Article and photos by: Charlie Angus
Visiting members of Toronto City Council had to be airlifted into the controversial Adams Mine, near Kirkland Lake, Ontario last Friday, to avoid a large cavalcade of protest vehicles lining the road to the potential dump site. The councillors, members of Toronto's Works Committee who were in the region as part of a tour of potential dump sites for Toronto's garbage, spent much of the day trying to avoid a mock "funeral procession".
The funeral was staged by local residents who are angry that after 11 years of protest, Toronto is still considering dumping its refuse in the abandoned mine. Up to 250 cars, a coffin, pallbearers and a contingent of mourners decked out in black armbands participated in the protest, in the hopes of a meeting with members of the committee.
With the Keele Valley dump site slated for closure in 2002, Toronto is facing a looming garbage crisis. Four other shortlisted dump sites (two in Michigan and two in southwestern Ontario) vying with Adams Mine for the contract, which could mean up to one million tonnes of waste per year. Bill Saundercook, Chairof the Works Committee, said that the Friday protest was the only time Toronto councillors had run into organized opposition during their five site tour.
Dump promoter Gordon McGuinty was clearly worried about the protest. McGuinty told local media that opposition had cost him a short term contract with Toronto in 1996. He said the latest protest could be the final nail in his 11-year campaign's coffin. The North Bay businessman has been dogged by major opposition from area residents since 1989, when he began pushing the open pits of the recently closed mine as Toronto's garbage solution.
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"It is humiliating for people of Northern Ontario to have to stand outside and beg Toronto not to use us as their garbage can." - local businessman Pierre Belanger |
Much of the organized opposition has come from area farmers, who believe that the dump, sunk three hundred feet into the water table, could poison their groundwater aquifers.
Ambrose Raftis is a veteran of the fight against the dump. "You look at other dumps, they have plastic liners. They are dug into clay soil far from contact with the water table. The Adams Mine, however, is little more than a giant experiment. It's a pit filled with rock fractures. There's water pouring in at all kinds of levels. The promoters aren't even going to put a liner in it. The only thing this site has going for it is it's out of sight and out of mind."
First Visit
The Friday visit was the first time elected Toronto officials have actually been to the site. What was to be an ordinary drive from the Kirkland Lake airport was transformed into a potentially disastrous public relations event when the visitors learned of the mock funeral procession. McGuinty then arranged for the councillors to be flown directly into the site by a special helicopter, allowing them to bypass the protesters who were waiting at the mine's gate.
News that Toronto councillors had been airlifted into the site turned a good-natured protest into an angry one as the hundreds of protesters found themselves sitting in the middle of nowhere, blocked from further access to the mine - and the councillors - by a chain link fence and a police cordon.
Local businessman Pierre Belanger was one of the protest organizers. "I find it humiliating to be standing here today," he told the crowd. "It is humiliating for people of Northern Ontario to have to stand outside and beg Toronto not to use us as their garbage can."
Back to the Airport
After debating the possibility of bursting through the police cordon and confronting the council members directly, protesters decided to turn the lumbering three-kilometre cavalcade around and head out to the local airport in the hopes of meeting up with the Toronto crowd when they were leaving. By the time the councillors arrived at the Kirkland Lake Airport, the crowd of 200 had dwindled down to about 50 people.
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"The garbage train has to travel through our farms and I'm telling you it isn't going to go through. How many helicopters do you think it will take to bring a million tonnes of garbage into the Adams Mine?" - farmer John Vanthof |
At the airport, the Toronto group, led by councillor Jack Layton, finally opted - to the apparent dismay of dump booster McGuinty - to meet the crowd that had been dogging them. Protesters describe the meeting as frank, open and cordial. But the underlying anger was apparent.
Dairy farmer John Vanthof told Layton point blank that area farmers were fed up with the process and would carry out a campaign of civil disobedience if Toronto decides to award the contract to McGuinty's Rail Cycle Consortium. "The garbage train has to travel through our farms and I'm telling you it isn't going to go through," Vanthof said. "How many helicopters do you think it will take to bring a million tonnes of garbage into the Adams Mine?"
Protest organizer Francine Patterson says that the councillors' visit has helped galvanize opposition to the dump. "Before today, I was realizing how tired people are of all this," she said. "They've been going to meetings and campaigning for so long. But I think Toronto has once again stirred up a hornet's nest."
She says the local anti-dump coalition is hoping to galvanize the energy of the march into producing a "thousand letter" campaign. Patterson says she hopes an outpouring of letters will influence Toronto Council to dump the Adams Mine from their list.
Some of the farmers say letters aren't enough. "They (Toronto Council) treated us like shit today," said one dairy farmer. "The farmers I talked to think its time we started sending them some of our own shit back."
Metro Council is expected to decide the fate of Toronto's trash by July 5.
A cavalcade of protest vehicles follow behind a "coffin" along the Adams Mine road |
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After failing to meet councillors at mine, residents stood vigil outside Kirkland Lake airport |
One of the fractured rock pits of the Adams Mine. The pits are sunk 300 feet into the water table. |
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Charlie Angus is the editor of HighGrader Magazine in Cobalt, Ontario. His latest book is the photo-collaboration: Industrial Cathedrals of the North. He is the lead singer with the Canadian folk band Grievous Angels.
Get More/Do More
E-mail Bill Saundercook, Chair of the Works Committee, councillor_saundercook@city.toronto.on.ca).
Toronto City Council: www.city.toronto.on.ca.
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