|
July 29, 2004
SARAH HARMER AND DAVE BIDINI COMING TO RED HILL VALLEY
The Red Hill treesit has now reached day 61. Next Thursday it will get a boost from some prominent national entertainers. Recording artists Sarah Harmer and Dave Bidini will lead a group of writers and musicians into the valley next Thursday evening, August 5, for the first Red Hill Valley Literary Festival. They will perform within earshot of two youth who are occupying trees to try and prevent the blasting of the Niagara Escarpment. And you are invited to listen too.
Bidini plays guitar for the Rheostatics, a well-known rock band, and is the author of several books including The Tropic of Hockey and the recently-released Baseballissimo. He will be the emcee for the festival. Harmer is lead singer for Weeping Tile. Her newest album is All of Our Names . Bidini and Harmer will be joined by Paul Quarrington, Gary Barwin and John Terpstra.
Quarrington has won a Stephen Leacock award for humour and a Governor General's Literary Award. He also writes for popular television shows including Due South and Power Play. Barwin is a poet, fiction writer, performer and children's author. Terpstra is a well-known Hamilton poet, where both he and Barwin reside.
The festival is being organized by the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper with support from local environmental groups. It will take place on a portion of the public walking trail near the foot of the escarpment that can only be accessed by foot. Participants and performers are being asked to gather at 6 pm at Rosedale Arena or in the parking lot on Mud Street from where they will be guided to the festival site.
Last week Now Magazine in Toronto published the journal of one of the tree-sitters (see http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-07-22/news_feature.php), and The Gallon Environmental Letter included the following lead editorial:
TREE SITTING IN THE PATH OF THE RED HILL EXPRESSWAY
Lead editorial in The Gallon Environmental Letter, July 2004
Time was that sitting in trees for weeks to draw attention to an environmental problem would guarantee national press. Two people have been sitting in two different trees in the path of the Red Hill Valley Expressway construction in Hamilton , Ontario , for the last eight weeks and hardly anyone outside of the readership of the Hamilton Spectator, the local daily paper, knows about it.
The Red Hill Valley Expressway is an old issue that has refused to go away. Environmental hearings were held in the early 1980's and most necessary approvals were granted back then. Hamilton City council has consistently refused to review the project, though most city residents do not care about the project one way or the other. When she was MP for the riding which contains the expressway, and when she was federal environment minister, Sheila Copps tried hard to derail the expressway project but had to fight not only the City but many in her own Liberal caucus. She found, as others have done, that federal powers over municipal road construction are pretty limited, even when heritage sites of global significance are involved..
The major issue is that the Red Hill Expressway will necessitate blasting a huge cut through the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It will also occupy a large part of the last remaining green space, in fact a wilderness space, in the east end of Hamilton . All this in a City with a decayed downtown and no rapid transit. Unfortunately, except for a very committed group of activists in Hamilton , few seem to care.
Maybe tree sitting is not the best strategy for derailing an urban expressway. But unless environmentally concerned people rally around to fight environmentally stupid municipal governments, Canada 's environmental heritage will be chipped away piece by piece until there is no wilderness and all is pavement. While it is now within a few weeks of being too late to save the Red Hill Valley, it would at least be comforting if ICLEI, the UN-sponsored International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, would repeal the Award for Excellence in Governance for Sustainable Development that it gave to Hamilton in 2000. Hamilton City Council has made it clear by its actions that it is not committed to a sustainable future.
Colin Isaacs, Editor
|
