. Sat 10am-5pm. Framed x Design, 11 First St, Orangeville. 519-940-3050; brushﬁreartists.ca APR 6 : GETTING TO GREAT COLOUR

Peter John Reid instructs on mixing colours, avoiding mud. 10am-4pm. $70, register. Victoria Parks Community Centre, 35 Victoria Cr, Mono Mills. 519307-0210; orangevilleartgroup.ca APR 6 : MAD & NOISY GALLERY’S A NEW BEGINNING Opening by new owners Lyne

and Rick Burek, 1pm. Local artists display new pieces with a spring theme. 2-5pm. Free. Mad & Noisy Gallery, 154 Mill St, Creemore. 705-466-5555 APR 20 & MAY 18 : NOTTAWASAGA HANDWEAVERS & SPINNERS GUILD

Speakers, mini-workshops, spinning 92

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

O F

S P R I N G

H A P P E N I N G S

and weaving activities. 1-3:30pm. $5. The Gibson Centre for Creativity, 63 Tupper St W, Alliston. 705-435-6991; nottguild.ca APR 20 & 21 : SPRING TREASURES

Stained glass, pottery, paintings, prints, cards, jewellery, hand knits, gourmet dips & more. Sat 10am-5pm. Sun 10am-4pm. Rosemont Hall, Hwy 89 W, Rosemont. 705-434-3283; kai-liis@sympatico.ca APR 20 – MAY 12 : MADE OF WOOD SHOW Canada’s ﬁnest woodworkers,

demonstrations, workshops, juried exhibition. Wed-Sun 10am-5pm. May 4 & 5: “All Things Wood Weekend.” Free. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. The Bartlett Gallery, 519-940-0199; madeofwoodshow.com APR 20 – MAY 19 : ONE IMAGE AT A TIME

Landscapes, cityscapes, and portraiture by photographers Jana and Jeff Smith. Wed-Sun 10am-5pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. The Falls Gallery, 519940-0935; altonmill.ca APR 26 – 28 : CELEBRATE SPRING AT FARMHOUSE POTTERY GALLERY AND COFFEE HOUSE Fresh-roasted Hockley

Valley Coffee and original stoneware mugs by Al Pace. 9am-5pm. Free. 307114 Hockley Rd, Mono. 519-941-6654; pacepottery.com APR 26 – 28 : TURNING TO SPRING – ARTISAN SHOW AND SALE Spring

gardens, wood, ﬁbre, glass. SatSun 10am-5pm. April 26: reception, 6–9pm. Free. Turn-of-Fate Studio, 5890 4th Line, Hillsburgh. 519-855-9639; turnoffatestudio.ca APR 27 & 28 : THE LANGUAGE OF COLOUR AND LIGHT – PHOTOGRAPHY BY ILA SISSON Flowers, land and

skyscapes, sacred sites and children, the dance between colour and light. 9am-4pm. Touched by Light Gallery, 633206 Hwy 10, Mono. 519-216-3115; touchedbylight.ca

MAY 1 – 20, WILLIAMS MILL SPRING OPEN HOUSE & SALE Various artists and

media. Noon-5pm. Open Studios: May 4 & 5, noon-5pm. Free. 515 Main St, Glen Williams. 905-873-8203; williamsmill.com MAY 2 – AUG 24 : CREATIVITY ART RETREAT Four- to seven-day workshops

with internationally acclaimed instructors, gourmet lunches/dinners, yoga. $325-$800. 8961 Cty Rd 9, Dunedin (Creemore). Lynn Connell, 416-951-6528; lynnconnellart.com MAY 4 & 5 : ALTON MILL SPRING AWAKENING OPEN HOUSE Open

studios, art shows and activities. Wed-Sun 10am-5pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. 519-941-9300; altonmill.ca MAY 4 & 5 : BEADS ON BROADWAY CELEBRATES! New spring collections

including Sassafras’ Up Cycle Collection. Name Joan’s new bead! 11am-4pm. Dragonﬂy Arts, 189 Broadway, Orangeville. 519-941-5249; info@dragonﬂyarts.ca MAY 4 & 5, 11 & 12 : SCROLL SAW ARTWORK BY TED HOLDEN SHOW AND SALE Framed and plaque-mounted pieces,

window displays, lamps, ornaments (wildlife & horse themes). 875135 5th Line Mono. Dragonﬂy Woodcraft, 519-941-7076 MAY 5 : BEHIND THIS DOOR – MARLENE MADOLE’S OPEN STUDIO Artist shows

work in progress from Georgian Bay. 1-4pm. Free. Williams Mill Visual Arts Centre, 515 Main St, Glen Williams. 905459-9753; marlenemadole@sympatico.ca MAY 8 – JUN 2 : ART4U Show and sale of award-winning 2D and 3D artists’ work. Reception: May 18, 1-4pm. WedSun 10am-5pm. Free. The Dam Gallery, Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. Orangeville Art Group, 519-307-0210; orangevilleartgroup.ca

MAY 11 – 16 : CREATIVE WRITING RETREAT AT THE FRENCH RIVER Hone

your writing skills with three of Canada’s craftiest writers: Oakland Ross, Susan Scott and Russell Smith. The Lodge at Pine Cove, P.O. Box 91, Noelville. Nicola Ross, 705-898-2500; frenchriver.com MAY 12 : CELEBRATE MOTHER’S DAY AT THE MILL Open artist studios, galleries,

shops, hands-on workshops. Shaw’s Creek Café special menu. Wed-Sun 10am5pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. 519-941-9300; altonmill.ca MAY 17 : HEADWATERS ARTS FESTIVAL ENTRY DEADLINE Submit work to the

juried festival Art Show and Sale. 519-9431149; headwatersartsfestival.com MAY 25 : DESIGNS IN NATURE HIKE

Photographer Bryan Davies discusses visual design, composition and exposure. Basic to intermediate DSLR photographers. 10am-2pm. $55, register. 9 Wellington St E, Creemore. 705-466-5775; bryandavies.com MAY 25 & 26 : KAI-LIIS ART STUDIO & HEED FARM ALPACAS SPRING OPEN HOUSE New work – watercolour, mixed

media on paper, acrylics on canvas, alpaca products. 836100 4th Line Mulmur. KaiLiis McInnes, 519-925-0421; kai-liis.com JUN 2 – SEP 1 : ABBAS AKHAVAN: SAVAC PARTNERSHIP EXHIBITION Exploring

gardens and domesticated environments. Special rates until April 1. Details on website. Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA), 9 Wellington St E, Brampton. 905-791-4055 x3632; pama.peelregion.ca JUN 5 : FLOWERS WATERMEDIA Stressing design, negative shapes, imagination. 10am-4pm. $65. Kai-Liis Art Studio, 836100 4th Line Mulmur. Kai-Liis McInnes, 519-925-0421; kai-liis.com JUN 5 – JUL 7 : 360: CIRCLES & CYCLES

Jennifer McKinnon, Ann Randeraad, CJ Shelton depict the circle’s power. June 8: reception, 1-4pm. Wed-Sun 10am-5pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. Jennifer McKinnon, 519-943-1149; headwatersarts.ca JUN 16 : STUDENT ART SHOW AWARDS CEREMONY In partnership with

Headwaters Arts, annual show & sale of original artworks by the best of local and area high schools. 1-3pm. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com

CREEMORE FARMERS’ MARKET : May 18 to Oct 12. Saturdays, 8:30am-12:30pm. Station on the Green parking lot. 705-7948943; creemorefarmersmarket.ca AMARANTH FARMERS’ MARKET : June 5 to Oct 9. Wednesdays, 4:30-8pm. Amaranth Municipal Ofﬁce, 374028 6th Line. 519941-1007 CALEDON FARMERS’ MARKET : June 8 to Oct 12. Saturdays, 9am-2pm. Albion Bolton Community Centre, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. 905-584-2272 x4286; caledon. ca/farmersmarket INGLEWOOD FARMERS’ MARKET : June 12 to Oct 9. Wednesdays, 3:30-7pm. Village of Inglewood. 905-584-6221; eatlocalcaledon.org ERIN FARMERS’ MARKET : June 14 to Sep 27. Fridays, 3-7pm. Erin Agricultural Society Fairgrounds. 519-833-2808; erinfair.ca ROSEMONT FARMERS’ MARKET : June 21 to Oct 11. Fridays, 3-7pm. Orange Hall parking lot, beside Globe Restaurant, Hwy 89, Rosemont. pam@pamssoaps.com

NOW – MAY 15 (WEDNESDAYS) : LIFETREE CAFE – STORIES AND CONVERSATION Explore life and faith in

a comfortable coffee shop atmosphere. All ages. See website for topics. 7-8pm. Free. St. James Anglican Church, 6025 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. 416-579-9977; lifetreecafe.com MAR 29 – 31 : CAN-AM ALL BREEDS EQUINE EMPORIUM Canada’s largest

all breeds horse show with seminars, entertainment, shopping and farrier competition. Thurs 10am-6pm. Fri & Sat 9am-7pm. Sun 10am-4pm. $20; senior/youth $15; child $5. Orangeville Fairgrounds, 5 Sdrd, off Hockley Rd, Mono. Can-Am Equine Marketing, 416587-0003; canamequine.ca MAR 29 & 31 : EASTER SERVICES “The

Hosanna at the Heartbeat of Life” and “Looking for the Living.” Everyone welcome. 9:30-10:30am. Caledon East United Church, 6046 Old Church Rd. 905584-9974; caledoneastunitedchurch.ca APR 3 : PRACTICAL MARKET RESEARCH

Techniques and cost-effective resources. 10am-1pm. $11.30, register by April 1. Tony Rose Sports Centre, 6 Northmen Way, Orangeville. Small Business Enterprise Centre, 519-941-0440 x2286; orangevillebusiness.ca

Palgrave Rotary Club 16th ANNUA L

WOW! Offering tastings of 60 wines, beer, local cider, oven roasted sirloin sliders, assorted foods and live music. Many Door Prizes, including a free motorhome weekend by Motor Home Travel of Bolton. Your ALL INCLUSIVE price – $40 Friday, June 7 th s 6:00 to 8:30 PM Caledon Equestrian Park – Palgrave Tickets Ti k t from f any Palgrave P l Rotarian R t i or these th llocations: ti PALGRAVE: Migrations Travel & Cruise Centre Palgrave Café BOLTON: The Naked Vine Forsters Book Garden CALEDON EAST: Howard The Butcher For Credit Card purchases call 905-583-0200 Free ‘Home James’ service 905-951-9000 ext 300 PLATINUM SPONSORS

JUN 19 : TEDDY BEARS WATERCOLOUR

Bring out your bear’s details with watercolour, coloured pencil, pen. Bring your bear. 10am-4pm. $65. Kai-Liis Art Studio, 836100 4th Line Mulmur. Kai-Liis McInnes, 519-925-0421; kai-liis.com

community NOW – OCT: FARMERS’ MARKETS Shop

for Headwaters’ freshest foods. Check websites for details on special events at each venue. MARKET ON BROADWAY : May 11 to Oct 26. Saturdays, 8am-1pm. Second St & Broadway. Orangeville BIA, 519-942-0087; marketonbroadway.ca ALLISTON FARMERS’ MARKET : May 11 to Oct 26. Saturdays, 8am-2pm. Mill St & Victoria St. 705-435-1787; allistonbia.com

APR 3 : AN EVENING WITH CHRISTINE CUSHING Inspiration, wine and hors

d’oeuvres. Proceeds to Bethell Hospice. 7pm. $75, register. Broadway Farm’s Market, 12506 Heart Lake Rd, Caledon. 905-843-9225

GOLD SPONSORS

APR 5 : SPRING FLING DINNER & DANCE

Rafﬂe, prizes, gift certiﬁcates. Proceeds to the centre. 6-9pm. $20. Caledon Seniors’ Centre, 7 Rotarian Way, Bolton. 905-9516114; caledonseniors.ca APR 6 : KING’S COLLEGE SCHOOL MULTI-FAMILY INDOOR GARAGE SALE

Extraordinary items at fantastic prices. 8:30-11:30am. King’s College School, 16379 The Gore Rd, Caledon. KCS Parents’ Assoc, 905-880-7645; kingscollegeschool.ca continued on next page IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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continued from page 93 APR 10 : AROUND THE WORLD WITH INGRID SPROXTON Highlights from her

2012 round-the-world trip. An Armchair Travel presentation. 7-8:30pm. Free. Orangeville Public Library, 1 Mill St. 519941-0610; orangeville.library.on.ca APR 13 : KING’S COLLEGE SCHOOL’S TASTES OF AFRICA GALA African-inspired

Annual Dinner & Auction

in support of Headwaters Health Care Centre Orangeville Fairgrounds Dinner & Dancing Featuring Steve Patterson, Best Male Stand-up Comedian & CBC Host of “The Debaters”

TICKETS: $195 EACH (a portion is tax receiptable)

BUY YOUR TICKETS ONLINE NOW AT

www.hhcfoundation.com or 519.941.2702, ext. 2303 Follow the behind-the-scenes activity leading up to the big event at inthehills.ca

dishes, entertainment, silent auction, dinner/dance. Proceeds to sister school in Cameroon. 6pm. $80. Caledon Woods Golf Club, 15608 RR 50, Caledon. 905-8807645; kingscollegeschool.ca APR 13 – MAY 11 (SATURDAYS) : VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES AT BETHELL HOSPICE Join our team of

trained volunteers. Register for April/ May training. 9am-3:30pm. Inglewood Community Centre, 15825 McLaughlin Rd. 905-838-3534 x2245; bethellhospice.org APR 14, MAY 11 & JUN 9 : WHOLE VILLAGE ORIENTATION Meet members, tour farm

and eco-residence. 1-4pm. $10. 20725 Shaw’s Creek Rd, Caledon. 519-941-1099; wholevillage.org APR 14 : COLLECTIONS & RECOLLECTIONS EXHIBIT OPENING 25 years

of history in one retrospective. 2pm. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com APR 16 : BOOMERS & BEYOND – SENIORS @ CALEDON PUBLIC LIBRARY

Local Caledon author Ken Weber. 1-3pm. Free, register. 35 Station St, Alton. 905857-1400 x250; caledon.library.on.ca

Headwaters Arts Festival

APR 17 & MAY 15 : CALEDON BREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUP Meet trained

CALL FOR ARTISTS ENTRY DEADLINE MAY 17

volunteers and survivors in safe, conﬁdential environment. 7-9pm. 4 Queen St N, #202, Bolton. 905-857-4068; caledonbcf.org

September 20-October 6 2013

APR 19 : FASHION SHOW FOR FAMILY TRANSITION PLACE Reception, silent

Any artist who is a member, resident or exhibitor within the Headwaters region (Dufferin, Caledon, Erin & vicinity) is invited to submit work to the juried HAFestival Art Show and Sale. Details & entry forms at HeadwatersArtsFestival.com or call 519.943.1149

2013 Jurors: Ilse Gassinger, Executive Director, Durham Art Gallery; David Kaye, David Kaye Gallery, Toronto; Stuart Keeler, Curator/ Programme Director, Art Gallery of Mississauga

Transfer to DVD

auction, three-course dinner. See website for tickets. 6:30pm. $65. Hockley Valley Resort, 793522 3rd Line Mono. 519-9420145 x5195; hockley.com APR 19 : LAUGH OUT LOUD LADIES’ NIGHT Live comedy by Yuk Yuk’s on

Tour. Antipasto bar, wafﬂe station, silent auction. Tickets in advance only at the Caledon Parent-Child Centre or Scotiabank in Bolton. 7-11pm. The Royal Ambassador, 15430 Innis Lake Rd, Caledon. Caledon Parent-Child Centre, 905-857-0090; cp-cc.org APR 19 – 21 : CALEDON HOME AND LIFESTYLE SHOW Over 80 vendors. Free

admission. Albion Bolton Community Centre, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. Caledon Chamber of Commerce, 905-857-7393; caledonchamber.com APR 20 : MERCHANT TOKENS – A CONNECTION WITH THE PAST Ryan

8mm, Super-8, 16mm Film, Video & Audio tape Slides & Photos ★ Custom production, Blu-ray available ★ www.ADD-duplications.com 94

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

519-928-2604

Lawson covers history of their use. Bring tokens for evaluation & identiﬁcation. 2-3pm. $10. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Road. 1-877941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com APR 20 & 21 : CREEMORE “GET GROWING” HOME AND GARDEN SHOW

Gardening, landscaping, renovating,

H A P P E N I N G S

décor, kids’ activities. Sat 10am-5pm. Sun 10am-4pm. $5; children under 12 free. Creemore Arena, 218 Collingwood St. Shallow Brook Productions, 1-877-8485831; getgrowinggardenshows.ca APRIL 21 : MELANCTHON TOWNSHIP 160TH ANNIVERSARY Open House

with displays, local businesses, First Responder teams. 1-3pm. Township ofﬁce, 157101 Hwy 10. Nanci Malek, 519-9250591; bentertainment@rogers.com APR 22 : CREATIVE WRITING WITH RICHARD SCARSBROOK Creating setting

and character. 6:30-8:30pm. Free. Orangeville Public Library, 1 Mill St. 519941-0610; orangeville.library.on.ca APR 23 : FINANCING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS Loan qualiﬁcations, business

cases, negotiating, leveraging personal equity. 9am-noon. Free. Tony Rose Sports Centre, 6 Northmen Way, Orangeville. Orangeville and Area SBEC and TD Canada Trust, 519-941-0440 x2286; orangevillebusiness.ca APR 23 : 150TH SERIES: ARTISTS AND AUTHORS AT THE LIBRARY Harry Posner

describes challenges and delights of writing a ﬁrst novel. 1-2:30pm. Free. Orangeville Public Library, 1 Mill St. 519941-0610; orangeville.library.on.ca APR 26 : SPRING STORYTELLING Stories

by Dufferin Circle of Storytellers with live music. 7-9pm. $10. Tickets from BookLore, Jelly Craft Café, Curiosity House and the museum. Corbetton Church, Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-9417787; dufferinmuseum.com APR 27 : HEADWATERS HEALTH CARE CENTRE CELEBRATE! 100 YEARS DINNER AND AUCTION Featuring Steve Patterson,

Best Male Stand-up Comedian and CBC host of “The Debaters.” 6pm. $195, portion tax receiptable; table of 10 $1750. Orangeville Fairgrounds, 5 Sdrd, off Hockley Rd, Mono. 519-941-2702 x2303; hhcfoundation.com APR 27 : ERIN HOME AND LIFESTYLE SHOW See what Erin has to offer. Shop

local! Exhibitors wanted. 10am-4pm. $2/$1 plus food bank donation. Centre 2000, 14 Boland Dr, Erin. East Wellington Chamber of Commerce, 519-217-1630; ewcc.ca APR 27 : MULMUR TALK Curator Wayne Townsend speaks on Mulmur’s past, present, and how residents can affect its future. 2-3pm. $10. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com APR 27 : BEEF BBQ Eat in or take out. 5-7pm. $20; children under 10 $6. Credit View Public School, 13990 Mississauga Rd, Caledon. Cheltenham United Church, 905-838-3417; brander@sympatico.ca APR 30 : WOMEN AT THEIR BEST An evening of bringing women together and supporting our community. 6-10pm. $30. Nottawasaga Inn, 6015 Hwy 89, Alliston. womenattheirbest.ca MAY 2 : 50+ BOOMERS AND BEYOND

Topics for those 50+, vendors, goodie bags. 6:30pm. Free, register. Orangeville Seniors’ Centre, 26 Bythia St. 519-941-5151 x336; brendakoley.com

Centre, 90 Main St N,. 519-928-5470; grandvalleylions.com MAY 25 : GRAND VALLEY LIONS DUCK RACE Ducks are $5. Proceeds to

community projects. Prizes, games, music. 2-5pm. Free. Hereward Park, Main St S. 519-928-5470; grandvalleylions.com MAY 25 : PALGRAVE UNITED CHURCH PLANT & BAKE SALE, BBQ Perennials, MAY 3 : HAM DINNER Scalloped

potatoes and homemade pie. 5-7pm. $15; $17 at door; children 6-12 $6; under 5 free. Westminster United Church, 247 Broadway, Orangeville. 519-941-0381; westminsterorangeville.ca MAY 10 : SPRING SWING FOR PEACE RANCH GALA DINNER AND DANCE The

Adam Saunders Jazz Band with Swing dance demo, auction. Tickets at Bolton or Orangeville Scotiabank branches. 6pm. $125. Glen Eagle Golf Club, 15731 Hwy 50, Caledon. Scotiabank, 905-584-9112; peaceranch.com MAY 11 : ORANGEVILLE FARMERS’ MARKET OPENING DAY Free pancake

breakfast. 8am-1pm. Alexandra Park, Second St & First Ave, Orangeville. 519942-0087; orangevillefarmersmarket.ca MAY 13 : CREATIVE WRITING WITH RICHARD SCARSBROOK Imagery, meta-

phors, symbols and feedback. 6:30-8:30pm. Free. Orangeville Public Library, 1 Mill St. 519-941-0610; orangeville.library.on.ca MAY 15 : CONSERVATION GALA

Dinner and auction, proceeds to Credit Valley Conservation Foundation and Conservation Halton Foundation. 6-10pm. $125. Rattlesnake Point Golf Club, 5407 Regional Rd 25, Milton. 905-670-1615 x424; conservationgala.ca MAY 15 : STARTING A SMALL BUSINESS

Tools for a successful business. 6:309:30pm. $11.30. Alder Recreation Centre, 275 Alder St, Orangeville. Small Business Enterprise Centre, 519-941-0440 x2286; orangevillebusiness.ca MAY 18 : SWIM KM FOR BETHELL HOSPICE

To swim or sponsor, see website. 9am. Cassie Campbell Recreation Centre, 1050 Sandalwood Pkwy W, Brampton. Bethell Hospice, 905-838-3534; bethellhospice.org MAY 18 : DCMA SPRING BUS TOUR

Curator Wayne Townsend hosts an adventure through Dufferin County. Lunch included. 10am-3pm. Tickets on sale April 2. $30, register. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com MAY 20 : MUSEUM MONTH AND QUEEN VICTORIA’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

It’s also the museum’s 20th anniversary! Bring a treasured item and share its provenance, Queen’s Court Theatre, Victoriana display, cake and tea. Noon4pm. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com MAY 21 : BOOMERS & BEYOND – SENIORS @ CALEDON PUBLIC LIBRARY

Andrea Seydel, author, life coach, nutritionist, shares tips. 1-3pm. Free, register. 15825 McLaughlin Rd, Inglewood. 905-857-1400 x250; caledon.library.on.ca MAY 25 : GRAND VALLEY LIONS COMMUNITY BREAKFAST Join us on

Duck Race Day. 8-11am. Free, donations accepted. Grand Valley Community

baked goods, bacon on a bun, rafﬂe. 8am-noon. Palgrave United Church, 34 Pine Ave. 905-880-0303; palgraveunitedchurch@rogers.com

The new issue of Food In The Hills is coming in May. Watch for it at restaurants, specialty food stores and markets throughout the hills.

And this spring, Food In The Hills is also pleased to announce the launch of

MAY 25 : PERFECT PAIRING BY TOPAC EXPRESS Gourmet meal paired with

tasteful wines. Proceeds to Transportation Program at Caledon Community Services. 6-11pm. $125. Glen Eagle Golf Club, 15731 Hwy 50, Caledon. Caledon Community Services, 905-584-2300 x260; ccs4u.org MAY 25 : PRIMROSE ECO-EXTRAVAGANZA!

Eco-themed activities and demonstrations. 9am-noon. Free. Primrose Elementary School, 636064 Prince of Wales, Shelburne. School Eco-Club, 519-9253939; primroseschoolcouncil@gmail.com MAY 26 : ONTARIO SPCA FRIENDS FOR LIFE! WALK-A-THON 5km walk, run, bike,

in-line skate. Lunch and activities. Register online. 9:30am-3:30pm. Alder Recreation Centre, 275 Alder St, Orangeville. Ontario SPCA Orangeville & District Branch, 519942-3140; orangeville.ontariospca.ca MAY 26 : AN AMUSING JOURNEY THROUGH THE ORANGEVILLE SUN In

The Hills columnist Ken Weber describes the history, wit, wisdom and whimsy of the historic newspaper. 2-3pm. $10. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com MAY 28 : ONE BOOK ONE COUNTRY GRAND FINALE DINNER WITH THE AUTHOR Join Cathy Marie Buchanan at

the White Trufﬂe. Tickets at BookLore, libraries. 6:30pm. 139 Broadway, Orangeville. BookLore, Libraries of Dufferin County, 519-942-3830; booklore@bellnet.ca

Our new online l guide d ffor d diners who h want to explore and savour the very best that Headwaters restaurants have to offer. Just click on the Dining Out link at foodinthehills.ca to view a region-wide map of select area restaurants, each linked to its own listing page. While you’re on the site, check out new recipes from our bloggers, up-to-the-minute listings of local food events, and proﬁles of local producers. And don’t forget to nominate your candidate for Best Bites in the hills. Or just send us a note – we love to hear from you!

foodinthehills.ca

For print and online advertising information, contact Sarah Aston at 519-940-4884, sarah@inthehills.ca

Are you passionate about living In The Hills ? If so, we are looking for a very special person to join our team. At In The Hills we believe in the beneﬁts of building a strong community with emphasis on arts, culture, heritage and environment. We are committed to bringing thoughtful articles and quality advertising to over 43,000 homes throughout Caledon, Dufferin and Erin.

JUN 1 : BOLTON SEA CADETS’ CEREMONIAL REVIEW Learn about the

cadet program. 1-3:30pm. Free. Caledon Community Complex, 6215 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. Navy League of Canada – Caledon Branch, 905-533-1960; caledonnavyleague@hotmail.com

If you share this passion, and if you’re a people person with a keen desire to connect with your community, you may be interested to know that In The Hills is looking for a new advertising representative for the Caledon and Erin area.

JUN 1 : BBQ PORK CHOP DINNER

Baked potatoes, salads, baked beans, cake & ice cream. Fresh chops for sale to take home. 5-7pm. $15. Palgrave United Church, 34 Pine Ave. 905-880-0303; palgraveunitedchurch@rogers.com JUN 2 : CORN FLOWER FESTIVAL Meet

former owners of the company, guest speakers, live auction, consignment sale. Lunch available. 10am-4pm. $10. Dufferin County Museum & Archives, Hwy 89 & Airport Rd. 1-877-941-7787; dufferinmuseum.com JUN 7 : WOW! WINES OF THE WORLD

Over 60 brands, plus beer and local cider. Sirloin sliders, live music. Home James with limited designated driver service. 6-8:30pm. $40. Caledon Equestrian Park, Pine Ave, Palgrave. 905-583-0200; rotaryclubofpalgrave.com continued on next page

We bid a fond farewell to our colleague and friend, Sarah Aston, and we wish her all the best in her future real estate career.

The successful candidate will be a self starter with strong presentation skills and sales experience. The candidate must live in the area and have excellent knowledge of local businesses and the community. If you exhibit these qualiﬁcations, please submit your resume in conﬁdence to our Operations Manager, Kirsten Ball, at info@inthehills.ca

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continued from page 95 JUN 10 : CREATIVE WRITING WITH RICHARD SCARSBROOK Five “simple”

steps to becoming a published author. 6:30-8:30pm. Free. Orangeville Public Library, 1 Mill St. 519-941-0610; orangeville.library.on.ca JUN 12-16 : WIC-CAN FEST Pagan festival,

rituals and more. Details on website. 3-hour pass $25; all-day-night pass $75; children $45. Mansﬁeld Outdoor Centre, 937365 Airport Rd, Mulmur. Wic-Can Fest Ltd, 705-454-3077; wiccanfest.com JUN 15 : FREE TO BE ME! One-day retreat

for women who love motorcycles. 8:30am4:30pm. Glamorum Healing Centre, 633206 Hwy 10, Orangeville. Liz Jansen and Ila Sisson, 519-943-1131; lizjansen.com JUN 15 : CALEDON DAY Live

performances, vendors, kids’ zone, beer garden, ﬁreworks. 2-11pm. Free. Caledon Community Complex, 6215 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. Town of Caledon, 905584-9254; caledon.ca JUN 15 : EQUI-FEST 2013 Non-

competitive events, all disciplines. See website to rent a horse. $60; spectators $5. Orangeville Agricultural Centre, 5 Sdrd, off Hockley Rd, Mono. Women Horse Owners Association (WHOA), 705-4340081; womenhorseownersassoc.com

outdoor APR – JUN : PLANT PARADISE COUNTRY GARDENS SEMINARS Apr 13: Dividing

NEW RV STORE & SERVICE

NOW OPEN! www.hughesrv.com

Perennials. Apr 20: All About Pruning. Apr 27: Gardening Tips & Tools. May 4: Tried & True Perennials. May 11: Spectacular Shade Selections. May 18: Colourful Perennial Combinations. May 25: Top 10 Long-Blooming Perennials. Jun 1: Perennials That Beat the Heat. 10-11am. $10, register. Plant Paradise Country Gardens, 16258 Humber Station Rd, Caledon. 905-880-9090; plantparadise.ca APR 6, 13 & 21 : INTRODUCTORY HIKING ON THE BRUCE TRAIL New hikers

welcome. Details on website. Apr 6 & 13, 10am-1pm. Apr 21, 10:30am-12:30pm Free. caledonbrucetrail.org APR 9, MAY 14 & JUN 11 : ORANGEVILLE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY MONTHLY MEETINGS Apr 9: New Trends in the CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE SPECIALS

Specializing in Service and Repairs for All Models from Trailers to Rear Engine Diesels and Horse Trailers Certiﬁed Centre to Check or Replace Your Permanent Propane Tanks / Fully Approved Centre for Insurance Repairs / Structural Repairs / Towing Systems / Generators / RV Appliance / Roof Airs / Awnings / Pre-Owned RV Sales / RV Storage Inside or Outside

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Garden. May 14: Floral Design with a Modern Slant. June 11: Cindy Deutekon of Blackstock. 7-9pm. Orangeville Seniors’ Centre, 26 Bythia St. orangevillehort.org APR 12-14, 27 & 28, MAY 11 & 12 : CANBIKE FREE CYCLING INSTRUCTOR CERTIFICATION In exchange, pay it

forward by teaching 2 workshops by 2015. Apr 12: 5:30-9:30pm. Otherwise 9am5pm. Headwaters Health Care Centre, 100 Rolling Hills Dr, Orangeville. Headwaters Communities in Action, 519-940-3118; headwaterscommunities.ca APR 16 & MAY 21 : SHELBURNE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY MEETINGS

Apr 16: Trish Symons. May 21: Delphiniums. 7:30-9:30pm. Shelburne Agricultural Society Community Centre, 377 William St. 519-925-2182; shelburnehort.blogspot.com

APR 18 : ASK A DESIGNER NIGHT

Answers to your landscaping questions. 7:30-10pm. Alton Mill, 1402 Queen St, Alton. Credit Valley Conservation and Peel’s Fusion Landscaping Program, creditvalley.ca/askadesigner APR 21, MAY 5 & 19, JUN 16 : LILACTREE FARM OPEN GARDEN A country garden

combining design, unusual plantings, meadow maze and spectacular views. 10am-4pm. 547231 8 Sdrd, Mulmur. Maureen and Brian Bixley, 519-925-5577; lilactreefarm@gmail.com APR 27 : TREE AND SHRUB SEEDLING SALE Seedlings 15-40cm (6-16") high.

Bring reusable containers. $10-$12/ bundle of 10 trees. Cash only. 9am-noon. Dufferin Operations Centre, 635666 Hwy 10, Primrose. Dufferin South Simcoe Land Stewardship Network, 705-435-1881 x23; dufferinmuseum.com APR 30 : TRUMPETER SWANS With Bev Kingdon, developer of the over-wintering site and feeding program. 7:30-9pm. Free. Orangeville Seniors’ Centre, 26 Bythia St. Upper Credit Field Naturalists, 519-9253968; joanneavison@yahoo.ca MAY 4 : KING’S COLLEGE SCHOOL PLANT SALE High-end planters, window

boxes, urn ﬁllers at below market prices. 8:30-11:30am. 16379 The Gore Rd, Caledon. KCS Parents’ Association, 905880-7645; kingscollegeschool.ca MAY 4 : NATURAL POND MANAGEMENT

Improve water quality, enhance wildlife habitat, case studies, guided walk. 9amnoon. $15. Monora Park Pavilion, Hwy 10 just N of Orangeville. 905-670-1615 x436; creditvalleyca.ca MAY 5 : HIKE FOR HOSPICE DUFFERIN

Suitable for all ages and ﬁtness levels. Noon-2:30pm. Pledges or by donation. Monora Park Pavilion, Hwy 10 just N of Orangeville. 519-942-3313 x25; hospicedufferin.com MAY 5 & 11 : HIKE FOR BETHELL HOSPICE May 5 – Inglewood hike on the

Caledon Trailway. May 11 – Bolton hike on the Humber Valley Trail. Proceeds to the Residence and Community & Bereavement Programs. Food, t-shirt. See details on website. 10am. Bethell Hospice, 905-838-3534; bethellhospice.org MAY 11 : BIRDING FOR BEGINNERS Tips to identify birds. Bring binoculars. $10; children/seniors $7. 10-11:30am. Terra Cotta Conservation Area, 14452 Winston Churchill Blvd, Halton Hills. 905-670-1615 x221; creditvalleyca.ca MAY 15 : CARING FOR YOUR LAND AND WATER Manage natural features on rural

properties, includes stewardship handbook.

Must have one acre+ of rural property. 6:309pm. Free, register. Hillsburgh. 905-6701615 x436; creditvalleyca.ca MAY 25 : SHELBURNE HORTICULTURAL PLANT SALE Plants from members’

gardens at reasonable prices. 9am-noon. Dufferin Mutual Insurance, 712 Main St E. Shelburne & District Horticultural Society, 519-925-2182; shelburnehort/blogspot.com MAY 25 : WILDFLOWER IDENTIFICATION

Identify plants common to the area. 9amnoon. $5; children free, register. Little Tract, Dufferin County Forest, 938130 Cty Rd 18, Mansﬁeld. Dufferin South Simcoe Land Stewardship Network, 705-435-1881 x23; dufferinmuseum.com JUN 1 : ORANGEVILLE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY PLANT SALE Great prices for

perennials, shrubs, houseplants, herbs. 8am. Orangeville Seniors’ Centre, 26 Bythia St. orangevillehort.org JUN 1 : WHAT TREE IS THAT, ANYWAY?

Identify various trees, shrubs and plants. 9am-noon. $5; children free, register. Little Tract, Dufferin County Forest, 938130 Cty Rd 18, Mansﬁeld. Dufferin South Simcoe Land Stewardship Network, 705-435-1881 x23; dufferinmuseum.com JUN 5 : CREATING A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN WITH NATIVE PLANTS Add elements of

colour and shape to your garden. 7-8:30pm. Caledon Community Complex, 6215 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. Toronto and Region Conservation, 416-661-6600 x5786; trcastewardshipevents.ca JUN 8 : EDIBLE WILD Lisa Yates, master herbalist/folklorist, identifies edible and medicinal wild plants. 9:30am-noon. $10; children free, register. Mansfield Outdoor Centre, 937365 Cty Rd 18, Mansfield. Dufferin South Simcoe Land Stewardship Network, 705-435-1881 x23; dufferinmuseum.com JUN 22 : BOUNTIFUL AND BEAUTIFUL GARDEN TOUR Visit 8 beautiful gardens

in the Creemore area, organic market garden/vineyard and sculpture garden. Tickets May 1 at the Creemore Echo, Curiosity House Books and Creemore Farmers’ Market. 10am-4pm. $15. Purple Hills Arts & Heritage Society, 705-4669925; phahs.ca

music MAR – MAY: LIVE MUSIC AT ROSE THEATRE All performances at 8pm,

unless noted. Rose Theatre, 1 Theatre Ln, Brampton. 905-874-2800; rosetheatre.ca APR 14 : BOYZ II MEN Soulful sound and incredible vocals. $75 to $90.

APR 25 : CLASSIC ALBUMS LIVE: DAVID BOWIE’S THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST One of rock’s seminal albums.

$38 to $58. MAY 2 : PAVLO Fiery fusion of Mediterranean musical styles. $55 to $65. MAY 3 : DIANA PANTON One of the brightest lights on the vocal jazz scene. $30. MAY 26 : CLASSICAL GEMS FEATURING THE MOZART REQUIEM Brampton

Festival Singers with special guests the Headwaters Concert Choir and Great Lakes Orchestra. 7:30pm. $25. MAR 29 : I AM THE LORD OF THE DANCE CANTATA Westminster Celebration

Choir, Andrew Gilpin, and Collective 369 dancers retell John 3:16. 7-8pm. Free. Westminster United Church, 247 Broadway, Orangeville. 519-941-0381; westminsterorangeville.ca MAR 30 : CALEDON CHAMBER CONCERTS: PIANIST ONI BUCHANAN

Tickets at BookLore, Howard the Butcher and Forster’s Book Garden. 8-10pm. $30; 16 and under $15. St. James Anglican Church, 6025 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. 905-880-2445; caledonchamberconcerts.com MAR 31 : I STILL GO ON – EASTER SERVICE AND CELEBRATION

Westminster Celebration Choir, guest soloist, trumpet, Andrew Gilpin, piano. 10:30-11:30am. Westminster United Church, 247 Broadway, Orangeville. 519941-0381; westminsterorangeville.ca APR 6 : CALEDON CABARET AND SILENT AUCTION Entertainment, lasagna dinner,

cash bar. Tickets by phone or website. 6pm. $35. Caledon Community Complex, 6215 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. Orangeville Chorus, Sweet Adelines International, 519941-4490; orangevillechorus.com APR 13 : SOURCE OF THE SONG 23 Bruce

Madole, roots and blues, with special guests. 1:30-5pm. $15; $20 at door. Glen Williams Town Hall, 1 Prince St. 905-4599753; brucemadole@sympatico.ca APR 13 : CHINGUACOUSY SWING ORCHESTRA Toe-tapping big band

music from the greats of the Swing era. 8pm. $20. Century Church Theatre, 3 Hill St, Hillsburgh. 519-855-4586; centurychurchtheatre.com APR 27 : CALEDON CHAMBER CONCERTS: FLUTIST LESLIE NEWMAN AND HARPIST ERICA GOODMAN Tickets

at BookLore, Howard the Butcher and Forster’s Book Garden. 8-10pm. $30; 16 and under $15. St. James Anglican Church, 6025 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. 905880-2445; caledonchamberconcerts.com APR 27 : BLUE SUEDE REVUE High-energy

hits of the ’50s and ’60s. 8-10:30pm. $30. Town Hall Opera House, 87 Broadway, Orangeville. The Kinsmen Club of Orangeville, 1-877-609-5439; beneﬁtshowtickets.com APR 28 : DAVID POMEROY CONCERT

One of North America’s foremost opera singers. 2:30pm. $30; students $20. Theatre Orangeville, 87 Broadway. Orangeville Concert Association, 519-9423423; tickets@theatreorangeville.ca MAY 4 : TALES FROM THE ATTIC Eric

Nagler recounts marching with Martin Luther King and tales from his folk music

days. Adult performance. 8-10pm. $20. Primrose United Church, 486281 30 Sdrd Mono. Second Fiddle, 519-925-0009; eric@ericnagler.com, MAY 6 & 7 : ORANGEVILLE & DISTRICT MUSIC FESTIVAL Performance opportun-

ities in all disciplines and styles. Registration forms online. Deadline April 2. $2 to attend adjudications. 3-9pm. Westminster United Church, 247 Broadway, Orangeville. 519-942-8675; odmf.ca MAY 27 : ORANGEVILLE & DISTRICT MUSIC FESTIVAL GALA CONCERT Best

performances of the festival, scholarships and the Most Promising Musician award. 7-9pm. $8; children under 12 $5. Westminster United Church, 247 Broadway, Orangeville. 519-942-8675; odmf.ca

theatre+ﬁlm MAR 29-30 : CALENDAR GIRLS British

women convince each other to pose nude for a charity calendar. Calendars available at Erin shops, proﬁts to Bethell Hospice. Wed-Fri 8pm. Sat 2 & 8pm. $20; seniors $15. Centre 2000, 14 Boland Dr, Erin. 905-873-6868; erintheatre.ca

519-938-2238 . RANDY BRUMMELL . 519-941-6080

SPRING SWING

for Peace Ranch! Gala Dinner, Dance and Select Auction Featuring the Adam Saunders Jazz Band with Swing Dance Demo

Friday, May 10th, 2013 At Glen Eagle Golf Club

MAR 30, APR 5 & 6 : DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK Zip and Lilac are thrust

into a terrifying revenge plot. 8pm. March 30: Dinner Theatre – Caledon West Rotary $25; $15 play only; 905-843-2052. Other dates, 905 838-2874. Inglewood United Church, 15672 McLaughlin Rd. Inglewood Schoolhouse Performers, inglewoodperformers.ca

15731 Hwy 50 Caledon Cocktails: 6pm Dinner: 7pm Tickets: $125 For tickets and information please contact: Margot Scott 905.584.9112, Susan Hodgson 416.550.1083, or Scotiabank Branches, Bolton and 97 First St, Orangeville This Special Event in Support of Caledon’s Peace Ranch www.peaceranch.com

APR 4 – 21 : ON A FIRST NAME BASIS

Wealthy novelist and his housekeeper realize she knows everything about him, yet he knows nothing about her. April 4-6, 11-13, 18-20, 8pm. April 7, 10, 14, 17, 18, 21, 2pm. $33-$40. Theatre Orangeville, 87 Broadway. 519-942-3423; theatreorangeville.ca

AU T H O R I Z E D D E A L E R

APR 8 : BARBARA – MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (PG) A Berlin physician

banished to a rural hospital is torn between escape and love for a colleague who may betray her. 4:30 & 7pm, $9. 9:10pm, $7. Galaxy Cinemas, 85 Fifth Ave, Orangeville. mondaynightmovies.ca APR 11 – 13 : JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOUR DREAMCOAT The

biblical saga of Joseph and his coat of many colours comes to life. Apr 11-13, 7:30pm. Apr 13, 1pm. $28. Rose Theatre, 1 Theatre Ln, Brampton. Brampton Music theatre, 905-874-2800; rosetheatre.ca

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APR 13 : YUK YUK’S COMEDY NIGHT

The best stand-up comedy around. See website for tickets. 7pm. $56. Hockley Valley Resort, 793522 3rd Line Mono. 519-942-0145 x5195; hockley.com APR 15 : JUST FOR LAUGHS ROAD SHOW

Four of the best stand-ups from the “best of the ’fest.” 8pm. $38-$58. Rose Theatre, 1 Theatre Ln, Brampton. 905-874-2800; rosetheatre.ca APR 18 : YUK YUK’S COMEDY CLUB WITH CHUCK BYRN Observational humour,

one-liners, stories and insight. 8pm. $25. Rose Theatre, 1 Theatre Ln, Brampton. 905-874-2800; rosetheatre.ca continued on next page

Gifts, Home Decor, Jewellery & Accessories, Clothing, Baby Products, Bath & Beauty, Artisans

36 Main Street Grand Valley 519-928-9880 WWW.HERMOSABOUTIQUE.COM IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

C A L E N D A R

O F

S P R I N G

MAR 29 – 31 : EASTERFEST Egg decorat-

continued from page 97

ing, baby farm animals, wagon ride, Egg Scramble. 10am-5pm. $11. Downey’s Farm Market, 13682 Heart Lake Rd, Caledon. 905-838-2990; downeysfarm.com

APR 25 – MAY 11 : WHAT IS SUSAN’S SECRET? Clever con artists Michael and

Susan trick their unsuspecting guests. Apr 25-27, May 3, 4, 10, 11, 8:15pm. May 4, 2:15 & 6:30pm. Evening $15; matinée $12; dinner and theatre $28. The Caledon Townhall Players, 18365 Hurontario St, Caledon Village. 519-927-5460; caledontownhallplayers.com

MAR 30 : EASTER AT TEEN RANCH

Hourly Easter egg hunts, pony rides, crafts, games, rock climbing, skating. 1-4pm. $10/vehicle. Teen Ranch, 20682 Hurontario St, Caledon. 519-941-4501; teenranch.on.ca

APR 26 & 27 : THE MIKADO A strolling

minstrel falls in love with a beautiful school girl already engaged to be married. 8pm. $69-$79. Rose Theatre, 1 Theatre Ln, Brampton. 905-874-2800; rosetheatre.ca APR 26 – 28 : JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOUR DREAMCOAT

Westminster Community Players, Children’s Chorus, No. 369 Dance Collective, full live instrumental accompaniment. Apr 26, 27, 8pm. April 28, 3pm. $20-$30; children under 12, $10. Westminster United Church, 247 Broadway, Orangeville. 519941-0381; westminsterorangeville.ca APR 26 – 28 : THE NEW FOOTLIGHT FOLLIES Traditional Vaudeville

extravaganza featuring comedy, song, participation. Apr 26, 27, 8pm. Apr 28, 2:30pm. $25. Century Church Theatre, 3 Hill St, Hillsburgh. Erin Arts Foundation, 519-855-4586; centurychurchtheatre.com APR 26 & 27, MAY 3 & 4 : DRINKING ALONE Carefully built family façades

and home truths emerge as the evening progresses. 8pm. $15. Grace Tipling Hall, 120 Main St, Shelburne. Tipling Stage Company, 519-925-2600; tiplingstagecompany.com APR 29 : AMOUR – MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (PG) Powerful and moving

portrait of an elderly couple struggling with their mortality. 4:30 & 7pm, $9. 9:10pm, $7. Galaxy Cinemas, 85 Fifth Ave, Orangeville. mondaynightmovies.ca MAY 9 – 26, THE TEAM ON THE HILL

World premiere by Dan Needles. Austin Ransier watches his son and grandson wrestle over the land’s future. May 12, 15, 19, 22, 26, 2pm. May 9-11, 16-18, 24, 25, 8pm. May 23, 2 & 8pm. Students $20; evenings $40; matinées $33; group rates. Theatre Orangeville, 87 Broadway. 519942-3423 x2804; theatreorangeville.ca MAY 13 : THE SAPPHIRES – MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (PG) True story

of a mother and aunt who sang in allAboriginal female soul quartet during the Vietnam War. 4:30 & 7pm, $9. 9:10pm, $7. Galaxy Cinemas, 85 Fifth Ave, Orangeville. mondaynightmovies.ca MAY 23 – JUN 2: WILLY RUSSELL’S BLOOD BROTHERS A single mother gives

H A P P E N I N G S

APR 8 – 13 : CALEDON PARENT-CHILD CENTRE PROGRAM REGISTRATION

Church Theatre, 3 Hill St, Hillsburgh. Century Theatre Guild, 519-855-4586; centurychurchtheatre.com JUN 14 & 15 : WINGFIELD’S FOLLY

Walt sets up a closed economy with his neighbours, prints his own currency and falls in love. 8pm. $35. Fergus Grand Theatre, 244 St. Andrew St W. Ralph Basset Associates, 519-843-4852; ralphbasset.com

kids NOW – ONGOING : CREATIVE SATURDAYS AT INGLEWOOD UNITED CHURCH Family time drop-in, play-based

learning. 2nd & 4th Saturdays. 9:15-11:30am. 6 & under. Free, register. Inglewood United Church, 15672 McLaughlin Rd, Inglewood. 905-857-0090; cp-cc.org NOW – JUN 25 (TUESDAYS) : LET’S GET TOGETHER Connect with other families

to explore parenting a child with special needs, 6 & under. Light dinner. Siblings welcome. 5:45-7:15pm. Free, register. Caledon Parent-Child Centre, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. 905-857-0090; cp-cc.org NOW – JUN 27 (THURSDAYS) : ADJUSTMENTS AFTER BIRTH Support

group for mothers with postpartum mood disorders. 1:30-3:30pm. Caledon ParentChild Centre, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. 905-857-0090 x22; cp-cc.org NOW – ONGOING : CREATIVE SATURDAYS AT INGLEWOOD UNITED CHURCH Family time drop-in,play-

based learning. 2nd & 4th Saturdays. 9:15-11:30am. 6 & under. Free, register. Inglewood United Church, 15672 McLaughlin Rd, Inglewood. 905-8570090; cp-cc.org NOW – APR 3 (WEDNESDAYS) : UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING DVD by Alﬁe Kohn

has ten guidelines to reconnect to your best instincts as parents. 7-9pm. Free, register. Island Lake Public School, 50 Oakridge Dr, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca MAR 19 : THE SESHINS: CREATIVE WRITING SERIES 4 TEENS Inspire through

Register for children’s early learning programs by phone or in person during Family Time hours. See website. Caledon Parent-Child Centre, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. 905-857-0090; cp-cc.org APR 9 – 23 (TUESDAYS) : HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS Identify healthy/un-

healthy relationships, conﬂict resolution, self-esteem. 6:30-8:30pm. Free, register. Princess Margaret PS, 51 Wellington St, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca APR 13 : THE MAPLES SCHOOL OPEN HOUSE Meet staff, parents, review

curriculum, displays. 10am-2pm. Free. The Maples Independent Country School, 513047 2nd Line, Amaranth. 519-942-3310; themaplesschool.com APR 13 : CALEDON ARTS FLEECE FRIENDS WORKSHOP Create a one-of-a-

kind soft sculpture. Ages 8-14. 1-3:30pm. $35, register. Caledon Arts Firehall Studio, 6085 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. 905587-0061; caledonarts.org APR 17 : CREATING THE ME I’D LIKE TO BE Nurture healthy behaviours, mutual

goals, open communication. 7-9pm. Free, register. Dufferin Child and Family Services, 655 Riddell Rd, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519940-8678; dpsn.ca APR 19 : I'D RATHER BE ME! – CHILDREN’S STORYTIME Author Marnie Worry and

illustrator Kristen Zietsma-Franjic, song & drawing class based on their book. 10:3011:30am. Shelburne Public Library, 201 Owen Sound St. 519-925-2168; shelburnelibrary.ca APR 20 : CALEDON ARTS SUMMER REGISTRATION & OPEN HOUSE

Meet instructors, kids’ art activities. Registration ongoing on website. 1-3pm.

To submit your community, arts or non-proﬁt event, go to inthehills.ca and click what’s on on the menu bar. That takes you to the listings page. Click submit your event and complete the easy form.

away one of her newborn sons, but her secrecy leads to tragedy. May 23-25, 31, Jun 1, 8pm. May 26, Jun 2, 2pm. $18; students and seniors $15. Grace Tipling Hall, 120 Main St, Shelburne. LP Stage Productions, 519-939-9038; lpstageproductionsinc.com

music, multimedia. Apr 9: Nourishment. May 7: Alienation. June 11: Realization. Ages 14-18. 4-5:30pm. Free, register. 1 Mill St, 519-941-0610; orangeville.library.on.ca

MAY 24 – JUN 2 : GASLIGHT Chilling

MAR 29 – JUN 21 (FRIDAYS) : PARENTING EDUCATION WORKSHOPS For parents of

We reserve the right to edit submissions for print and web publication.

children 6 & under. Childcare, small fee. 9:30-11am. Free, register. Caledon ParentChild Centre, 150 Queen St S, Bolton. 905-857-0090; cp-cc.org

For up-to-date listings between issues, go to inthehills.ca and click what’s on on the menu bar.

Victorian drama of a young wife who becomes the victim of her husband’s obsession. May 24, 25, 31, Jun 1, 8pm. May 26, June 2, 2:30pm. $18. Century 98

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

For the summer (June) issue, submit by May 1o, 2o13.

Caledon Arts Firehall Studio, 6085 Old Church Rd, Caledon East. 905-587-0061; caledonarts.org APR 24 – MAY 29 (WEDNESDAYS) : HOW TO TALK SO KIDS WILL LISTEN

Develop positive relationships, effective communication. 7-9pm. Free, register. Island Lake Public School, 50 Oakridge Dr, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca APR 27 : KIDZZ TO KIDZ SUPERSALE

Gently-used baby and children’s items. 9:30am-1pm. $1. Brampton Fairgrounds, 12942 Heart Lake Rd, Caledon. Twins Plus Association of Brampton, 905-459-1735; facebook.com/kidzztokidzsupersale APR 30 – MAY 7 (TUESDAYS) : ANGER, PARENTING AND YOU Recognize

triggers, how to release safely. 7-9pm. Free, register. Grand Valley Public School, 120 Main St N. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca MAY 2 : NOT MY KID Learn the

dangers, challenges teens face, better communication strategies. 7-9pm. Free, register. Montgomery Village Public School, 70 Montgomery Blvd, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca MAY 9 : RAISING KIDS IN VIRTUAL WORLD Cyberbullying, the Internet,

texting, chat, Facebook, social networking. 7-9pm. Free, register. Montgomery Village Public School, 70 Montgomery Blvd, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca MAY 11 : CPCC LITTLE TYKE HIKE WALKA-THON Walk, BBQ and reception. Forms

online. 9:30am-1pm. Caledon Centre for Recreation and Wellness, 14111 Hwy 50, Bolton. Caledon Parent-Child Centre, 905857-0090; cp-cc.org MAY 14 : HELPING CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER Strate-

gies to self-manage and become more independent. 6:30-8:30pm. Free, register. Princess Margaret Public School, 51 Wellington St, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca MAY 16 & 30 : RAISING YOUR SPIRITED SCHOOL-AGED CHILD Show them how

to self-regulate and self-manage. 7-9pm. Free, register. Princess Margaret Public School, 51 Wellington St, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519940-8678; dpsn.ca MAY 31 – JUN 2 : TEEN RANCH MOTHERDAUGHTER EQUINE RETREAT Accommo-

dations, food, riding in the Caledon hills. $200pp. 20682 Hurontario St, Caledon. 519-941-4501; teenranch.on.ca JUN 8 – 22 : SHREK THE MUSICAL An ogre shows up to rescue a feisty princess. June 8, 14, 15, 21, 22 8pm. June 9, 16 2pm. $20; children under 12 $15. Town Hall Opera House, 87 Broadway, Orangeville. 519942-3423; orangevillemusictheatre.com JUN 13 & 20 : POSITIVE PARENTING FROM TWO HOMES Understand your

feelings, your children’s needs, develop a business-like relationship with the other parent. 6:30-9:30pm. Free, register. Dufferin Child and Family Services, 655 Riddell Rd, Orangeville. Dufferin Parent Support Network, 519-940-8678; dpsn.ca ≈

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B. A. WOOD MASONRY Specializing in Stone & Restoration Work Brick â&#x20AC;˘ Block Brian Wood

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ART & CRAFT

Caledon Mountain Wildlife Supplies â&#x20AC;˘ Wild Birdseed / Feeders / Nesting Boxes â&#x20AC;˘ Pet Food & Supplies / Wildlife Feeds â&#x20AC;˘ Crafts / Books / Nature Accessories â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re here to help you help nature.â&#x20AC;? 18371 Hurontario Caledon Village Tel 519-927-3212 Fax 519-927-9186 Brian Thayer

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Design, Build, Install Wall Units, Bars, Home Offices Call Gary for a Free Estimate 519-323-1121/1-877-454-9522 www.forrestcustomcarpentry.com

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CUSTOM CONTRACTORS CONCRETE FORMING CUTTING & CORING For a free estimate, call

Howard Curran 519-942-0171 howard.curran@sympatico.ca

CLEANING SERVICES

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MARKETPLACE CONSTRUCTION SERVICES

(cont’d)

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MASONRY

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Sheilagh Crandall • Gail Morrison 647-244-2970 msplantsofcaledon@gmail.com

519.942.9944 daniel.fracassi@sympatico.ca

519-215-0758 esteemfc@hotmail.com

www.esteemtraining.com

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Caledon Garden Design • Landscaping Planting • Maintenance

“May the Beat be with you”

Fulvio Cubello

(cont’d)

Gardens by MsPlants

For Healthcare Providers, Business, Personal

Certified Personal Trainer

LANDSCAPING & GARDENING

• Personal Training • Athlete Coaching • Fitness Assessments • Youth Fitness Programs • Dryland Training • Cycling Coach Level 3 • Muscle Movement Specialist • Yoga • Pilates

Seasonal Gardener

Garden Bed Maintenance • Planting & Pruning Spring & Fall Cleanup Janice Sant Barry 705-440-8607 seasonalgardener@hotmail.com

Leasing, Boarding, Cattle Drives, Riding Adventures Come, let the adventures begin.

NATURAL BEAUTY

Anti-Aging Skin Care Clinic™ Non-Invasive Firming • AHA Treatment Collagen Treatment • Eye Treatment CELEBRATION® Ceremony Deluxe Treatment Liz Beavis 519-216-SKIN (7546) By appointment only www.NaturalBeautyAnti-AgingSkinCareClinic.ca

FASHION

DUFFERIN LAWN LIFE Feel Pampered in Your Own Home

Massage & Holis c Services Upwards of 90% of disease is stressrelated. Massage is an eﬀec ve tool for relieving stress.

Lisa Maggiore C.M.P. House Calls . By Appointment Only 5199417666

FURNITURE www.yesterdayshome.weebly.com

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INTERIOR DESIGN

Customized Organic Based Lawn Care Programs Since 1973

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LAND SURVEYING P.J. Williams Ontario Land Surveyor

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Orangeville Drapery

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HAIR SALONS

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Music for weddings and special events Guitar lessons labrashmusic.ca dlabrash@sympatico.ca 519-941-9319

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100

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

Garden Design & Installation Property Maintenance Nursery Stock Supplied & Planted Spring Clean Up David Teixeira 519-942-1421

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MARKETPLACE PARTIES

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(cont’d)

AND

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R E A L E S TAT E Short or Long Term Rental in Belfountain Overlooking the Credit River Valley at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in lovely Belfountain, Potter’s Cottage is looking for a tenant to move in May 1, 2013. This 1½ bedroom house has a newly renovated kitchen, LR, DR, office, high-speed internet, cable and one of Caledon’s prize views. Contact nross@woodrising.com.

PET SUPPLIES & SERVICES Signs that your pet’s current diet needs to be reviewed:

SEPTIC SERVICES

Visitors nab your copy of In The Hills? But now you want to reach an advertiser? You can ﬁnd complete listings of all our recent advertisers, sorted by business category, at www.inthehills.ca Select ‘Find an Advertiser’ from the menu. Click a name to go directly to our advertiser’s site!

P U Z Z L I N G S O L U T I O N S from page 1o2 There’s a Motto in Here Somewhere! 1. Melancthon, sketchbook; 2. facetious, uncomplimentary; 3. stalks-talks, over-rove; 4. Camilla, Leggatt; 5. plank, trudge. Orangeville’s ofﬁcial motto is “Historic Charm – Dynamic Future.”

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How Ginny Fooled Jack Jack had 50 and Ginny 30. After exchange #1, Jack has 20 and Ginny 60; exchange #2 gives Jack 20 for a total of 40. Ginny too, has 40. In exchange #3, she gets Jack’s 40. Way Over the Top? Wally was surreptitiously inspecting the claimant’s hand. If she has really been in a wheelchair for ten months her palms will be callused. IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

101

a Puzzling Conclusion

by Ken Weber

Up in the Attic at S.S. #15 There’s a Motto in Here Somewhere! By following the six directions that appear below this list of words, you will reveal the ofﬁcial motto of a community here in the hills.

stalk camilla uncomplimentary dynamic sketchbook plank facetious historic over future melancthon trudge leggatt charm Delete any words or names that:

1 have four consonants in a row

2 have all ﬁve vowels in alphabetical order or reverse alphabetical order

5 can be another word for “lumber” There should be four words remaining. Rearrange them to get the motto.

Near the ﬁnish line of the Terra Cotta to Terra Nova marathon Tiffany ﬁnally overtook the last runner. What position is she now in?

How Ginny Fooled Jack

P Q

During a lunch break she challenged her fellow workers to look at this pattern in the rafters and count the number of trapezoids. (One of them wanted to know what a trapezoid is and she told him it’s a four sided ﬁgure with only two parallel sides.) How many trapezoids are there in the pattern?

become different, regular English words when the first letter is moved to the end or when the final letter is moved to the beginning have a doubled consonant from the first half of the alphabet

From Terra Cotta to Terra Nova

A member of the crew ﬁxing a leak in the roof of S.S. #15 in Alton discovered that by lying across the joists and looking up at the rafters, she could see a pattern of trapezoids and parallelograms that looked like this.

At a Coffee Shop in Grand Valley Enzo watched a mute person approach the cashier at a coffee shop in Grand Valley and buy a medium coffee to go, black – no milk or sugar – with two lids, all accomplished by pointing at signs and making various motions with her hands. This customer was followed by a blind person whose order was almost exactly the same (except he wanted sugar). How did the second customer indicate what he wanted?

A N

I N

T H E

H I L L S

M I N I

On the day before the Apple Fest in Inglewood, Ginny and Jack were observed exchanging apples. Ginny had McIntoshes in her basket while Jack’s basket held Spartans. Jack had agreed that Ginny was in charge and that he would go along with whatever she asked in the exchange, provided there would be a maximum of three exchanges. Ginny organized the first exchange by asking Jack to dip in to his basket and give her as many apples as she had in her basket. Which he did because for the second exchange, Ginny promised she would then give him back the same number he had left. Ginny kept that promise and then said, “Okay, now the third exchange. You give me back, the same number I have left.” When Jack did that, he found his bushel basket was completely empty while Ginny’s contained 80 apples. How many apples did each of Jack and Ginny have before the exchanges?

M Y S T E R Y

Way Over the Top? T two investigators were The jjust minutes away from ttheir ofﬁce in Caledon East when Pete ﬁnally burst out with the questions he’d suppressed since leaving Toronto. “Why did you kiss her hand, for heaven’s sake? Like h some twelfth-century Lochinvar. som What was w that all about? And what’s

it going to look like if this case goes to court and that comes out?” Wally looked at his partner and frowned ever so slightly. “We’re investigators and I was investigating,” he said. “Three months after the accident her claim was for ﬁve million. Seven months later it’s gone to ten million. She says she’s been pushing herself around in that wheelchair all this time and is never going to get out. Supposedly she’s now got an orthopedic surgeon and a neurologist who will back that up.”

“Yeah, and a physiotherapist,” Pete said, “and the massage therapist she sees every second day. But …” “And,” Wally continued like a patient elementary teacher, “our clients need to know if it’s worth putting up the big bucks to get their own experts into the picture or whether they should just try to settle, or even …” “Yeah, yeah, but her hand!” Pete almost shouted. “Why did you kiss her hand?” Why indeed? solutions on page 101

102

IN THE HILLS SPRING 2013

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CHANGING LIVES ONE SMILE AT A TIME Dr. Richard Schmidt practices General Dentistry in Brampton, Ontario. He has been in practice for twenty ﬁve years with his wife, Dr. Tamara Sosath. His area of interest has always been Orthodontics and four years ago he introduced Clear Aligner Therapy (Invisalign) as a treatment option for his patients, to establish healthy alignment of teeth. In addition to treating adult and teen malocclusions with Invisalign, he is utilizing it to align teeth for conservative and rehabilitative restorative treatment.

WHAT IS INVISALIGN? Invisalign is a method of straightening teeth without using traditional braces. It uses a series of custom designed, clear plastic, removable “aligners” that gradually move teeth into their correct position. It has been used to treat millions of patients around the world.

If this orthodontic treatment interests you, it is important that you choose an experienced Invisalign Provider with whom you feel comfortable. Not all dentists and orthodontists have experience with Invisalign, so it is important to find one that has had the training to accurately assess your particular case. Invisalign addresses both simple and complex cases. During the initial consultation, radiographs, photos and impressions of your teeth will be taken. In conjunction with a 3D imaging iTero Scanner, the interpretation of these records will provide you with a preliminary treatment plan. Using the scanner, virtual tooth movements may be tracked to show you the end result. During your consultation, your questions and concerns will be answered. Once your records are collected, your case is sent off to the Laboratory. Using a 3D computer software program, your treatment plan is finalized. A series of clear aligners, made specifically for you, will be sent back to the office. They are worn for approximately twenty two hours per day and removed for

meals, brushing and flossing. Every two weeks or so, you will proceed to a new set of aligners. Your case will be periodically monitored at 2-8 week intervals. With completion of treatment, a retainer is worn to maintain the teeth in their new position. It is very satisfying and fulfilling to achieve striking results using Invisalign. Clear Aligner Therapy has definite advantages over conventional fixed orthodontic treatment. Most adults would feel uncomfortable wearing braces. Invisalign is virtually undetectable when worn. As a result, it provides the patient with the confidence to smile in their daily lives. There is less incidence of soft tissue irritation when compared to conventional braces. Also, the aligners can be removed for daily dental hygiene making the flossing and brushing of teeth much easier. Worried about the effects of aligners on speech? There are none. Our profession provides us with the opportunity to alter our patients’ lives by giving them beautiful smiles, more self-confidence and greatly improving dental health.

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