For the defence

To mark CONE’s 30-year anniversary, Ontario Nature salutes this grassroots coalition created in our boardroom to safeguard the Niagara Escarpment from developers and industry. While CONE has not won every battle, it is certainly winning the war by making sure that the unesco World Biosphere Reserve that stretches from the Niagara Peninsula to the tip of the Bruce remains protected

By D’Arcy Jenish

Lyn MacMillan is seated in the sunroom of her country property north of Toronto – 57 hectares of rolling, wooded land now nearly surrounded by the suburban sprawl of the Town of Vaughan. She is reminiscing about the day in the spring of 1978, when hundreds of citizens converged on the grounds of Queen’s Park to voice their concerns about the future of the Niagara Escarpment. They were a noisy but passionate rabble, and they scored an important victory. Their protest persuaded Bill Davis’s minority Progressive Conservative government to defeat a Liberal private member’s bill that would have repealed the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act – a landmark law designed to control commercial activity and protect the environment. “We were overjoyed,” recalls MacMillan, a vibrant and dynamic octogenarian with a brisk British accent. “There were all these people milling around and stepping on each other’s toes, but I thought we needed to be better organized.”

Bigger battles lay ahead and Ontario Nature (then called Federation of Ontario Naturalists, or FON for short) asked MacMillan, one of its most active volunteers, to organize a coalition of groups and individuals to help fight them. The planning and development act, passed five years earlier, had provided for the creation of the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC). Its mandate included the drafting of a plan to regulate development and create protected natural areas within the 725-kilometre-long escarpment, which stretches from Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. fon knew that developers, aggregate companies and many municipalities along the escarpment would fight to keep as much land as possible free from such restrictions, and it was determined to meet them head on.

Not long after the Queen’s Park protest, MacMillan held a meeting at the kitchen table in the spacious, elegant Toronto home she and her late husband, Robert, a prominent cardiologist, shared with their five children. Half a dozen people attended – MacMillan and Ron Reid from FON, as well as representatives of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the Canadian Nature Federation, Pollution Probe and the Foundation for Aggregate Studies, a citizens’ group opposed to the aggregates industry. That day they formed the Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment, CONE for short.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of this alliance of grassroots environmental and naturalist groups, which, over the decades, has become a tightly focused and formidable force in defence of the diverse and, in some cases, unique ecosystems of the escarpment. Many people consider fon prescient in pushing for its formation. “My husband was on the board of fon [at the time] and was very interested in the escarpment,” recalls Margaret Cranmer-Byng, who sits on the board of CONE and is a longtime member of Ontario Nature. “I remember him coming home from a meeting and saying that the federation was going to set up an organization to defend the escarpment because the government wasn’t doing enough. I have always felt that one of fon’s really great achievements was recognizing the need and doing something about it.” At 30 years old, it’s a legacy very much alive and well.

“It’s evident that there is still a great need for CONE,” says Caroline Schultz, executive director of Ontario Nature. “The escarpment is still under great pressure from developers, aggregate companies and others. We need the coalition as a coordinating body to fight the ongoing battles.”

CONE was only a few weeks old when it faced its first major test. A powerful and politically connected development company was seeking approval for a major executive retreat centre, Cantrakon, at Forks of the Credit, one of the most striking sites on the escarpment. The NEC turned down the proposal. So did the ministries of Natural Resources and the Environment. But Claude Bennett, the minister of housing at the time, approved it.

CONE leapt into action, leading the opposition to the proposal, recalls Reid, then a staff environmentalist with fon. It held press conferences, organized a letter-writing campaign against the project (addressing all correspondence to Premier Davis) and met with a number of mpps to educate them about the need to control development on the escarpment. “Cantrakon was a gift,” says Reid. “It blew up and became very controversial. It made people realize that the escarpment was in danger and the government wasn’t doing enough to protect it. It also looked like developers were getting favours from the [housing] minister in return for political support. No government could let that stand.” Cabinet turned down the proposal, and CONE scored its first important victory.

The experience taught the group the effectiveness of personal contact with political decision makers, and it began to aim higher. In 1980, MacMillan used her extensive network of connections to arrange a meeting with Premier Davis at his Queen’s Park office. The group’s goal was to persuade him to increase the conservancy funds available to acquire environmentally sensitive or significant escarpment lands for preservation purposes.

“The meeting began around quarter to 12 and we all thought we’d be lucky to get 10 minutes with him,” Reid says. “But he appeared to be interested and was very congenial. We were there till two o’clock and by then we were all starving. To make matters worse, Davis was a pipe smoker, and this was before smoking in the workplace became a no-no. He was puffing on his pipe and the room became smokier and smokier as the meeting went on, but nobody wanted to leave.”

By the time they stood, shook hands and left, the CONE delegates had secured a commitment of one million dollars from the premier. Davis, whose Brampton riding included Caledon and parts of the escarpment, acknowledges today he did have a soft spot for their cause. “They had no trouble getting me interested.”

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