Ever wondered how well you know Bradford and the surrounding area?
Like most of you non-Bradford-born people, I came to this town from a different place. In my case, the Netherlands. One would think that living in Bradford off and on since 1971, working as a volunteer for many town organizations, as well as taking daily retirement walks the last 13 years everywhere in the greater Bradford West Gwillimbury countryside should have made me familiar and maybe even knowledgeable about the municipality. Wishful thinking.
A Bradford jewel like Scanlon Creek Conservation Area is hard to miss. It used to be a great swimming hole when the dam was still intact. It was a favourite place to visit with our young sons even though the occasional leeches would find their young blood a must-suck attraction. The slithery parasites would be salted off the boys' bodies in a fine teaching/science moment.
Even Mount Pleasant cemetery should be familiar to all. At times, being there feels like Siberia, when the northern winds howl and chill one to the bone while watching another body descend into the half-frozen earth. Unfortunately, at my age, there have been too many.
The first half kilometre on Line 10, east of Highway 11, is also well trodden since it is a great place to walk and rubberneck along its snaky layout and steep slopes dropping off the tarmac. That roadbed currently can be driven only if done carefully, since half of it is marked with pylons due to subsidence of the pavement. As you stand on the raised area further east, you can see the southern arms of Lake Simcoe. Last week, for the first time ever, I decided to walk to the lake's wintry edge. It's a longish walk but a rewarding one if you like the view of reeds, ice and water, trees and finally the marsh reclamation project.
A little searching into library files revealed that a local paper had mentioned this area earlier, but that reporting failed to catch my eye. One organization, Ducks Unlimited Canada, plays a significant role, with money from the Ontario government (really our money that the province redistributes), rehabilitating that wetland habitat in the marsh.
The Ontario government provided over $1.8 million in funding to Ducks Unlimited for 40 conservation projects to restore and enhance wetlands across the province, including the local project in Bradford on Line 10.
On its website, Ducks Unlimited states that they have conserved over one million acres of habitat.
The government funding aims to help restore that wetland by improving water quality, help prevent flooding and build some climate change resilience. According to government sources, this Wetlands Conservation Partner Program represents one of the largest investments in wetland restoration in Ontario’s history. The five-year, $30-million program supported projects in restoring and enhancing large-scale wetlands, smaller wetlands on marginal agricultural lands, and wetlands in more urban areas as part of municipal stormwater management. All project activities under this program, including the final project report, had to be completed by Dec. 31.
We all know that wetland ecosystems in the Holland Marsh improve natural water quality and protect the safety of our communities from potential floodwaters (like the flooding by Hurricane Hazel in 1954), and they naturally have an innate beauty. That last fact alone may induce you to take the walk along Line 10. You can drive that road in a car, but you'd miss a lot of fine detail.
The reclamation area covers 218 hectares (540 acres) and runs from the Oak Ridges Moraine to Lake Simcoe.
Wetlands are essential resources. They filter water, help mitigate flooding and drought and protect biodiversity (a spring frog concert can be very memorable). Keeping the Holland Marsh wildlife management area intact benefits moderating our climate. Enhancing wetlands has multiple positive outcomes.
Our current government states that it has invested in over 330 wetland projects, restoring and enhancing approximately 7,200 acres of wetlands across the province and that more than 170 green jobs were created in rural and near-urban communities to do restoration work. For those of us who know how crucial it is for our quality of life to maintain wetlands and other green areas, we say, “That's a good start."
Let's hope the government is sufficiently wise and has the foresight to expand these programs like in Scanlon, which has been altered and improved over the last decade. The dam is gone, the lake where we swam is gone, but fish now travel up the river again to spawn. That reclamation project, consisting of the wetlands leading to Lake Simcoe, is part of the larger restoration of that area. Scanlon may no longer offer swimming but the hiking in summer and winter is invigorating while birds are singing their songs.
Keep walking.
