Looking Past, to the Future
Wolfe Island, Ontario
By Kate Harris
A cattail-clogged two-kilometer canal is the key to the future of Wolfe Island. Residents, eager to bring new economic opportunities to the island, are struggling with how to develop this long-abandoned waterway. One proposal is to create a powerboat thoroughfare. Another is to transform this historic route into a wilderness corridor, an approach that invests in those aspects of the waterway that are unique and irreplaceable. This is a development model that’s championed by an unlikely coalition of farmers, fishermen, hunters and environmentalists who believe that the community should exploit its strengths as a maritime community, its wilderness, its wildlife and its clean water.

The Pressure
Wolfe Island, 20 miles long and seven miles wide, is home to 1,100 people, many descended from Scot and Irish settlers, Empire Loyalists, who first cleared the land more than two centuries ago. The aftermath of World War II brought a wave of Dutch farmers who were followed more recently by retirees and a burgeoning community of artists who treasure the sense of a time gone. There are no strip developments here, no fast food joints, no sprawl. This is a place where people live in and off the land; their freezers are full of the fish they catch and the game they shoot. The culture is one of sturdy self-reliance.

But jobs on the island are scarce. Commercial fishing is no longer a viable employment option for most island residents. The Kraft-owned cheese factory on the island, which once processed the milk from the dairy farms, closed a few years ago and these days Wolfe Island farmers struggle with rising costs and static food prices. But as waterfront property becomes increasingly prized, the community has become aware of the potential of the unused waterway in their midst. Developing the canal presents great opportunities, but how to do it is the question.

The Proposal
It started in 2001 when the Wolfe Island Wildlife Association, a local hunters’ group, suggested to the municipal council that the canal be dredged and new culverts put in to restore water flow and renew fish and wildlife habitat. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper Mark Mattson, lawyer and Wolfe Island native, also joined to support the project.

Freshwater marshes are critical seasonal habitat for birds migrating up and down the eastern side of the Americas. Such habitat is precious: southern Ontario has lost more than two thirds of its once abundant wetlands to agriculture, urban development and shoreline uses, with much of the rest under threat. The Canadian Wildlife Service ranks Wolfe Island among the top three Great Lakes staging areas for migratory waterfowl. But five years ago, concern about the declining use of the area by waterfowl prompted the federal government to impose a unique ban on hunting from boats around Wolfe Island to minimize the disruption to resting birds.

The Fishermen
Barry Woodman is a third-generation commercial fishermen, one of only half a dozen islanders with a commercial fishing license. Along with a handful of operators based in the nearby Bay of Quinte, they form the last remnant of the Lake Ontario fishery. But there’s no longer a living in fish. While most islanders work on the mainland, making the 20-minute ferryboat trip morning and night, Woodman chooses to stay on the island. He pieces together an income from a variety of activities: he drives a school bus, helps a friend with a dump truck, guides sport fishermen, and turns his hand to whatever comes along.

Like many residents of the island, Woodman relies directly on the island’s bounty for his dinner. There are no supermarkets or fast food chains on the island. The Ontario environment ministry publishes a guide with advice on consumption limits on sports fish based on concerns about mercury, PCBs and other chemicals. There’s no comparable information for waterfowl. But Woodman, like others, shrugs off concerns about contaminants. “I eat the fish, I eat the duck,” he says with a smile. “No, I’m not worried.”

This blithe disregard of the effects of pollution can play right into the hands of officials responsible for inadequate standards and lax enforcement. But Waterkeeper Mark Mattson understands and supports his insistence on the right to consume wild fish and birds, even in the face of government caveats. “Those whose lives and livelihoods are closest to the island,” he says, “best understand which values we should protect and how to protect them. When people lose their connection to the water, stop eating the fish and ducks out of Lake Ontario, then we’ve lost our best reason to protect the environment, and an important part of ourselves.”

The Council
In 2001, the hunters’ canal proposal was well received by the municipal council. In 2002, Waterkeeper weighed in with a preliminary report recommending replacement of the causeway with a bridge, dredging the canal and re-introducing native wetland plants. Council endorsed the report, retained a consultant and in 2003 appointed a canal committee. The canal project took on a life of its own as a promising engine of economic growth. The siren song of tourism played well with the island’s small business sector – two hotels, three restaurants, four bed-and-breakfasts, and a couple of golf courses. But many businesspeople feel there is a need to create more things for visitors to do.

To many of its initial supporters, the canal project seemed to have grown into a monster. Pleasure craft would bring noise, pollution, wash and a further deterioration of the spawning grounds. “Council took off on something different,” says Dan Mosier, owner of the island’s only gas station and a leading member of the wildlife association. “They’re trying to open it up to eco-tourism. You don’t push something aside that’s already there for something that might work, might not work. It’s God’s stuff, leave it alone.”

God’s stuff it may be, but some islanders felt that hunting and fishing shouldn’t be the only activities in the former canal.

“The committee felt there had to be some benefit to the community or why bother,” recalls Linda Van Hal, owner of a bed-and-breakfast. “There’s no sense having a great environment if people can’t enjoy it. There has to be a balance between access and protection.”

For Waterkeeper Mark Mattson, however, and to a growing number of Wolfe Island residents, the key to finding this balance lies in the historic uses that have been the basis of the island’s prosperity for hundreds of years – fishing, hunting and farming. And the key to preserving these uses is protecting our natural resources – the clean water and habitat that provide the natural abundance of the island.

The Hot Potato
In 2004 the canal committee determined that a bridge would be too expensive, but a 10 or 12-foot culvert could permit the passage of small watercraft. But the committee failed to reach consensus on whether boat traffic should be allowed and left the decision to the municipal council, which was similarly unwilling to commit on a political hot potato.

A month later, Waterkeeper picked up the ball, teaming up with the wildlife association to retain biologist Doug Howell to study the feasibility of just the fish habitat rehabilitation portion of the canal project. Howell’s report was released to the public in January. It recommended dredging the southeastern portion of the canal at a cost of $180,000. Replacing the culvert under the highway would be another $150,000 to $200,000. Mattson and the wildlife association initiated a process to solicit public input from island residents. “We designed a process that we thought we’d like if we were the ones opposing the project,” Mattson explains. Some 50 islanders attended a public meeting on the report in February and overwhelmingly supported the plan.

Meanwhile the canal committee’s efforts had succomb to a political death. The final nail in the coffin was an unexpected ownership situation. Through some oversight in the 1850s, or perhaps thanks to a quirk of the early settlers, ownership of the canal land was never given up as a right-of-way when the canal was built. Any restoration project of the canal would require the approval of the adjoining property owners. Turns out the canal isn’t God’s stuff, it belongs to half a dozen landowners.

The Farmer
The grandiose plans for re-opening the canal to boat traffic made some of the landowners skittish. One of them is R.F. Fawcett, a retired farmer, commercial fisherman and former skipper of the Wolfe Islander ferryboat whose grandfather helped dig the original canal. In a free-wheeling conversation, the 83-year old touches on a variety of government follies – from the provincial environment officials who insist that he fence his cattle out of the marsh, to those from another ministry that have imposed a moratorium on eel fishing, to the municipal officials in Kingston who are behind the sewage leak that sent untreated waste washing up on the island’s shores earlier this year. “Every year it’s just something else,” he says. Still, he wouldn’t object to the canal being opened up. “What I’d like to see is the bulrushes taken out and the water running, but not boat traffic. That would wash the banks out.”

The Mayor
Mayor Vanden Hoek, a retired dairy farmer who now builds houses on the waterfront portion of his property favours a solution that would implement the habitat improvement outlined in the Waterkeeper report, as well as some opening up of the area to non-hunting users like hikers, canoers and kayakers. That could be a problem for the landowners and hunting groups. He is wary of hunt clubs with American members who have invested millions of dollars on the island. He sees his job as making sure that the interests of local people are represented. Vanden Hoek warns that the municipality won’t support a private wetlands restoration project that doesn’t have a public access component to it. And council support is needed because it has to approve any change to the road and culverts.

For now, the council has put this project on the back burner. The process has in effect defaulted to Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and the wildlife association, for whom Howell is negotiating with landowners and exploring what regulations need to be met. If successful, the project will be a remarkable example of collaboration between volunteers outside the formal political process to restore wetland on private land.

“Initially I think some people could suggest that they were on our turf,” Vanden Hoek says of the way the two groups pushed ahead with their study and the public input process. But at the end of the day, he says he’ll back whatever best serves the public good.

Mattson believes that however the project is finally implemented, the process has already truly served the public good. “Many residents,” he says, “have renewed awareness of the uniqueness of this community’s gifts – the history of fishing and farming, the wildlife and the clean water.”

The Future
Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and the wildlife association are continuing to push the project forward, negotiating solutions to remaining questions with the six property owners. They are finding innovative ways to keep cows and runoff from fields out of the water while still providing farms with access to the water. They are identifying funding sources for the project through public agencies and private organizations. There is great interest because this is a rare collaboration, bringing together fishing and hunting, environmental and farming communities. They hope to have permits, funding and approval by the landowners by December.

It will then be up to the council to give the green light. But Mattson is optimistic, “I believe the council will approve the project because we will not use local taxpayer money and it enhances one of the islands greatest strengths – wildlife habitat. In the end, fish and wildlife, clean water and a great community are what make Wolfe Island a unique and magical place.”