10:00:19:16 FEMALE SINGING VOICE
A is for airport a gift from Pierre
B the belief that turns to despair
C is for Cedarwood, stand up and shout
D is for Davis let’s throw him out
10:00:33:27 – SYNC FEMALE VOICE
We cleared these lands. We made farms, we made communities, we made schools. We made a home for ourselves and communities here, but the government didn’t like the way we did things out here in Radical Corners, that’s what they called us. And when 1837 came we marched on Toronto and my sons were arrested and our men folk were arrested. And her husband Peter Mathews was hanged by the government.
10:01:08:04 – MARY DELANY
Pickering, especial north Pickering was a hotbed of rebellion during the 1830s. William Lyon Mackenzie came out here on several occasion and when the time came time, Peter Mathews was chosen by Mackenzie to be the leader of the Pickering contingent. And it was Peter who was eventually hanged for his participation in the Rebellion. He shared a scaffold with Samuel Lount.
10:01;33:08 – MALE VOICE
Brothers and sisters, as the spirit of Brougham twists in the wind and during a slow death over three decades, I ask you to listen to this reading from the final chapter of The Book Of Brougham – in the shadow of an airport. I am a small village in Pickering Township. I am now burdened down with taxation and care. I have now crime to atone for, no misdeed to condemn me, yet stand under a threat and in great need of prayer. There’s still time. Do take heed all those who wield power, less a rash act bring loss, devastation and tears. Save me and mine for god sake, I endure with all duress, lest too late should bring down through long distance of years.
10:02:43:10 – LORNE ALMACK - subtitle
It’s rather stranger that back in 1968 Transport Canada officials said we don’t need a second airport. We should redevelop Pearson, Malton at the time. But then when the politicians came along and told them to go justify the need for an airport well then they went hired consultants and spent millions of dollars proving that black was white.
10:03:14:03 - NARRATOR
This is a story of a political decision by the government of Canada that resulted in a ruthless land grab. In the late 1960s, Mirabel, Montreal’s second international airport was announced by the Trudeau government.
Toronto politicians demanded a new airport and they started putting pressure on Ottawa. The Trudeau government agreed and set up an expensive to find a suitable site.
In 1970 a total of 59 sites were studied in Ontario. Although Pickering, north-east of Toronto, had been eliminated as an airport site in 1969 it was presented as an ideal choice for an airport. Low cost farmland, no people and great for speculators.
On March 2nd, 1972 the Federal and Ontario governments jointly announced plans for second Toronto international airport and the new town of Cedarwood in Pickering Township. Then came an avalanche of protests from everywhere.
10:04:17:13 – NARRATOR CONTINUES
In October expropriation notices went out. People lost land that had been in the family for generations. Other took the money and ran. Other held their ground and fought. The battle lasted 3 ½ years. People or Planes used every weapon in their arsenal, from leaked reports, to legal briefs to street theatre
10:04:39:13 – BILL LISHMAN
Paula and I lived here for five years until I think it was March 2nd, 1972, we got a thing through the news that all of this area was being expropriated and this was going to be the new airport for Toronto. It was a major shock. I was kind of dejected by the whole thing. And along come a Globe & Mail reporter. So I said what do you have to do to get their attention to stop this thing, do you have drop a bomb or something. And next day there’s a picture in the Globe & Mail, and I’ve got his gun in my hand and it say ‘Lishman ready to go to war’, you see and that came out in the Globe & Mail and I got inundated with phone calls from all my neighbours and that was sort of like, let’s all get together and we started the People or Planes organization which Dr. Godfrey headed up and I became the creative director.
10:05:34:12 - NARRATOR
On the evening of March 2nd, 1972, a meeting was held at Melody Farm where Matthew Lount had lived, a rebel who was executed by the government of Canada in 1837. The group formed that night to fight the airport was called PEOPLE OR PLANES. POP membership was an eclectic mix including farmers, lawyers, doctors, home-makers and artists. Dr. Charles Godfrey is elected chairman of the group.
10:05:57:13 – DR. CHARLES GODFREY
I got the word on the jungle grapevine very quickly because, one they didn’t know what the hell was going on, two although they didn’t know what the hell was going on, they were against it anyway, because they were against loosing that farmland. So eventually we became co-ordinated and got a fairly strong group protest going on. We set up various fact finding committee and they went to work analyzing was going on out at Malton. They pointed out that the projections put forward by the airport planning committee, that was the Federal Government planning committee was all to cock. They way they talked about it, everyone in Canada would be flying by the year 2000.
10:06:45:10 – LORNE ALMACK
Our objections came down to two things. One it wasn’t needed and two even if it was it should not be build on 18,000 acres of class one food land.
10;07:03:18 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
We didn’t want to do negative protests. We wanted to explain to people that this was just a huge mistake. And that it was going to cost the government and all of us a lot of money. This was not the place to do it ‘A’ and ‘B’ that it wasn’t needed. It had never been proved that the two airport system would work here.
10:07:24:24 – DR. GODFREY
They weren’t facing the fact, that an airport wasn’t needed there, was never shown to be needed there. And really never will be shown to be needed there. The history of cities the size of Toronto with two airports is an absolute disaster.
10:07:40:04 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
E is the environment that is being destroyed
F is the farmland we all once enjoyed
10:07:52:02 - NARRATOR
With weapons fashion from pipes and pitch forks, Bill Lishman and Mike Robertson formed the 1st Pickering Fusiliers to protect the lands.
Transport Canada set up offices in a vacant school in Brougham and are immediately put under siege by the Fusiliers.
Lishman and Robertson stand guard over the new international gateway to Canada and demand passports.
10:08:27:20 – BILL LISHMAN
What I enjoyed about was the street theatre. We needed media attention, because that was really important. So you have to do a few outrageous things to do that, and that was the fun part.
10:08:41:03 – AL GRAHAM
So bill came up with this wonderful idea, burying Mother Nature. I wasn’t just burying Mother Nature; it was burying Mother Nature in a very theatrical event on the front lawn of Queen Park.
10:08:55:29 – BILL LISHMAN
We did a funeral march on Queens Park. Paula made 50 black robes, so it was like an Ingmar Bergman scene.
10:09:10:25 – AL GRAHAM
Everybody carried a little cross and the three of four coffins that Bill had fashioned. Up University Avenue we went. And up to that point, most people associated protests with shouting and carrying placards, well this was entirely the opposite. The media just went nuts they loved it. Bill always had fresh ideas. There was always something new to do. And it got people’s spirits up. We always had something to work towards.
10:09:51:23 – NARRATOR
The funeral march brought the airport issue national attention and taught POP an in1valuable lesson in media relations.
10:10:04:07 – NARRATOR
In October, 1972 the federal government sent out expropriation notices to 2,000 Pickering land owners. A federal report indicates that speculators own 60% of the airport site.
10:10:15:13 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
I don’t think many of use really felt we had much of a heck of a lot of chance defeating the airport. Yet we felt like it was a responsible thing that we had to do. They protests weren’t in our minds totally futile, yet we felt the chances of success were fairly slim.
10:10:31:11 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
G is for garbage and gravel pits too
H is for highways around and right through
10:10:38:04 – ISOBEL THOMPSON
It’s a horrifying feeling. We had to go out and talk to people, at night. They’d phone and they’d be really upset. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know who to call. Nobody was paying any attention, least of all Mr. Trudeau at the time, who did come around here and was asked by a Farmer, ‘look what are you going to do about this and what can I do. And he said I want to know where I stand? And Mr. Trudeau said, My dear sir you are standing on expropriated ground. And you see the farmer almost burst into tears.
10:11:14:16 – NARRATOR
April 1973: Pickering landowners complain that federal governments’ offers are too. The average of $1,600 an acre is about half what of what it should be.
10:11:23:22 – MARY DELANY
They grind you down. They wear out. They make you ill. I’ve heard stories of the original expropriated people crying on doorsteps. Marriages breaking up. Suicides, depression. And that’s what they do to you. It wears you down. And when it you own government, and you think that’s not supposed to happen here is it? In Canada. It’s not supposed to happen and it’s happening.
10:11;55:23 - NARRATOR
In June 1973, Ontario amends the Housing Development Act giving it the power to expropriate land for the new city of Cedarwood.
In response, People or Planes stages the public hanging of Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Bill Davis, in effigy.
10:12:17:20 – PAULA LISHMAN
What he did was he got the media involved, then he made it real. He put on plays. He did street theatre. I mean the hanging and those types of things really captured people’s imagination.
10:12:37:04 – NARRATOR
The public hanging makes the front page and the six o’clock news and focuses he national spotlight on the airport issue once again.
10:12:43:18 – DR. GODFREY
A couple of our members thought that might be going a bit too far, but by then our tempers were really raising. We were getting made because the government was hitting us with all sorts of crap and we were beginning to react no quite as honorable citizens would react.
10:13:19:10 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Just a miles north of here we ran an Earth Days festival one year and attracted huge crowds. He had the Perth County Conspiracy down and had an incredible gathering a lot of positive energy to try and will this airport to see some common sense and stop their blind full ahead progress at the cost of intellect.
10:14:04:12 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
I means insane the we began
J is for roads that soon will be jammed
10:14:13:04 – AL GRAHAM
One beautiful summer day outside of Bill’s little school house, there was a survey crew, I guess doing the dastardly business I guess of trying to figure out where the runways went. Bill and his good friend Zak Keanin had this idea. They filled up a couple balloons with helium and put some black powder charges in them, waited until the wind was right and floated the balloons over these poor guys in the field doing survey work and blew the charge. Ha. Ha. And these guys scattered like you wouldn’t believe.
10:14:50:27 – NARRATOR
In October The Gibson Inquiry into the airport is announced but it will not be allowed to consider the need or location of airport. It doesn’t hold it’s first public hearing until March of 1974. Brenda Davies testifies and sings Durham’s lament.
10:15:05:18
K are the kids who have nowhere to play
L is the lifestyle that’s slipping away
M is the mill ponds that once took up space
N is the noise all over the place
10:15:19:18 - NARRATOR
The inquiry is the focus of attention for most of 1974. The Gibson report is made public in January 1975. Federal Cabinet considers it, then shelves it.
Marchand announces that construction will begin this year with only one runway instead of the four originally planned, at a cost of $204 Million.
10:15:43:09 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
And the day before the deadline was over we found out that Marchand was going to announce in the House of Commons that they were going to go ahead with the airport. We had no time to arrange any kind of official protest, so Bill got on the blower and started phoning people. And I threw a glider on the old Jeep and headed for Ottawa. I ‘m driving through a blinding snowstorm, thinking this is ridicules, this is never going to happen.
10:16:20:06 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
I manage to tow a flight and circle the Peace Tower and circle the eternal flame. Because we had a rookie TV crew, they didn’t have all the polished question for me, they just handed me the mic and I was able to say my bit and talk about how this land ought to be kept for growing beautiful food, some of the best farmland in Ontario and for flying like this that doesn’t impinge on the environment.
10:`16:53:22 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
O is the obsession we have to expand
O is the progress that eats up our land
10:17:00:05 – ANNE HOWES
There were fewer women in the work force and more of use who had the time. The poor men were off working all day and then coming to meetings. We just never stopped meeting and doing.
10:17:13:01 – NARRATOR
In April 1975 100 women sign a petition against the airport and pledge to sit in front of the bulldozers if and when work on the airport starts.
Fences and barricades are erected on roads to the site to keep demonstrators out.
10:17:33:21 – ANNE HOWES
Brenda was a British eccentric, and a very, very bright woman. And I think we just came across each other at various meeting. I mean you couldn’t help but meet people eventually. Franny was the wife of a judge and a spin of iron and rather reserved. And we began to talk and realized that the three of us had no dependants. We could disappear for weeks.
10:18:03:15 - NARRATOR
In August 1975: Bulldozers level the first house.
Local area resident are stunned at the destruction. They visit the site which is nothing more that a pile of rumble piled up across the road from Ernie Caruthers’s farm.
Ernie Caruthers is the last hold out on the federal land, trying the farm that has been in the family for generations. POP organizes a party at his farm. It is an emotional tribute to Ernie. The house is boarded up and Ernie moves out.
10:18:40:10 – ANNE HOWES
The party was a cover. The party was planned as a cover for Brenda, Franny and I to slip into the house.
10:18:52:03 - NARRATOR
That night, Ann Howes, Francis Moore, and Brenda Davies take up residence in Ernie Caruthers’s boarded up house and defy bulldozers.
None of women are directly affected by the expropriation, but feel compelled this last stand.
10:19:08:21 – ANNE HOWES
We had no idea what would happen. I was the youngest, therefore hail and hearty and able to chop wood. Brenda was a ham radio operator and we figured we could have some contact with the outside world. And Franny had a spine of steel.
10:19:27:02 – NARRATOR
On Sept. 17, 1975: The electricity is shut off to the farmhouse. Michael Robertson delivers supplies on horseback.
10:19:37:04
They had dug tank traps in the road. And so I had a horse and a four wheel drive so I was able to supply the gals up in the Caruthers’s farm that were holding out. I didn’t know those women well but they had fantastic energy and spirit. And I think that symbolically that was one of the big stands.
10:19:57:02 – NARRATOR
On September 18th, 1975 an Ontario election returns a minority Conservative government. Dr. Godfrey is elected in Durham West defeating a pro-airport liberal. But the destructions of homes on the site continues.
10:20:16:00 - NARRATOR
Sept. 21ST, 1975 1300 woman pledge to lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent the destruction of Ernie’s Caruthers farm.
Federal security guards are put on stand-by alert, ready to close all public access to the construction area of the planned runway.
10:20:33:01 – LORNE ALMACK
We were able to get to the Davis cabinet, and explain to them that this thing was a shame, and would not be a good thing for Toronto or Ontario. It would be a disaster like Mirabel and they shouldn’t support it.
10:20:49:29 - NARRATOR
On Sept. 24, 1975: Under pressure from the NDP and Liberals, Davis announces that Ontario will not provide roads, water mains, sewers and other essential services, even if Ottawa pays the cost.
10:21:06:23 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
The day of the announcement, I got up early and you could hear the heavy equipment moving and I thought those….. never mind, are going to knock down another house, it’s just stupid, you know the announcement is coming out today. So I jumped on Colonel, that’s my horse, bare back didn’t even saddle him up and rode out with my dog. They were getting ready to hit a house. The backhoe had the thing elevated and there was a big front end loader there. I rode in underneath, jumped off, and Sherman my dog and I ran inside.
I got in there and sat in an upper storey window and shouted out it’s over, you guys can’t hit it now. You’ll have to call who ever you have to call, if they’re going to remove me, but we have good reason to believe that as been cancelled so that this is a really bad idea to knock down another house. So anyway he just kept knocking away at the house and by the time the media got there and the suits arrived to tell them to stop the house had been lost anyway.
10:22:14:15 – NARRATOR
In Ottawa, Federal Cabinet shelves the airport. And the destruction ends. Marchand and Trudeau are enraged.
10:22:24:11 – ANNE HOWES
The ham radio that Brenda had was connected to people all around the world. So we got wind of it through the ham radio before we got wind of it anywhere else. We didn’t believe it.
10:22:34:07 - NARRATOR
Within an hour of the announcement, the padlocked gates to the site are opened by security guards and anti-airport campaigners drive through from all directions, horns honking.
10:22:44:17 – ANNE HOWES
I don’t know that I’ve ever been quit so proud of a bunch of people in my life.
10:22:58:08 – NARRATOR
That evening 200 POP troops squeeze into two rooms in the farmhouse to cheer their conquering general, Dr. Charles Godfrey. Three years, seven months and 25 days after they began to fight, POP members have a victory party.
10:23:12:06 – LORNE ALMACK
Oh we had a great party that night. Yep. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
10:23:17:03 – DR. GODFREY
We had a god-damned good time. Even if we lost, which we didn’t, even if we had lost we would have counted it as a great adventure. That’s the way we looked at it.
10:23;28;14 – BILL LISHMAN
So, eventually a lot of people became aware of it and there was a big public outcry that this shouldn’t happened and the public pressure on the politician and it essentially got cancelled, but we did get expropriated. We’re standing on Federal land now and they own this property and the bureaucrats are still there, well we’ll get that airport in yet.
10:23:50:27 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
Q is the quiet we once had
R is the roar of engines in flight
10:23;59;15 - NARRATOR
In October 1975, Mirabel opens late at double the budget. Trudeau says Torontonians will be "on their knees" begging for a second airport.
10;24;11;08 – NARRATOR
Following the Royal Commission the airport issue fell off the public radar. For the next twenty years, Transport Canada continued quietly planning an airport.
In July 1998 a small article appeared in the Toronto Star announcing the Federal governments’ intention to declare the Pickering lands as an airport site. It was met with immediate opposition.
10:24:34:10 – LORNE ALMACK
Why on earth do we announce this in July when everyone is on holidays. It sounds like another sneaky Transport Canada ploy. This is an issue that requires public debate and public input. I’m not prepared tonight to say whether it’s good bad or indifferent. But I have studied this issue for 25 years, I know an awful lot about it, I would like an opportunity to have input, so would another 1000 people in this communities.
10:25;07;00 – ISOBEL THOMPSON
I want to commend council for at least standing up this time and making their annoyance felt. In the last episode they rolled over and played dead, resulting in horrible circumstances lasting for 25 years with many people hurt un-necessarily.
10:25;23;22 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The fact that Lorne Almack and the Thompson had gone to the city council meeting at the beginning of August and asked City Council to ask Transport Canada for a delay, for a chance to consider the response. That’s what really saved the day. Right. Those guys from People or Plane, they were there 30 years ago, they were there at the critical moment then. That allowed VOCAL to get organized.
And I call all of local politician, and said you can’t make this an airport. An I remember I was standing in my bedroom looking out the front window talking to Mr. Anderson on the phone. And I said why would they need and airport, bla, bla, bla and told me directly, he said they’re building an airport there and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. And I said, that’s not how the system works. And he said, that’s how it works here.
That really gets my back up, when people who supposedly works for us, turns around and tells you, you as a voter, there’s not a single thing that you can do about it.
To be honest, I remember standing there, we opened the hall and said it’ll be interesting to how many people show up. The room was packed. You know, that was quite gratifying, certainly. It really invigorated me. It said, people are concerned about this. They are concerned as I am.
(SYNC) This is exactly the kind support we require to move forward. We have to make our local, our provincial and our federal official aware of the fact that we as communities oppose and airport on these land. Make them aware of how strongly we feel this and how, if they don’t represent us we can get someone who can.
10:27;24;20 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
I was all a matter of racing against the clock. Because Pickering City Council had a time that they were going to respond to Transport Canada. And we really had to focus on getting our message to Pickering City Council and then getting that to Transport Canada.
10:28;05;03 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The process of getting the word out was more difficult in the beginning because of faxes. I would gather names and addresses and really work on concentration on getting press coverage in the beginning. I called every press agency. Gathered their fax numbers, got names of reports and every other day I would do a press release.
10;28;46;10 – STEPHEN FREDERICK (SYNC)
The business of this meeting is for the town of Pickering to reinstate and to re-enforce the opposition it has always had. We have clear indication from them that they are willing to do that. And what we want to do it go in and show the Federal officials and the Provincial officials who so far have not come to the table that we are vocal and we want no airport.
‘we’re vocal, no airport’
10;29;13;12 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The sheer size of the rally caught them off guard. When we showed up with the placards and showed up across the street at the hub plaza and marched up.
10;29;22;13 – POLICE OFFICER
You know you’re doing a good job stirring up the crowd and what not, but at the same time. Everybody is welcome in, but no signs, no placards.
10;29;32;19 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
We showed up at the door and they had the Durham Region Police there taking placards, insisting that if we didn’t put them down we wouldn’t get in. You know, we weren’t there to yell and scream. We were there to make a very valid point that there was more than one side to this argument, than meets the eye. And what they were being asked to approve they didn’t have the information, to make that kind of recommendation to move ahead with.
10:30;16;07 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
Thank you Mayor Arthurs, Dan Mctigue, everyone present. I would like to start this presentation first of all with a viewing of the video that was put together by FilmSTAR .
10;30;28;03 – FEMALE VIDEO ANNOUNCER
25 years ago, the Federal Government, seized through expropriation, 18, 600 acres of the richest farmland in Canada to build an airport. After a successful campaign by People or Planes the Ontario government refused to provide the necessary infrastructure and the Federal Government shelved the project. For the past 25 years. Transport Canada has been quietly planning an airport.
10;30;46;22 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The video was outstanding. It really shocked, the politicians at all levels whether it was regional or municipal or even Federal. They were shocked that we had the professionalism to put together that kind of presentation, so they really didn’t have any choice but to counter and look at the information that was put in front of them. And it didn’t matter how you added it up the numbers didn’t work. And that left them in a position of having to defend an indefensible position. And that’s the last thing a politician is going to do.
10;31;21;13 – STEPHEN FREDERICK (SYNC)
Transport Canada has a study that says because Hamilton does not form a part of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, that the Greater Toronto Airport Authority would rather build an airport to take the traffic away from Hamilton. Rather than use the existing airport facilities efficiently they want to build their own empire. We say let’s stop them. Right here right now.
10;31;57;07 – LORNE ALMACK
I am so pleased that another generation is taking over this fight. Democracy is alive and well in Pickering. Remember in 1972 Transport Canada, to prove a second airport was needed, forecast 64 million passengers would be flying out of Toronto by the year 2000. Well, they’re going to have to get moving because there’s only 26 million a year now. They’re not going to make it. Let’s stop this airport. And I’m so happy to see so many young people here. I’m going to Florida to retire.
10;32;49;10 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
At the end of the meeting in Pickering, as it was breaking up and there was the vote and everyone was cheering I went down to hand the various politician a VOCAL button. And one of the councilors stood up and said you didn’t get a 1000 people here tonight, did you? And I just pushed it right back to him and said, we got more than you’ve ever seen.
10;33;12;08 – MINISTER DAVID COLLENETTE
Let me be perfectly clear, the GTAA has no role in the Pickering Lands. The decision to build an airport will be when the Federal Government is convinced that the surrounding community, the wider community, the Province Government and traffic needs dictate the construction of another airport. Certainly I believe that won’t come for 15 to 20 years. Maybe never.
10;33;35;11 – NARRATOR
It was a small victory for VOCAL. The government bowed to public pressured, deferred airport designation and buried the process in a stakeholders committee to explore the alternatives.
10;33;46;18 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
It became readily apparent into the second and third meeting that this was an act by Transport Canada to co-ordinate the actions of the municipalities and the regions in moving these toward an airport. They couldn’t give two damns whether we were there or not. I showed up for every meeting. I did not miss a meeting, no one. Because I didn’t want to show up at a meeting and them saying you missed the last one so we passed all this.
When they realized they couldn’t get down to the municipal level they said okay on to the next step. They moved to enact the Airport Zoning Regulations and said the next step is inviting in the Greater Toronto Airport Authority to build a business case so that they can be operational by 2012.
From their prospective it was brilliant. They could download a 30 year old problem onto an unaccountable agency that was filled with former Transport Canada personnel. Right, it was an incestuous relationship to say the least. Build it was an unaccountable body and the Government could say, it’s not us it’s the GTAA and the GTAA it’s not us talk to Transport Canada they make the decision, while the whole time they continued to advance the process strongly.
10;35;04;04 – WOMAN
The government is using our money to irritate and annoy and to make our living miserable. Using our money to do it.
10;35;13;12 – STEVE SHAW
We looked at the growth. We looked at the population and it’s clear to us certainly, and that’s the proposal we put forward that if you look down the road, by the time you get 20 years down the road Pearson will be too busy. There will be a need for a second airport, a reliever airport, as well as that we believe…
10;35;29;24 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
But basically they said, we need to build a small airport now, we need to keep our options open. And we will need an airport to support Pearson in 20 to 25 years. So to think 20 or 30 years out you’re going to need be using 10,000 acres for an international airport approximate to Toronto is nuts.
10;35;55;11 – MAN AT MICROPHONE
The International Atomic Agency, the IAEA is considering instituting a mandatory no fly zone over all nuclear facilities. This no fly zone is between 10 and 20 kilometers. Your airport is 12 on the south, 18 on the north. You do you got to say about that?
10;36;15;10 –STEVE SHAW
I can assure you that this Airport Authority will never build an airport that is not safe and not secure, period.
10;36;20;19 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
They said Markham airport was closing. Oshawa airport was closing and the Buttonville airport was closing. To close three airports to legitimize opening a Cessna airport for 15 years. They didn’t have a business case so in and effort to grab the land, we’ll drop a 500 acres airport on 11,100 acres of Crown Land. That land is worth 5.6 billion dollars today and they want to get it for nothing.
10;36;56;23 – NARRATOR
Mirabel Airport ceases commercial operations in November 2004, losing billions of taxpayer dollars.
10;37;10;05 – STEPHEN FREDRICK
The Greater Toronto Airport Authority has presented a business cast that just doesn’t fly. This business case has holes so big in it that you could drive a truck through.
Pearson is running at about 40-45% capacity. They just completed a 4.4 billion dollar renovation. We have in the airport system in southern Ontario is operating at about 35% of total capacity.
10;37;41;18 – BILL LISHMAN
They have not learned. In 30 years they haven’t learned. And what this that the opposition went away, we’re still here.
(crowd – No Airport)
10;37;54;10 – MAN IN CROWD
20 years of living there. They’re evicting me in 60 days. They’re giving me 60 days to move everything that I own, my life invested. They’re taking away my freedom, my life before and after now. I own all this stuff and I don’t know if I’m coming or going.
10;38;09;01 – MARY DELANY
It’s hard to maintain the same kind of sense of belief in your community, your land and your home when you don’t own it. When you’re not given a long term lease and you’re treated very badly. So the spirit went.
10;38;21;20 – REPORTER
Now speaking with Steve Shaw from the GTAA, he says there will be public hearing as well as an environmental assessment, what do you make of that?
10;38;29;14 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
I’ve been a member of the Pickering Advisory Council and the Community Affair Working Group for 4 years, just because you’re invited to a meeting, does not necessarily mean they’re listening to you.
10:38;38;26 – REPORTER
Okay, thank you very much
CROWD – ‘No airport’
10;38;42;10 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
If they are presenting a business case, their business case better incorporate rent for those lands at market value or we’ll find an airport operator that will pay. Why should the government take a hair cut on our property when this community has suffered so much by a faulty decision my by Trudeau era mega projects 30 years ago. If they were making this decision on economic grounds we wouldn’t be having this discussion today.
Their plan going forward was that as we came through the spring an environmental assessment would be undertaken on the property. You know, full panel environmental assessments cost millions of dollars. Why are we wasting 10 million, 20 million dollars on an environmental assessment when the business case still does not exist.
10;39;33;12 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
About ten years ago they stopped renting out houses. It was very apparent that no place that went empty was going to be rented. Everything was going to be boarded up.
10;39;52;28 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
We got the information that they were issuing, taking the tenders, taking the bids for the destruction of 25 homes. So it seem an appropriate place to gather attention. And we thought with the ‘save the land’ view the best thing to have there was the tractor. So it was Tom Tapscott that went up there with his tractor and blocked the road.
Instead of spending ½ a million dollars to tear these places down, we could be saving them and earning money with them. You know it’s ah…. It’s sad.
10;40;27;15 – MARY DELANY
You drive your kids down to school, you come back at night and three houses are a pile of rubble.
10:40;32;02 – MARY DELANY
They showed me their eviction notice and it said mold. First thing I did is I phoned the name at the bottom, the fellow who had done the inspection, the fellow at DCI, Decommissioning Services. I phoned him out. I said, what is this mold? Is it dangerous and what do you do about it? He said it’s nothing. I have the same mold in my house. You wash it. You wash it with Javex.
10;40;51;08 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Anyone want to go inside and see what the Regional Manager has to say. Let’s pop in and see, see what’s cooking.
So we can’t come in. So you’re sure we can’t come in. And could you give me a reason. We’re locked out folks, he won’t let us in.
And ah, I mean this is been going on for 35 years and it’s unnecessary, it’s a waste. These places could have been occupied all that time.
How are you today. Well I don’t know. We don’t know if we’ve done much here but we’ve been trying to draw some attention to this, this ah destruction thing going on
10;41;35;20 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
I really felt at this point that we weren’t going to have an airport here. So to me the bigger picture was where we had to work. We had to work on saving the land, saving the houses, stopping the demolitions, reverse this eviction, this obvious clear the land that Transport Canada had issued to public works.
10;42;28;01 – MARK HOLLAND
I can recall on a Friday afternoon getting notice that there was houses that were going to be ripped down imminently some of them were already being destroyed. The more I investigate the problems of how the Pickering Airport lands have been managed the more concern I have. Simply put there seems to be a policy of de-population.
10;43;04;04 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
We didn’t save any of the 25. We really felt that we would be able to save a couple but we weren’t able to.
It was just such a waste. It was just such a waste. When you realize what a wonderful home many of these would have been for people it just seemed such a…. To spend $25,000 to tear a place down, when it should be supplying revenue, it just seemed, again so nuts, so government out of control. Where’s the stewardship.
10;43;53;12 – MARK HOLLAND
And sure enough when we probed some of these so called deadly situations where third party, by insisting upon third party independent assessment of those homes, we found out that there was nothing deadly or toxic about the situation that they’re in. And a lot of these situations are fabricated, if they not fabricated then somebody made an outrageous error that they did.
10;44;17;24 – MARY DELANY
And it was when Mark was trying to investigate this that he started getting lied to and that’s when he realized what we had been saying for years now is true. That Public Works has a systematic campaign to de-populate these lands. They do not want to have tenants. They don’t want people. They don’t want People or Planes. They don’t want Land Over Landings. They don’t want noise. They don’t tenants. They just want us out of there and then they can do what they want with the lands.
10;44;47;18 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
And I do believe it’s systematic genocide. Right, first of all the government allowed the barns to dilapidate. Right, didn’t maintain them for 30 years. Then they got to a point where they said your barn is unsafe, we’ll have to knock it down. The same is happening to the houses. Over the last 4 or 5 years there has been systematic elimination of people on the property. And I have a report right from 1990, it’s called the Feasibility of a North Toronto Airport. And it outlines, that one of the plans to reduce resistance to an airport in the future by eliminating the tenants and reducing the population on the lands.
10;45;35;26 – NARRATOR
The senseless destruction of the homes hit a nerve with the community and local area politicians were bombarded with a massive email protest.
10;45;46;24 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
One of the things that did turn the tide for us, yes was that political pressure. Email campaigns. It became much easier for us to get the message out. That really turned the tide. Mark Holland our MP originally was, you know, the party’s for an airport, so am I.
10;46;04;18 – MARK HOLLAND
But I think and international airport in Pickering is a bad idea. I oppose it. Let me say, no there’s not a but… Let me say that I did say before as well that I would support a regional airport. I don’t thing there’s a pressing need for a regional airport. I don’t think a case has been made for it at all
10;46;25;07 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
That was a turning point certainly and helped to draw in other support from the Liberal party and said this is a much bigger story than just you trouncing a bunch of local people. We can turn this into an issue that can swing some seats. And that was instrumental in getting the government to where it is today, saying lets have a look at this and see if the numbers add up.
10;46;44;26 – MARK HOLLAND
If I care so much about this job. That I care more about holding onto this job than fighting something, then get rid of me. If that’s your opinion then get rid of me. But if you think I’m the best person job, if you think I’m going to fight harder than anyone else will fight, if you think I’m going to be more open and transparent to be here, then keep me, that’s your choice.
10;47;01;08 – MARK HOLLAND
I went to GTA caucus and said frankly I need your help. This is an issue that is being mishandled, is causing a lot of people a lot of grief un-necessarily. And we need fix it and I need your help to do that. So I asked GTA to support my request for a moratorium for all evictions, on all demolitions and that includes the 13 that are currently in process.
10;47;27;27 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
It’s one of the biggest things that’s come out of this for me, is to see that the political process today with email and the ease of communications, we’re seeing politics start to change. We starting to see, it’s getting to be the way it was intended to be that actually every individual has a voice in what is going on.
10;47;51;05 – NARRATOR
In September 2005, the Liberal Government announced that there would be a comprehensive review of the need for an airport in Pickering before any decision to proceed with an environmental assessment.
10;48;02;16 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Well the peer review is from a practical point of view is the thing we had to do to stop the airport from going ahead is to stop the EA, the Environmental Assessment. And the peer review effectively stopped that. So that’s now in limbo. That was something that was scheduled to start in May. So now we’ve, we’ve effectively moved off the start of this airport well beyond the 2012 date.
10:48:30;11 – MARK HOLLAND
I think there will be a day personally, when we’re going to have to take a look at what to do with these lands ah in terms of either a park system or something along those lands to dispose of them. I think you have to keep something else in mind in the process and that is if the expropriation didn’t occur what would those lands look like today. And I frankly think that the sprawl the we see headed west ward would have also sprawled out this way and those lands would have been largely developed if un- protected. So I mean there is a silver lining here. And my hope is that one day we will reap the benefit of that unintended consequence and that could be a truly remarkable thing.
I’d love to see the land connected into the Oak Ridge Moraine and left as Canada largest urban park . The reality is those lands are tremendously beautiful and have a great deal of value as being left natural.
10;49;30;21 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
You know this is the largest single tract of class one farmland from Toronto to the east coast. And that’s a very important consideration as we move forward. Right, being able to feed ourselves and being able to have that in proximity to our cities is critical.
10;49;48;06 – MARY DELANY
We seem determined in southern Ontario to pave every ounce of farmland we’ve got. And lord knows as we move into the next millennium we don’t need airports. We need fresh water, fresh food and fresh air. That’s what we need. And we have got by sheer dumb luck and enormous opportunity here for all of those thing, right on the doorstep the most populated area in Canada. And in the process we will create a new paradigm. We will actually take advantage of this unbelievable and unlikely opportunity to create a land trust, a huge urban park, organic farms, my goodness the possibilities are endless.
10;50;32;28 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
We have two nuclear plants in the region. Why not balance that and offset it by being a leading edge developer of wind power. Develop a technology that leads us through the 21st century rather than looking at a 20th century technology. The Feds had no interest. Right, from day one, they look at you as though you’re some sort of alien. This is an airport site. What are you talking about?
10;51;02;22 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Our spirit lives on. We will prevail. Yea.
10;51;10;11 – NARRATOR
In January 2006 the Liberals lost the election to the Conservatives. Today the citizens of Pickering continue their battle against the government of Canada to stop the airport and save the land.
10;51;21;29 – SINGING FEMALE VOICE
S are the sewer pipes mile upon mile
T are the trees that will lay in a pile
U is the urban sprawl we invite
V is the value of which we lost sight
W is when all these changes we’ll see
X a Xerox of New York we’ll be
Y is for you, you must stand up and fight
Z is the zeal to protect all that’s right
A is for airport a gift from Pierre
B the belief that turns to despair
C is for Cedarwood, stand up and shout
D is for Davis let’s throw him out
10:00:33:27 – SYNC FEMALE VOICE
We cleared these lands. We made farms, we made communities, we made schools. We made a home for ourselves and communities here, but the government didn’t like the way we did things out here in Radical Corners, that’s what they called us. And when 1837 came we marched on Toronto and my sons were arrested and our men folk were arrested. And her husband Peter Mathews was hanged by the government.
10:01:08:04 – MARY DELANY
Pickering, especial north Pickering was a hotbed of rebellion during the 1830s. William Lyon Mackenzie came out here on several occasion and when the time came time, Peter Mathews was chosen by Mackenzie to be the leader of the Pickering contingent. And it was Peter who was eventually hanged for his participation in the Rebellion. He shared a scaffold with Samuel Lount.
10:01;33:08 – MALE VOICE
Brothers and sisters, as the spirit of Brougham twists in the wind and during a slow death over three decades, I ask you to listen to this reading from the final chapter of The Book Of Brougham – in the shadow of an airport. I am a small village in Pickering Township. I am now burdened down with taxation and care. I have now crime to atone for, no misdeed to condemn me, yet stand under a threat and in great need of prayer. There’s still time. Do take heed all those who wield power, less a rash act bring loss, devastation and tears. Save me and mine for god sake, I endure with all duress, lest too late should bring down through long distance of years.
10:02:43:10 – LORNE ALMACK - subtitle
It’s rather stranger that back in 1968 Transport Canada officials said we don’t need a second airport. We should redevelop Pearson, Malton at the time. But then when the politicians came along and told them to go justify the need for an airport well then they went hired consultants and spent millions of dollars proving that black was white.
10:03:14:03 - NARRATOR
This is a story of a political decision by the government of Canada that resulted in a ruthless land grab. In the late 1960s, Mirabel, Montreal’s second international airport was announced by the Trudeau government.
Toronto politicians demanded a new airport and they started putting pressure on Ottawa. The Trudeau government agreed and set up an expensive to find a suitable site.
In 1970 a total of 59 sites were studied in Ontario. Although Pickering, north-east of Toronto, had been eliminated as an airport site in 1969 it was presented as an ideal choice for an airport. Low cost farmland, no people and great for speculators.
On March 2nd, 1972 the Federal and Ontario governments jointly announced plans for second Toronto international airport and the new town of Cedarwood in Pickering Township. Then came an avalanche of protests from everywhere.
10:04:17:13 – NARRATOR CONTINUES
In October expropriation notices went out. People lost land that had been in the family for generations. Other took the money and ran. Other held their ground and fought. The battle lasted 3 ½ years. People or Planes used every weapon in their arsenal, from leaked reports, to legal briefs to street theatre
10:04:39:13 – BILL LISHMAN
Paula and I lived here for five years until I think it was March 2nd, 1972, we got a thing through the news that all of this area was being expropriated and this was going to be the new airport for Toronto. It was a major shock. I was kind of dejected by the whole thing. And along come a Globe & Mail reporter. So I said what do you have to do to get their attention to stop this thing, do you have drop a bomb or something. And next day there’s a picture in the Globe & Mail, and I’ve got his gun in my hand and it say ‘Lishman ready to go to war’, you see and that came out in the Globe & Mail and I got inundated with phone calls from all my neighbours and that was sort of like, let’s all get together and we started the People or Planes organization which Dr. Godfrey headed up and I became the creative director.
10:05:34:12 - NARRATOR
On the evening of March 2nd, 1972, a meeting was held at Melody Farm where Matthew Lount had lived, a rebel who was executed by the government of Canada in 1837. The group formed that night to fight the airport was called PEOPLE OR PLANES. POP membership was an eclectic mix including farmers, lawyers, doctors, home-makers and artists. Dr. Charles Godfrey is elected chairman of the group.
10:05:57:13 – DR. CHARLES GODFREY
I got the word on the jungle grapevine very quickly because, one they didn’t know what the hell was going on, two although they didn’t know what the hell was going on, they were against it anyway, because they were against loosing that farmland. So eventually we became co-ordinated and got a fairly strong group protest going on. We set up various fact finding committee and they went to work analyzing was going on out at Malton. They pointed out that the projections put forward by the airport planning committee, that was the Federal Government planning committee was all to cock. They way they talked about it, everyone in Canada would be flying by the year 2000.
10:06:45:10 – LORNE ALMACK
Our objections came down to two things. One it wasn’t needed and two even if it was it should not be build on 18,000 acres of class one food land.
10;07:03:18 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
We didn’t want to do negative protests. We wanted to explain to people that this was just a huge mistake. And that it was going to cost the government and all of us a lot of money. This was not the place to do it ‘A’ and ‘B’ that it wasn’t needed. It had never been proved that the two airport system would work here.
10:07:24:24 – DR. GODFREY
They weren’t facing the fact, that an airport wasn’t needed there, was never shown to be needed there. And really never will be shown to be needed there. The history of cities the size of Toronto with two airports is an absolute disaster.
10:07:40:04 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
E is the environment that is being destroyed
F is the farmland we all once enjoyed
10:07:52:02 - NARRATOR
With weapons fashion from pipes and pitch forks, Bill Lishman and Mike Robertson formed the 1st Pickering Fusiliers to protect the lands.
Transport Canada set up offices in a vacant school in Brougham and are immediately put under siege by the Fusiliers.
Lishman and Robertson stand guard over the new international gateway to Canada and demand passports.
10:08:27:20 – BILL LISHMAN
What I enjoyed about was the street theatre. We needed media attention, because that was really important. So you have to do a few outrageous things to do that, and that was the fun part.
10:08:41:03 – AL GRAHAM
So bill came up with this wonderful idea, burying Mother Nature. I wasn’t just burying Mother Nature; it was burying Mother Nature in a very theatrical event on the front lawn of Queen Park.
10:08:55:29 – BILL LISHMAN
We did a funeral march on Queens Park. Paula made 50 black robes, so it was like an Ingmar Bergman scene.
10:09:10:25 – AL GRAHAM
Everybody carried a little cross and the three of four coffins that Bill had fashioned. Up University Avenue we went. And up to that point, most people associated protests with shouting and carrying placards, well this was entirely the opposite. The media just went nuts they loved it. Bill always had fresh ideas. There was always something new to do. And it got people’s spirits up. We always had something to work towards.
10:09:51:23 – NARRATOR
The funeral march brought the airport issue national attention and taught POP an in1valuable lesson in media relations.
10:10:04:07 – NARRATOR
In October, 1972 the federal government sent out expropriation notices to 2,000 Pickering land owners. A federal report indicates that speculators own 60% of the airport site.
10:10:15:13 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
I don’t think many of use really felt we had much of a heck of a lot of chance defeating the airport. Yet we felt like it was a responsible thing that we had to do. They protests weren’t in our minds totally futile, yet we felt the chances of success were fairly slim.
10:10:31:11 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
G is for garbage and gravel pits too
H is for highways around and right through
10:10:38:04 – ISOBEL THOMPSON
It’s a horrifying feeling. We had to go out and talk to people, at night. They’d phone and they’d be really upset. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know who to call. Nobody was paying any attention, least of all Mr. Trudeau at the time, who did come around here and was asked by a Farmer, ‘look what are you going to do about this and what can I do. And he said I want to know where I stand? And Mr. Trudeau said, My dear sir you are standing on expropriated ground. And you see the farmer almost burst into tears.
10:11:14:16 – NARRATOR
April 1973: Pickering landowners complain that federal governments’ offers are too. The average of $1,600 an acre is about half what of what it should be.
10:11:23:22 – MARY DELANY
They grind you down. They wear out. They make you ill. I’ve heard stories of the original expropriated people crying on doorsteps. Marriages breaking up. Suicides, depression. And that’s what they do to you. It wears you down. And when it you own government, and you think that’s not supposed to happen here is it? In Canada. It’s not supposed to happen and it’s happening.
10:11;55:23 - NARRATOR
In June 1973, Ontario amends the Housing Development Act giving it the power to expropriate land for the new city of Cedarwood.
In response, People or Planes stages the public hanging of Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Bill Davis, in effigy.
10:12:17:20 – PAULA LISHMAN
What he did was he got the media involved, then he made it real. He put on plays. He did street theatre. I mean the hanging and those types of things really captured people’s imagination.
10:12:37:04 – NARRATOR
The public hanging makes the front page and the six o’clock news and focuses he national spotlight on the airport issue once again.
10:12:43:18 – DR. GODFREY
A couple of our members thought that might be going a bit too far, but by then our tempers were really raising. We were getting made because the government was hitting us with all sorts of crap and we were beginning to react no quite as honorable citizens would react.
10:13:19:10 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Just a miles north of here we ran an Earth Days festival one year and attracted huge crowds. He had the Perth County Conspiracy down and had an incredible gathering a lot of positive energy to try and will this airport to see some common sense and stop their blind full ahead progress at the cost of intellect.
10:14:04:12 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
I means insane the we began
J is for roads that soon will be jammed
10:14:13:04 – AL GRAHAM
One beautiful summer day outside of Bill’s little school house, there was a survey crew, I guess doing the dastardly business I guess of trying to figure out where the runways went. Bill and his good friend Zak Keanin had this idea. They filled up a couple balloons with helium and put some black powder charges in them, waited until the wind was right and floated the balloons over these poor guys in the field doing survey work and blew the charge. Ha. Ha. And these guys scattered like you wouldn’t believe.
10:14:50:27 – NARRATOR
In October The Gibson Inquiry into the airport is announced but it will not be allowed to consider the need or location of airport. It doesn’t hold it’s first public hearing until March of 1974. Brenda Davies testifies and sings Durham’s lament.
10:15:05:18
K are the kids who have nowhere to play
L is the lifestyle that’s slipping away
M is the mill ponds that once took up space
N is the noise all over the place
10:15:19:18 - NARRATOR
The inquiry is the focus of attention for most of 1974. The Gibson report is made public in January 1975. Federal Cabinet considers it, then shelves it.
Marchand announces that construction will begin this year with only one runway instead of the four originally planned, at a cost of $204 Million.
10:15:43:09 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
And the day before the deadline was over we found out that Marchand was going to announce in the House of Commons that they were going to go ahead with the airport. We had no time to arrange any kind of official protest, so Bill got on the blower and started phoning people. And I threw a glider on the old Jeep and headed for Ottawa. I ‘m driving through a blinding snowstorm, thinking this is ridicules, this is never going to happen.
10:16:20:06 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
I manage to tow a flight and circle the Peace Tower and circle the eternal flame. Because we had a rookie TV crew, they didn’t have all the polished question for me, they just handed me the mic and I was able to say my bit and talk about how this land ought to be kept for growing beautiful food, some of the best farmland in Ontario and for flying like this that doesn’t impinge on the environment.
10:`16:53:22 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
O is the obsession we have to expand
O is the progress that eats up our land
10:17:00:05 – ANNE HOWES
There were fewer women in the work force and more of use who had the time. The poor men were off working all day and then coming to meetings. We just never stopped meeting and doing.
10:17:13:01 – NARRATOR
In April 1975 100 women sign a petition against the airport and pledge to sit in front of the bulldozers if and when work on the airport starts.
Fences and barricades are erected on roads to the site to keep demonstrators out.
10:17:33:21 – ANNE HOWES
Brenda was a British eccentric, and a very, very bright woman. And I think we just came across each other at various meeting. I mean you couldn’t help but meet people eventually. Franny was the wife of a judge and a spin of iron and rather reserved. And we began to talk and realized that the three of us had no dependants. We could disappear for weeks.
10:18:03:15 - NARRATOR
In August 1975: Bulldozers level the first house.
Local area resident are stunned at the destruction. They visit the site which is nothing more that a pile of rumble piled up across the road from Ernie Caruthers’s farm.
Ernie Caruthers is the last hold out on the federal land, trying the farm that has been in the family for generations. POP organizes a party at his farm. It is an emotional tribute to Ernie. The house is boarded up and Ernie moves out.
10:18:40:10 – ANNE HOWES
The party was a cover. The party was planned as a cover for Brenda, Franny and I to slip into the house.
10:18:52:03 - NARRATOR
That night, Ann Howes, Francis Moore, and Brenda Davies take up residence in Ernie Caruthers’s boarded up house and defy bulldozers.
None of women are directly affected by the expropriation, but feel compelled this last stand.
10:19:08:21 – ANNE HOWES
We had no idea what would happen. I was the youngest, therefore hail and hearty and able to chop wood. Brenda was a ham radio operator and we figured we could have some contact with the outside world. And Franny had a spine of steel.
10:19:27:02 – NARRATOR
On Sept. 17, 1975: The electricity is shut off to the farmhouse. Michael Robertson delivers supplies on horseback.
10:19:37:04
They had dug tank traps in the road. And so I had a horse and a four wheel drive so I was able to supply the gals up in the Caruthers’s farm that were holding out. I didn’t know those women well but they had fantastic energy and spirit. And I think that symbolically that was one of the big stands.
10:19:57:02 – NARRATOR
On September 18th, 1975 an Ontario election returns a minority Conservative government. Dr. Godfrey is elected in Durham West defeating a pro-airport liberal. But the destructions of homes on the site continues.
10:20:16:00 - NARRATOR
Sept. 21ST, 1975 1300 woman pledge to lie down in front of the bulldozers to prevent the destruction of Ernie’s Caruthers farm.
Federal security guards are put on stand-by alert, ready to close all public access to the construction area of the planned runway.
10:20:33:01 – LORNE ALMACK
We were able to get to the Davis cabinet, and explain to them that this thing was a shame, and would not be a good thing for Toronto or Ontario. It would be a disaster like Mirabel and they shouldn’t support it.
10:20:49:29 - NARRATOR
On Sept. 24, 1975: Under pressure from the NDP and Liberals, Davis announces that Ontario will not provide roads, water mains, sewers and other essential services, even if Ottawa pays the cost.
10:21:06:23 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
The day of the announcement, I got up early and you could hear the heavy equipment moving and I thought those….. never mind, are going to knock down another house, it’s just stupid, you know the announcement is coming out today. So I jumped on Colonel, that’s my horse, bare back didn’t even saddle him up and rode out with my dog. They were getting ready to hit a house. The backhoe had the thing elevated and there was a big front end loader there. I rode in underneath, jumped off, and Sherman my dog and I ran inside.
I got in there and sat in an upper storey window and shouted out it’s over, you guys can’t hit it now. You’ll have to call who ever you have to call, if they’re going to remove me, but we have good reason to believe that as been cancelled so that this is a really bad idea to knock down another house. So anyway he just kept knocking away at the house and by the time the media got there and the suits arrived to tell them to stop the house had been lost anyway.
10:22:14:15 – NARRATOR
In Ottawa, Federal Cabinet shelves the airport. And the destruction ends. Marchand and Trudeau are enraged.
10:22:24:11 – ANNE HOWES
The ham radio that Brenda had was connected to people all around the world. So we got wind of it through the ham radio before we got wind of it anywhere else. We didn’t believe it.
10:22:34:07 - NARRATOR
Within an hour of the announcement, the padlocked gates to the site are opened by security guards and anti-airport campaigners drive through from all directions, horns honking.
10:22:44:17 – ANNE HOWES
I don’t know that I’ve ever been quit so proud of a bunch of people in my life.
10:22:58:08 – NARRATOR
That evening 200 POP troops squeeze into two rooms in the farmhouse to cheer their conquering general, Dr. Charles Godfrey. Three years, seven months and 25 days after they began to fight, POP members have a victory party.
10:23:12:06 – LORNE ALMACK
Oh we had a great party that night. Yep. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
10:23:17:03 – DR. GODFREY
We had a god-damned good time. Even if we lost, which we didn’t, even if we had lost we would have counted it as a great adventure. That’s the way we looked at it.
10:23;28;14 – BILL LISHMAN
So, eventually a lot of people became aware of it and there was a big public outcry that this shouldn’t happened and the public pressure on the politician and it essentially got cancelled, but we did get expropriated. We’re standing on Federal land now and they own this property and the bureaucrats are still there, well we’ll get that airport in yet.
10:23:50:27 – FEMALE SINGING VOICE
Q is the quiet we once had
R is the roar of engines in flight
10:23;59;15 - NARRATOR
In October 1975, Mirabel opens late at double the budget. Trudeau says Torontonians will be "on their knees" begging for a second airport.
10;24;11;08 – NARRATOR
Following the Royal Commission the airport issue fell off the public radar. For the next twenty years, Transport Canada continued quietly planning an airport.
In July 1998 a small article appeared in the Toronto Star announcing the Federal governments’ intention to declare the Pickering lands as an airport site. It was met with immediate opposition.
10:24:34:10 – LORNE ALMACK
Why on earth do we announce this in July when everyone is on holidays. It sounds like another sneaky Transport Canada ploy. This is an issue that requires public debate and public input. I’m not prepared tonight to say whether it’s good bad or indifferent. But I have studied this issue for 25 years, I know an awful lot about it, I would like an opportunity to have input, so would another 1000 people in this communities.
10:25;07;00 – ISOBEL THOMPSON
I want to commend council for at least standing up this time and making their annoyance felt. In the last episode they rolled over and played dead, resulting in horrible circumstances lasting for 25 years with many people hurt un-necessarily.
10:25;23;22 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The fact that Lorne Almack and the Thompson had gone to the city council meeting at the beginning of August and asked City Council to ask Transport Canada for a delay, for a chance to consider the response. That’s what really saved the day. Right. Those guys from People or Plane, they were there 30 years ago, they were there at the critical moment then. That allowed VOCAL to get organized.
And I call all of local politician, and said you can’t make this an airport. An I remember I was standing in my bedroom looking out the front window talking to Mr. Anderson on the phone. And I said why would they need and airport, bla, bla, bla and told me directly, he said they’re building an airport there and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. And I said, that’s not how the system works. And he said, that’s how it works here.
That really gets my back up, when people who supposedly works for us, turns around and tells you, you as a voter, there’s not a single thing that you can do about it.
To be honest, I remember standing there, we opened the hall and said it’ll be interesting to how many people show up. The room was packed. You know, that was quite gratifying, certainly. It really invigorated me. It said, people are concerned about this. They are concerned as I am.
(SYNC) This is exactly the kind support we require to move forward. We have to make our local, our provincial and our federal official aware of the fact that we as communities oppose and airport on these land. Make them aware of how strongly we feel this and how, if they don’t represent us we can get someone who can.
10:27;24;20 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
I was all a matter of racing against the clock. Because Pickering City Council had a time that they were going to respond to Transport Canada. And we really had to focus on getting our message to Pickering City Council and then getting that to Transport Canada.
10:28;05;03 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The process of getting the word out was more difficult in the beginning because of faxes. I would gather names and addresses and really work on concentration on getting press coverage in the beginning. I called every press agency. Gathered their fax numbers, got names of reports and every other day I would do a press release.
10;28;46;10 – STEPHEN FREDERICK (SYNC)
The business of this meeting is for the town of Pickering to reinstate and to re-enforce the opposition it has always had. We have clear indication from them that they are willing to do that. And what we want to do it go in and show the Federal officials and the Provincial officials who so far have not come to the table that we are vocal and we want no airport.
‘we’re vocal, no airport’
10;29;13;12 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The sheer size of the rally caught them off guard. When we showed up with the placards and showed up across the street at the hub plaza and marched up.
10;29;22;13 – POLICE OFFICER
You know you’re doing a good job stirring up the crowd and what not, but at the same time. Everybody is welcome in, but no signs, no placards.
10;29;32;19 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
We showed up at the door and they had the Durham Region Police there taking placards, insisting that if we didn’t put them down we wouldn’t get in. You know, we weren’t there to yell and scream. We were there to make a very valid point that there was more than one side to this argument, than meets the eye. And what they were being asked to approve they didn’t have the information, to make that kind of recommendation to move ahead with.
10:30;16;07 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
Thank you Mayor Arthurs, Dan Mctigue, everyone present. I would like to start this presentation first of all with a viewing of the video that was put together by FilmSTAR .
10;30;28;03 – FEMALE VIDEO ANNOUNCER
25 years ago, the Federal Government, seized through expropriation, 18, 600 acres of the richest farmland in Canada to build an airport. After a successful campaign by People or Planes the Ontario government refused to provide the necessary infrastructure and the Federal Government shelved the project. For the past 25 years. Transport Canada has been quietly planning an airport.
10;30;46;22 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
The video was outstanding. It really shocked, the politicians at all levels whether it was regional or municipal or even Federal. They were shocked that we had the professionalism to put together that kind of presentation, so they really didn’t have any choice but to counter and look at the information that was put in front of them. And it didn’t matter how you added it up the numbers didn’t work. And that left them in a position of having to defend an indefensible position. And that’s the last thing a politician is going to do.
10;31;21;13 – STEPHEN FREDERICK (SYNC)
Transport Canada has a study that says because Hamilton does not form a part of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, that the Greater Toronto Airport Authority would rather build an airport to take the traffic away from Hamilton. Rather than use the existing airport facilities efficiently they want to build their own empire. We say let’s stop them. Right here right now.
10;31;57;07 – LORNE ALMACK
I am so pleased that another generation is taking over this fight. Democracy is alive and well in Pickering. Remember in 1972 Transport Canada, to prove a second airport was needed, forecast 64 million passengers would be flying out of Toronto by the year 2000. Well, they’re going to have to get moving because there’s only 26 million a year now. They’re not going to make it. Let’s stop this airport. And I’m so happy to see so many young people here. I’m going to Florida to retire.
10;32;49;10 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
At the end of the meeting in Pickering, as it was breaking up and there was the vote and everyone was cheering I went down to hand the various politician a VOCAL button. And one of the councilors stood up and said you didn’t get a 1000 people here tonight, did you? And I just pushed it right back to him and said, we got more than you’ve ever seen.
10;33;12;08 – MINISTER DAVID COLLENETTE
Let me be perfectly clear, the GTAA has no role in the Pickering Lands. The decision to build an airport will be when the Federal Government is convinced that the surrounding community, the wider community, the Province Government and traffic needs dictate the construction of another airport. Certainly I believe that won’t come for 15 to 20 years. Maybe never.
10;33;35;11 – NARRATOR
It was a small victory for VOCAL. The government bowed to public pressured, deferred airport designation and buried the process in a stakeholders committee to explore the alternatives.
10;33;46;18 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
It became readily apparent into the second and third meeting that this was an act by Transport Canada to co-ordinate the actions of the municipalities and the regions in moving these toward an airport. They couldn’t give two damns whether we were there or not. I showed up for every meeting. I did not miss a meeting, no one. Because I didn’t want to show up at a meeting and them saying you missed the last one so we passed all this.
When they realized they couldn’t get down to the municipal level they said okay on to the next step. They moved to enact the Airport Zoning Regulations and said the next step is inviting in the Greater Toronto Airport Authority to build a business case so that they can be operational by 2012.
From their prospective it was brilliant. They could download a 30 year old problem onto an unaccountable agency that was filled with former Transport Canada personnel. Right, it was an incestuous relationship to say the least. Build it was an unaccountable body and the Government could say, it’s not us it’s the GTAA and the GTAA it’s not us talk to Transport Canada they make the decision, while the whole time they continued to advance the process strongly.
10;35;04;04 – WOMAN
The government is using our money to irritate and annoy and to make our living miserable. Using our money to do it.
10;35;13;12 – STEVE SHAW
We looked at the growth. We looked at the population and it’s clear to us certainly, and that’s the proposal we put forward that if you look down the road, by the time you get 20 years down the road Pearson will be too busy. There will be a need for a second airport, a reliever airport, as well as that we believe…
10;35;29;24 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
But basically they said, we need to build a small airport now, we need to keep our options open. And we will need an airport to support Pearson in 20 to 25 years. So to think 20 or 30 years out you’re going to need be using 10,000 acres for an international airport approximate to Toronto is nuts.
10;35;55;11 – MAN AT MICROPHONE
The International Atomic Agency, the IAEA is considering instituting a mandatory no fly zone over all nuclear facilities. This no fly zone is between 10 and 20 kilometers. Your airport is 12 on the south, 18 on the north. You do you got to say about that?
10;36;15;10 –STEVE SHAW
I can assure you that this Airport Authority will never build an airport that is not safe and not secure, period.
10;36;20;19 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
They said Markham airport was closing. Oshawa airport was closing and the Buttonville airport was closing. To close three airports to legitimize opening a Cessna airport for 15 years. They didn’t have a business case so in and effort to grab the land, we’ll drop a 500 acres airport on 11,100 acres of Crown Land. That land is worth 5.6 billion dollars today and they want to get it for nothing.
10;36;56;23 – NARRATOR
Mirabel Airport ceases commercial operations in November 2004, losing billions of taxpayer dollars.
10;37;10;05 – STEPHEN FREDRICK
The Greater Toronto Airport Authority has presented a business cast that just doesn’t fly. This business case has holes so big in it that you could drive a truck through.
Pearson is running at about 40-45% capacity. They just completed a 4.4 billion dollar renovation. We have in the airport system in southern Ontario is operating at about 35% of total capacity.
10;37;41;18 – BILL LISHMAN
They have not learned. In 30 years they haven’t learned. And what this that the opposition went away, we’re still here.
(crowd – No Airport)
10;37;54;10 – MAN IN CROWD
20 years of living there. They’re evicting me in 60 days. They’re giving me 60 days to move everything that I own, my life invested. They’re taking away my freedom, my life before and after now. I own all this stuff and I don’t know if I’m coming or going.
10;38;09;01 – MARY DELANY
It’s hard to maintain the same kind of sense of belief in your community, your land and your home when you don’t own it. When you’re not given a long term lease and you’re treated very badly. So the spirit went.
10;38;21;20 – REPORTER
Now speaking with Steve Shaw from the GTAA, he says there will be public hearing as well as an environmental assessment, what do you make of that?
10;38;29;14 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
I’ve been a member of the Pickering Advisory Council and the Community Affair Working Group for 4 years, just because you’re invited to a meeting, does not necessarily mean they’re listening to you.
10:38;38;26 – REPORTER
Okay, thank you very much
CROWD – ‘No airport’
10;38;42;10 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
If they are presenting a business case, their business case better incorporate rent for those lands at market value or we’ll find an airport operator that will pay. Why should the government take a hair cut on our property when this community has suffered so much by a faulty decision my by Trudeau era mega projects 30 years ago. If they were making this decision on economic grounds we wouldn’t be having this discussion today.
Their plan going forward was that as we came through the spring an environmental assessment would be undertaken on the property. You know, full panel environmental assessments cost millions of dollars. Why are we wasting 10 million, 20 million dollars on an environmental assessment when the business case still does not exist.
10;39;33;12 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
About ten years ago they stopped renting out houses. It was very apparent that no place that went empty was going to be rented. Everything was going to be boarded up.
10;39;52;28 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
We got the information that they were issuing, taking the tenders, taking the bids for the destruction of 25 homes. So it seem an appropriate place to gather attention. And we thought with the ‘save the land’ view the best thing to have there was the tractor. So it was Tom Tapscott that went up there with his tractor and blocked the road.
Instead of spending ½ a million dollars to tear these places down, we could be saving them and earning money with them. You know it’s ah…. It’s sad.
10;40;27;15 – MARY DELANY
You drive your kids down to school, you come back at night and three houses are a pile of rubble.
10:40;32;02 – MARY DELANY
They showed me their eviction notice and it said mold. First thing I did is I phoned the name at the bottom, the fellow who had done the inspection, the fellow at DCI, Decommissioning Services. I phoned him out. I said, what is this mold? Is it dangerous and what do you do about it? He said it’s nothing. I have the same mold in my house. You wash it. You wash it with Javex.
10;40;51;08 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Anyone want to go inside and see what the Regional Manager has to say. Let’s pop in and see, see what’s cooking.
So we can’t come in. So you’re sure we can’t come in. And could you give me a reason. We’re locked out folks, he won’t let us in.
And ah, I mean this is been going on for 35 years and it’s unnecessary, it’s a waste. These places could have been occupied all that time.
How are you today. Well I don’t know. We don’t know if we’ve done much here but we’ve been trying to draw some attention to this, this ah destruction thing going on
10;41;35;20 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
I really felt at this point that we weren’t going to have an airport here. So to me the bigger picture was where we had to work. We had to work on saving the land, saving the houses, stopping the demolitions, reverse this eviction, this obvious clear the land that Transport Canada had issued to public works.
10;42;28;01 – MARK HOLLAND
I can recall on a Friday afternoon getting notice that there was houses that were going to be ripped down imminently some of them were already being destroyed. The more I investigate the problems of how the Pickering Airport lands have been managed the more concern I have. Simply put there seems to be a policy of de-population.
10;43;04;04 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
We didn’t save any of the 25. We really felt that we would be able to save a couple but we weren’t able to.
It was just such a waste. It was just such a waste. When you realize what a wonderful home many of these would have been for people it just seemed such a…. To spend $25,000 to tear a place down, when it should be supplying revenue, it just seemed, again so nuts, so government out of control. Where’s the stewardship.
10;43;53;12 – MARK HOLLAND
And sure enough when we probed some of these so called deadly situations where third party, by insisting upon third party independent assessment of those homes, we found out that there was nothing deadly or toxic about the situation that they’re in. And a lot of these situations are fabricated, if they not fabricated then somebody made an outrageous error that they did.
10;44;17;24 – MARY DELANY
And it was when Mark was trying to investigate this that he started getting lied to and that’s when he realized what we had been saying for years now is true. That Public Works has a systematic campaign to de-populate these lands. They do not want to have tenants. They don’t want people. They don’t want People or Planes. They don’t want Land Over Landings. They don’t want noise. They don’t tenants. They just want us out of there and then they can do what they want with the lands.
10;44;47;18 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
And I do believe it’s systematic genocide. Right, first of all the government allowed the barns to dilapidate. Right, didn’t maintain them for 30 years. Then they got to a point where they said your barn is unsafe, we’ll have to knock it down. The same is happening to the houses. Over the last 4 or 5 years there has been systematic elimination of people on the property. And I have a report right from 1990, it’s called the Feasibility of a North Toronto Airport. And it outlines, that one of the plans to reduce resistance to an airport in the future by eliminating the tenants and reducing the population on the lands.
10;45;35;26 – NARRATOR
The senseless destruction of the homes hit a nerve with the community and local area politicians were bombarded with a massive email protest.
10;45;46;24 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
One of the things that did turn the tide for us, yes was that political pressure. Email campaigns. It became much easier for us to get the message out. That really turned the tide. Mark Holland our MP originally was, you know, the party’s for an airport, so am I.
10;46;04;18 – MARK HOLLAND
But I think and international airport in Pickering is a bad idea. I oppose it. Let me say, no there’s not a but… Let me say that I did say before as well that I would support a regional airport. I don’t thing there’s a pressing need for a regional airport. I don’t think a case has been made for it at all
10;46;25;07 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
That was a turning point certainly and helped to draw in other support from the Liberal party and said this is a much bigger story than just you trouncing a bunch of local people. We can turn this into an issue that can swing some seats. And that was instrumental in getting the government to where it is today, saying lets have a look at this and see if the numbers add up.
10;46;44;26 – MARK HOLLAND
If I care so much about this job. That I care more about holding onto this job than fighting something, then get rid of me. If that’s your opinion then get rid of me. But if you think I’m the best person job, if you think I’m going to fight harder than anyone else will fight, if you think I’m going to be more open and transparent to be here, then keep me, that’s your choice.
10;47;01;08 – MARK HOLLAND
I went to GTA caucus and said frankly I need your help. This is an issue that is being mishandled, is causing a lot of people a lot of grief un-necessarily. And we need fix it and I need your help to do that. So I asked GTA to support my request for a moratorium for all evictions, on all demolitions and that includes the 13 that are currently in process.
10;47;27;27 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
It’s one of the biggest things that’s come out of this for me, is to see that the political process today with email and the ease of communications, we’re seeing politics start to change. We starting to see, it’s getting to be the way it was intended to be that actually every individual has a voice in what is going on.
10;47;51;05 – NARRATOR
In September 2005, the Liberal Government announced that there would be a comprehensive review of the need for an airport in Pickering before any decision to proceed with an environmental assessment.
10;48;02;16 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Well the peer review is from a practical point of view is the thing we had to do to stop the airport from going ahead is to stop the EA, the Environmental Assessment. And the peer review effectively stopped that. So that’s now in limbo. That was something that was scheduled to start in May. So now we’ve, we’ve effectively moved off the start of this airport well beyond the 2012 date.
10:48:30;11 – MARK HOLLAND
I think there will be a day personally, when we’re going to have to take a look at what to do with these lands ah in terms of either a park system or something along those lands to dispose of them. I think you have to keep something else in mind in the process and that is if the expropriation didn’t occur what would those lands look like today. And I frankly think that the sprawl the we see headed west ward would have also sprawled out this way and those lands would have been largely developed if un- protected. So I mean there is a silver lining here. And my hope is that one day we will reap the benefit of that unintended consequence and that could be a truly remarkable thing.
I’d love to see the land connected into the Oak Ridge Moraine and left as Canada largest urban park . The reality is those lands are tremendously beautiful and have a great deal of value as being left natural.
10;49;30;21 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
You know this is the largest single tract of class one farmland from Toronto to the east coast. And that’s a very important consideration as we move forward. Right, being able to feed ourselves and being able to have that in proximity to our cities is critical.
10;49;48;06 – MARY DELANY
We seem determined in southern Ontario to pave every ounce of farmland we’ve got. And lord knows as we move into the next millennium we don’t need airports. We need fresh water, fresh food and fresh air. That’s what we need. And we have got by sheer dumb luck and enormous opportunity here for all of those thing, right on the doorstep the most populated area in Canada. And in the process we will create a new paradigm. We will actually take advantage of this unbelievable and unlikely opportunity to create a land trust, a huge urban park, organic farms, my goodness the possibilities are endless.
10;50;32;28 – STEPHEN FREDERICK
We have two nuclear plants in the region. Why not balance that and offset it by being a leading edge developer of wind power. Develop a technology that leads us through the 21st century rather than looking at a 20th century technology. The Feds had no interest. Right, from day one, they look at you as though you’re some sort of alien. This is an airport site. What are you talking about?
10;51;02;22 – MICHAEL ROBERTSON
Our spirit lives on. We will prevail. Yea.
10;51;10;11 – NARRATOR
In January 2006 the Liberals lost the election to the Conservatives. Today the citizens of Pickering continue their battle against the government of Canada to stop the airport and save the land.
10;51;21;29 – SINGING FEMALE VOICE
S are the sewer pipes mile upon mile
T are the trees that will lay in a pile
U is the urban sprawl we invite
V is the value of which we lost sight
W is when all these changes we’ll see
X a Xerox of New York we’ll be
Y is for you, you must stand up and fight
Z is the zeal to protect all that’s right