MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2017

FALL 2017 ML BLUE 19 Celebrate your Special Occasion with us! • Gluten-Free Menu • No MSG • Healthy Selections • No Cross-Contamination • Peanut-Free • Kid Friendly Private Rooms Available Make your Reservation Now Open Daily Take-out & Delivery Largest Restaurant in Collingwood 2 Mountain Rd., Collingwood Besides Staples and Galaxy Cinema 705 446 2888 crystalbu et.ca Daily Bu et Hours : Lunch 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Dinner 4 p.m. to 9:30/10 p.m. Delivery Areas Local Collingwood e Blue Mountains Nottawa/Clearview ornbury Orders over $25 (before tax) FREE $5.00 $5.00 $5.00 Orders under $25 (before tax) $6.00 $10.00 $10.00 $10.00 Satisfy your Appetite with over 150 Delicious Food Items Chinese, Canadian and Japanese Sushi Bu et and Taste Buffet Larger than the Bruce Trail itself, its 50-year legacy of conservation is embedded in our lives whether we realize it or not. using the Escarpment landform as a guide. Working in the molten heart of the industrial complex, Lowes understood that southern Ontario was in danger of becoming a continuous zone of parking lots and subdivisions. In the 1950s and early ‘60s, most planners and elected officials could see little reason to curb development, mostly because nobody was offering an alternative. The first Bruce Trail Committee meeting in 1960 would present that alternative to unsustainable development. It was right under everyone’s noses: a volunteer-maintained trail following the Escarpment from Queenston to Tobermory to ensure public access in perpetuity. Seven productive years after that first Committee meeting, the basic Trail was blazed and open. The 1967 Trail and the Escarpment conservation plan it represented, though mapped from southern to northern terminus, was far from complete. Fifty years later, much more of the optimum route has been secured–and, crucially, a protective corridor around it. In recent years, the Bruce Trail Conservancy and its volunteers have focused on creating nature reserves to serve as natural buffer zones. In 2016/17 alone, the BTC acquired an unparalleled 1,102 acres of Escarpment land, with ten new nature reserves and one easement established. Still, 40 percent of the Bruce Trail corridor remains vulnerable. And today, Ontario’s population is again exploding. The recognition of the pressures of population growth and resource exploitation in Escarpment regions was the original impetus to build the Trail. This pressure never ceases. But we can be somewhat encouraged by the fact that city dwellers who move to Escarpment regions—whether seeking cheaper real estate or rural respite—are arriving at a place where the Bruce Trail is woven into the fabric of the landscape. Not only does the Trail’s protected corridor grow every year, the Trail as a whole is a longstanding example of the success of conservation efforts in close proximity to population centres. After a half-century of the Bruce Trail, it is easy to lose sight of its accomplishments. Thanks in large part to the Trail’s example, the Niagara Escarpment Commission (1973), the UNESCO Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve (1990), and Ontario’s Greenbelt (2005) were established to help curb development. Larger than the footpath itself, its legacy of conservation is embedded in our lives whether we realize it or not. From that shallow prehistoric sea, to a fossil-rich landform that harbours extraordinary biodiversity, to a Trail that both showcases and protects it, there has been much progress in the last 450,000,000 years—and in the last 50. Efforts like that of the Bruce Trail Conservancy and its volunteers show that we can help maintain ourselves in a continuum with the non- human biosphere, both because it’s worth saving on its own merits, and for a more selfish reason: because it saves us too. –Ned Morgan, Editor