www.georgianbaytodaynews.com NATURE / CULTURE / RECREATION Fall 2015 Issue #110 $2.65 plus tax Joie de vivre in Lafontaine Saw whet Owl: nomadic chouette The gifts of aritist Audrey Tabobondung Morning on the village, Deb Grisé, oil on canvas, 8” x 10” 2 GEORGIAN BAY TODAY Fall 2015 www.georgianbaytodaynews.com Georgian Bay Dreaming Georgian Bay Today By David Sweetnam Issue 110, study of the Great Lakes Protection Fall 2015 Network was in large measure due to the leadership of Georgian Bay For - Publisher ever, a grass roots charity focused on Bird Room Press protecting water in Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes. Manager/Editors Peter Wood & Sherry Giddings [email protected] The Great Lakes Protection Net - [email protected] work is a coordinated system of flow attenuating structures that use accu - Contributors rate predictive models to anticipate future Great Lakes water levels and Cathy Cooper provide enough flow modification in Aurora their connecting channels to com - pensate for climate impacts. This en - Olivia Hill sures that healthy historic water level Muskoka ranges are maintained throughout Photo by Gary Scott Breithrupt the entire system. This protects the Steven Duff I have a dream. The waters of cerns expressed a century ago be - environment and ensures that the Parry Sound Georgian Bay are once again teeming cause of historic poor air quality economic region’s inexpensive and with healthy fish. With the eradica - leading up to the last Olympics there non-carbon marine transportation Gary Cerantola tion of zebra and quagga mussels, in 2008. advantage is maintained protecting Wasaga Beach sea lamprey and other invasive the millions of jobs and families who species, our native flora and fauna Clean-up investments have now live in this prosperous region. Gary Scott Breithrupt have once again settled into their been completed throughout the Parry Sound niches and the ecosystem is thriving. Great Lakes repairing the damages After a 2012 study found that The fish, chasing prey into the bays, done by shortsighted generations Kate Harries structural intervention could address once again cause the water levels to and industries using archaic account - Elmvale all of the expected extreme water rise and we have all seen the Lake ing systems that ignored the harms level conditions anticipated from Anne Lewis Sturgeon eating the cranberries they inflicted on the environment early climate models, new research Six Mile Lake Conservation Club along the re-naturalized shoreline. and passed onto future generations. was completed to create an engineer - Industry driven best management ing model of what possible climate Monika Lukacena - Russo The fish are once again edible… practices and de-listing criteria for so resilient solutions might look like. Olea Health Wasaga Beach far from the bad old days when toxic called “Areas of Concern” under - This visionary engineering study air pollution from antiquated fossil taken early in the last century proved was the first of its kind in the Great Kim Newby fuel burning power plants across the insufficient to make real, lasting im - Lakes to incorporate climate change Wyevale ocean fouled the waters of Georgian provements. The outcry from the impacts as an integral component of Bay and kept pregnant and nursing public over recurring losses of drink - the design requirements. Until that David M Dupuis mothers from eating any fish. Nasty ing water due to toxic algae blooms time, previously engineered struc - Tiny Township chemicals from household and per - throughout the Great Lakes region tures were little more than speed sonal care products and industrial finally forced governments to re-ex - bumps of rocks in the river -- inade - Cindy Cartwright processes are no longer dumped into amine policies, enforce source treat - Ontario Hummingbird Project quate to address the volatility of the the water to pass through inadequate ment and remove and treat past century’s exceptional storms water treatment facilities. contaminated sediments in order to and droughts. Kristian Puhvel re-establish ecosystems that could ac - Friends of Killarney Park And then I wake up. The visual blight of wires strung tually improve water quality. Our David Sweetnam across thousands of miles of wilder - countries can now finally look to - Georgian Bay Forever is actually Georgian Bay Forever ness leaking significant percentages wards investing in the future to pro - funding this engineering study this of electromagnetic radiation is gone, mote a new sustainable economy. year, but will it lead to the world Patrice Dutil now replaced by efficient energy changing? I have a dream. Ryerson University storage capacity linked to clean en - Canada’s vision to procure the ergy sources located close to popula - world’s spent nuclear fuel supply has David Sweetnam is the Executive Pat Edwards tion centres. paid dividends reviving its world Director of Georgian Bay Forever Township of Georgian Bay leading status in radio-isotope man - Our mandatory zero-emission ufacturing and also in the Nadine Lalonde electric vehicles now scoot around burgeoning heavy element Presidente LaMeute culturelle the region autonomously logging synthesis markets. New el - de la Lafontaine more miles with fewer accidents. ements and alloys are Solar recharging networks energize being created for the first Penny Barr our automobiles with abundant effi - time in the history of the Cartoonist - Scarobrough Bluffs ciently captured light energy. known universe, trans - Pipeline deconstruction in North forming materials science Production America is now completed and all of in every manufacturing Web site administrator Colin Wood the environmental impairments they process and enabling the accumulated have been cleaned up. state of the art femto-elec - Assembly Editor tronics field. The deep ge - Andrew Smellie These new energy and trans - ologic repository is now Smellie’s Copy & Print Shop Bracebridge portation technologies have reversed almost empty and new the effects of climate change follow - sources of raw materials Printing ing two malodourous centuries of are being captured from McLaren Press Graphics Gravenhurst collective maleficence that proved near orbit asteroids at the costly in terms of lives, property, the Martian processing facility. ISSN 0849-5696 economy and the ecosystems. The air BN 121730009 RT0001 is once again clean and next sum - The foresight of the In - September 2015 mer’s 2116 Olympics are being held ternational Joint Commis - in Beijing without the health con - sion in its century old 2018 www.georgianbaytodaynews.com GEORGIAN BAY TODAY Fall 2015 3 Lafontaine: The village, the wolf and the festival By: Nadine Lalonde, with files from Marin Lalonde, Daniel Marchildon and Canada’s History Their determination and resourceful - fontaine” legend explains the devel - ness led to the creation of an agricul - opment of this Franco-Ontarian tural co-op, which has since evolved, community. Since publication, the into the village’s hardware store. story was dramatized by children, Later, a Credit Union was organized. youth and adults of the community Eventually, a Community Hall and as part of centennial celebrations. In Recreation Pavilion provided venues May 1977, students from École for social and sporting events and a Sainte-Croix, the only school in the team of volunteers formed a dedi - village of Lafontaine, adapted the cated and efficient fire department. text and presented a play, to the de - light of parents and public. Commercially, the land was well suited to the cultivation of seed po - Whether fact, fiction or part auto - tatoes. This became one of the thriv - biography, it is said the Rev. ing enterprises that can still be found Marchildon was prompted to write in the Lafontaine area today. When the wolf story in order to bring the travelling the concession roads dur - disparate and isolated groups of set - ing the spring and summer, one can’t tlers together to form a united com - help but notice the various grain munity. crops produced in the area. The checkerboards of hay, oat, barley, As the story goes, a wolf of epic canola, soy bean and alfalfa fields size and unusual cunning arrived in provide a rich and colourful texture the community one fine day near the to the countryside. They form the end of March. Capitalizing on the cash crops that feed dairy cattle, beef fact that these isolated settlers were cattle, goats and sheep on the larger so bent on ignoring one another, he farms. Hobby farms also dot the decided to stay… He indiscrimi - countryside and provide the perfect nately raided farms and slaughtered setting for budding equestrians and livestock. Each new sunset brought View of the village of Lafontaine (photographed from similar vantage point gardeners, as well as a new crop of forebodings of the wolf’s ravages as as cover painting by Deb Grisé – cover) food entrepreneurs. his blood-curdling howl pierced the Once upon a village, there was Soulanges) to till the lands of Huro - stillness of the countryside. The evil ....Lafontaine. nia and set down roots in the north - The area boasts a great number of beast did not distinguish between Located 160 km North of ern portion of Tiny Township. The builders and many artisans still prac - farmers with fertile lands and those Toronto, Lafontaine is a small rural first wave of immigrants claimed the tice the fine art of cabinet making in with poorer soil, nor did he prefer village bordered by Georgian Bay to most fertile tracts on the 16th and Lafontaine. In addition, we find spe - settlers who hailed from Batiscan to the North, Nottawasaga Bay to the 17th concessions, while others set - cialized woodworkers skilled in the those from Joliette. The settlers now West and Penetanguishene to the tled for whatever land remained. production of high quality musical had something in common: fear of East. In the early 17th century, this Those who arrived in the 1850s set - instruments such as guitars and vio - the wolf.