Frompool to pond

How A Mono Nature Lover Transformed Her Swimming Pool Into A Pond Teeming With Wildlife

BY EMILY DICKSON

After living at her country home in Mono for a few years, Carol Terentiak remained enchanted by the country views and pleased with the horse barn that first drew her to the six-acre property in 2011. But she had never overcome her initial misgivings about its concrete swimming pool.

Carol’s children had grown, and while they occasionally brought the grandkids to swim, for the most part the 35-foot-long pool was an underused feature that required too much work.

“I rarely swam in it myself but did spend a lot of time cleaning it and dumping the required salt and chemicals into it,” says Carol. “The worst was in the fall when all the leaves from the trees made the pool their home.”

Fed up, Carol started researching how to transform the kidney-shaped curse into something more beautiful and biological – that could eventually be a habitat for wildlife. Though she found inspiration from similar projects in other countries, she struggled to find a company willing to embrace her “biopond” project. “I actually had one landscaper tell me I had a pretty enough place and to just fill it in,” she says.

But her perseverance paid off. In 2020, Fergus-based company July Ponds & Landscaping – known for creating water features and swimming ponds from scratch – got on board. Owner Chris July had never undertaken a pond project on a pool site before, but he was game.

“Converting an unwanted pool to a pond full of life is a great way to repurpose an existing space,” says Chris. “We were inspired and up for the challenge of creating an organic garden space where the waters are pure and promote life and positive spirits. Our goal was to create an organic balance within the pond so that it can sustain itself with little intervention.”

The first task was to prepare the pond’s base. The old pool liner was removed, and a layer of sand was added to cushion a new synthetic rubber liner. (Holes had been drilled into the pool base to drain any water that might seep between the liner and the concrete.) The pool depth ranged from about three feet to six feet. At the shallow end, wide steps were built to provide access for wildlife, as well as Carol’s dogs who love to swim.

On either side of the steps, large landscaping rocks and gravel were added to create a bed for aquatic plants, some of which grow directly in the gravel and some in planting pockets made with geotextile. Carol’s pond plants include water lilies, irises, pond grass, cattails, hornwort, arrowhead, horsetails and soft stem rush, plus two floating plants – water lettuce and water hyacinth – to shade and cool the water below.

Next, more rocks and garden plants were placed around the pool to naturalize its edges. The final touch was the creation of a charming bubbling brook which flows down a stone path to a waterfall at the pond’s deep end. It is part of a filtration system that circulates and aerates the water. According to Carol, “The goal was for the pond to eventually clean itself without any chemicals.”

With the plants in and the landscaping complete, Carol introduced the pond’s first residents – six goldfish – which quickly became dozens of goldfish. And with no other natural ponds nearby, it wasn’t long before the local wildlife began making themselves at home, exactly as Carol had hoped.

“In addition to my goldfish, now I’ve also got frogs and a painted turtle. I have no idea how the turtle got there – it just showed up, as did the frogs,” Carol says. Her domestic ducks use the pond, joined by the occasional wild duck. “So many birds come to the little river flowing from the waterfall to drink in the summer – robins, wrens, crows and more. It’s a treat each time I’m out there to wait and see what birds will stop by for a drink.”

One summer the pond also attracted a huge blue heron who couldn’t resist a feast of tadpoles and goldfish, but overall there aren’t a lot of predators, so the goldfish and frogs reproduce fast enough to maintain their populations. The goldfish also have their own little cave to hide in when they need to.

“I’m happy different animals can thrive here,” Carol says, describing how she hated finding dead frogs that had become stuck and drowned in the leaf skimmer of the old pool.

The first year, however, was definitely a learning curve for Carol as the pond was hit with an algae bloom which had to be treated. “I had to learn to balance the ecosystem of the pond by adding a lot more plants, as well as natural bacteria,” she explains. Since then, Carol is pleased to report she hasn’t needed to add any other supplements to the water. That also makes it safe for her dogs who like to jump in to cool down.

The only time Carol gets into the water is when she must anchor or move the location of a floating fence that protects some of the plants. “If I don’t adjust the fence, the ducks will eat them – especially in the spring when they are new and tender.”

Now that the project is complete and the pond is thriving, Carol is thrilled with the results and takes great joy from her aquatic oasis. “I just love the sound of the waterfall, both in summer and winter. I love to see the migratory birds that visit in the summer. Each morning I look for frogs, tadpoles and baby fish to see where they may be hiding or swimming. The pond is a great place to sit, have a cold drink and read while listening to the waterfall. This is a place where I find peace.”

WHEN THESE HEADWATERS PILOTS FEEL THE URGE TO FLY, THEY STEP OUT THEIR BACK DOOR

BY ANTHONY JENKINS

• PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETE PATERSON

In the late 1950s, a boy stood in a Brampton backyard, looking up. Puzzled. That boy was a young Stan Vander Ploeg.

“I kept seeing little airplanes flying overhead. From time to time, the engine would quit right above my head and I’d think, ‘Oh-oh, that guy’s in trouble!’ And he’d glide off out of sight. Then another son-of-a-gun had his engine quit, same spot, right above me! I had to chase these airplanes!”

Stan is much older now and living in Grand Valley. But he’s still looking up and is grateful for what he saw back then – and where it led him. “The romance of flight. It hasn’t changed. I have the same ache to go flying. To leave the earth for a while. It is a lifelong love.”

Young Stan tracked those “stricken” aircraft to the nearby Brampton Flying Club, walked boldly in and said hello. (Turns out the “faltering” planes, engines throttled back on purpose, were part of pilots’ training to land.)

He started dropping by the club two or three times a week after school. At first he gawked. Later he cleaned windshields and washed planes. At 13, he was pumping aviation fuel. “You won’t see that today!” The first time the eager kid was taken aloft and saw the ground fall away beneath him, he was hooked. “Jeez, I’ve got to do this!” he thought. “I’ve just got to do this!”

And so he has, for 57 years, a licensed pilot since the age of 17. He flies a yellow Piper J-3 Cub with registration CF-WFT painted on the sides of the fuselage and in big letters on the underside of one wing and the top of the other, in accordance with the vintage of the plane.

Stan, now retired from a career as an Air Canada aircraft maintenance engineer, and his wife, Sheila – the two met at an airport – operate Grand Valley Aircraft Restoration on their rural property. There they have painstakingly restored every part of vintage aircraft from propeller to tail. The turf airstrip they created, Grand Valley North Aerodrome, designated CGV3 by Transport Canada, has been the couple’s backyard for two decades.

The flight paths of private rural airfields like the Vander Ploegs’ may not, by regulation, overfly the dwelling of an existing neighbour. But if an airstrip exists and a new neighbour arrives to complain or plan construction, the airfield usually takes precedence – even if the neighbour is a company with plans to build big, fancy wind turbines that generate power to feed into Ontario’s electrical grid.

“There were going to be wind turbines just north of where our runway was going to be,” Stan remembers. “None of them was built yet, of course, just a thought put out, a possibility. They would have known about us. We’d already cut trees. They got upset. ‘Wait a minute, this is not an airport!’ they said. I said, ‘Well yes, it is. I’ve already started. My runway is underway. We were first.’” He notes that Transport Canada’s approval of the construction plan bolstered his case.

“There was a bit of a skirmish, nothing serious, but they cancelled four wind turbines,” he adds. “More people were happy about that than unhappy.”

“I haven’t heard of any private airfield up here having problems with neighbours in 30 years,” says Paul Lamont. He lives on Cedar Strip Farm in Amaranth and flies his Maule M5210C, from Laurel/Whittington Aerodrome (CLW3). “There’s not any great traffic into these strips. I might have a dozen people in a year. Motorcyclists on the road make more noise.”

Stan, Paul and their fellow aviators are a sociable group. The dozen or so local airfields – unless posted PNR (prior notification required) in aviators’ handbooks – are open and free for any pilot to drop into (literally) for a visit, though that hospitality isn’t overtaxed. Maybe a couple of planes a month fly in “to borrow some tools or have a cup of coffee” with Stan and Sheila. “As a group we’re anxious to see people, see their planes,” says Stan. “There is no association but 90 per cent of us know one another. We’ve never been turned away elsewhere.”

In search of the $100 hamburger

The “$100 hamburger” is a standing joke among private pilots. They will, on a whim, a hankering for a burger and a beckoning balmy day, fly out to a near-ish airfield to hobnob with peers around a barbecue. Factoring in the cost of aviation fuel – approaching

$2.80 a litre as of spring 2023 – as well as wear and tear on their aircraft, an hour’s return flight in a Piper Cub like Stan’s to, say, Collingwood, will set them back about $100.

If the sound of a $100 hamburger –and the attendant joys of flying your own aircraft to enjoy it – appeals, just what will it take to get you off the ground?

Training. To earn a private pilot licence, or PPL, through a Transport Canada-approved training facility such as the Brampton Flight Centre in Caledon, the learning curve is steep, as is the price.

Basic flight training for a singleengine aircraft runs about $12,000. But a budget of $15,000 to $18,000 is more realistic, according to Scott Chayko, chief flight instructor at BFC, located south of Inglewood. Training and costs can be spread “self-paced” over months or even years.

Transport Canada mandates 40 hours of classroom study or “ground school,” which covers topics such as weather, air law, aircraft construction and engine systems, as well as a minimum of 45 hours in the air. The 45 hours of air time is theoretical, says Scott. “Count on more,” he advises. “The average is around 70 hours.” It takes about a year to achieve the level of competence necessary to become a licensed private pilot.

Scott suggests the experience is worth it. “Flying is an exciting thing. It is a calling, a passion. Every time I go up, I feel it.”

An airfield. Creating a glorified long lawn – the Vander Ploegs’ airstrip measures 2,000 x 75 feet – on suitable property, entails planning and work. You’ll need flat land. A brushy field is preferable (land suitable for crops or pasturing cattle is expensive). A bulldozed, rolled and specially seeded bare-bones airstrip might set you back about ten grand.

An aircraft. The starter plane is a Cessna 150. If you’re seeking a showroom-shiny one, you won’t find it. Cessna stopped making them in 1977. For well-maintained used examples (found on the internet or in the back pages of aviation magazines), set aside about 50 grand.

Insurance. Liability coverage will cost between $500 and $700 annually. This doesn’t include “hull insurance,” the equivalent of collision insurance for a car, which covers damage to the hull or engine, and runs about $3,000 a year.

Repairing light damage from a heavy runway landing might cost between $8,000 and $10,000. Damage from a propeller “strike” (overapplying the throttle, causing a taxiing plane to tip on its nose, for example) will entail not only an expensive propeller replacement, but also – by Transport Canada rules – removal and X-ray of the crankshaft, replacement of damaged parts, and reassembly of the entire engine. Think $25,000-plus.

Operating costs. With fuel, oil and maintenance you do yourself, plan on a cost of at least $100 an hour for time both on the ground and in the air.

Flying for delight

John Black is a flyer and a farmer who tends 200 acres of wheat, corn and soy in East Garafraxa. He built Black Field (CGV5) airstrip on his property south of Grand Valley in 1979.

At a plowing match in Breslau, near Kitchener, when John was 15 or so, his father coaxed him into taking a flight. “That was the last time I had to be coaxed into an airplane,” says John, who earned his pilot’s licence in 1971.

He flies his 1964 Cessna 150D, registration CF-WEB, “maybe once a week” to inspect his crops and see what other farmers are doing. “But I’m not always going somewhere,” he says. He flies – they all fly – because they can. They fly for the delight of looking at everything all at the same time, for the freedom, for no traffic, no roads, to be above it all.

The view from above How does Dufferin County appear from the sky?

From 2,000 feet, Mono, northeast of the low sprawl of Orangeville, presents a diversity of topographies: the dark slash of Hockley Valley, the green upholstered jut of Mono Cliffs Provincial Park and the large splash of Island Lake, visible for miles (though you can’t land a float plane there, except in an emergency).

North of Mono, the land in Mulmur bunches into deep folds, marked by fields and forests. “Horsey country,” Stan calls it. To the west, windswept Melancthon and Amaranth below it are remarkable for their towering wind turbines, each more than 260 feet tall and lazily casting shadows twice their height. But even at that size, the towers “are not a big factor for planes,” says John.

Further west, Grand Valley, cut by the meandering Grand River, is a mosaic of farms. It’s home to a relative preponderance of airstrips, and its westerly roads end raggedly, interrupted by the moody dark green waters and wetlands of massive Luther Marsh. South again, East Garafraxa is likewise a multi-toned patchwork of farmland, with its road grid plainly tilted on a diagonal.

Relics of a different era?

Private airstrips and those who maintain and use them are fading into aviation’s past. Ever-rising costs of land, fuel and maintenance are factors, even for the fairly well-to-do.

In Paul’s opinion, the younger generation going into aviation isn’t much interested in light aircraft. “They know they can go into a program in a college, put out the money – around $100,000 –and at the end of two years they arrive at the doorstep of the big airlines with a multi-engine instrument rating. They’re mostly interested in driving 737s, 727s, all the big iron. Sad, but that’s just the way it is. In my day, in the ’60s and ’70s, a lot of us went into planes like going into motorcycles or boats or snowmobiles.”

Among others, Madill Field (CGV4), southeast of Grand Valley, was closed and allowed to go back to farmland. “I don’t like to see it,” laments John.

“It cuts down the places I can go. We have friends with airplanes and we like to drop in to see them. Those fields are getting scarcer.”

Now well into his 80s, John says, “I’ll never lose interest. As long as you pass the medical every two years (his plane must be inspected and certified annually), you can be flying at 100.” The medical involves stress tests and not-under-stress tests, he adds. “It’s fairly stiff.”

As for Stan and Sheila, they have spent a lifetime and a marriage in the air in small planes. Their most memorable flight, both romantic and frightening, was early on. It was late fall or early winter, and Stan had flown to Sudbury to pick up Sheila, his new girlfriend at the time. The weather forecast over the route back to Brampton wasn’t 100 per cent, he says, but it was favourable for visual sight rules.

“By the time we got to Parry Sound, bad weather had set in. Snow and sleet were sticking to the wings and lift struts. To see, we had to descend until we were about 100 feet above the treetops. There was no airport in Parry Sound. I knew if I flew east I’d pass a