Ontario Chapter

On July 23, Sierra Club Ontario had a walk on the tranquil, beautiful Seaton Trail which forms the battle line between the Rouge National Urban Park and the Pickering Airport Study Area. The walk went from the charming Victorian Gothic village of Whitevale, up to the Oak Ridges Moraine. Here, we turned back after seeing an indicator of good ecosystem health — a Pileated Woodpecker. We were also entertained by a soaring Red Tail Hawk and the sounds of Cardinals, Chickadees, and Wood Frogs. 

There is a narrow green wedge of 1.5 kilometers south of the Niagara Escarpment in the City of Niagara Falls. It is a thin refuge for wildlife between a concrete maze of an expressway, quarries, the Welland Canal and a rock dump. It is now under attack. 

North of the green wedge is the Greenbelt, which stretches from Lake Ontario to the Niagara Escarpment. South is the most intact area of Carolinian Canada outside of designated Indian Reservations stretching to Lake Erie. It is dominated by the wetland forests created by the heavy clays of the vanished Lake Tonawanda. 

In January 2020, a month after the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal (LPAT) rejected my appeal of the amendment to the City of Niagara Falls Official Plan to facilitate the Riverfront development, extensive mowing took place in a Grey Hawthorn dominated savanna. In addition to Hawthorns being mowed, some small trees were cut down and turned into sawdust — which in some places, buried existing vegetation by mounds three feet deep. 

As part of Plastic Free July, we'll be hosting a clean-up. Come join us!

Where? Cherry Beach, Toronto

When? Thursday, July 28 at 7PM

What should you bring? Supplies will be provided on-site. We encourage you to bring your own refillable water bottles as well as masks and gloves (gardening gloves would be great!).

In its 17th year, the Ontario Biodiversity Council (OBC), came together to achieve the actions set by the Ontario Biodiversity Strategy 2005. In 2011, with support from the Ontario government, Ontario’s Biodiversity Strategy was renewed as a 10-year strategy, aligning with the Convention on Biological Diversity’s global Strategic Plan and its 20 targets, collectively known as Aichi targets. The 10-year strategy is a blueprint, championed by OBC, for an ecologically sustainable future for Ontario, its biodiversity and its people — something well worth pursuing. 

In Memory of Alicja Rozanska.

From John Bacher: 

Recently when I was reviewing the decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Bacher V. GR CAN Investments, I received grim news of brutal events in the Amazonian rainforest. This showed the similarity of the assaults of the woodlands of the Carolinian life zone, Canada’s most biologically diverse biome, with another critical cradle of species diversity on our planet. 

The Sierra Club (both in the U.S. and Canada) is part of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.