Reinventing Brantford. Leo Groarke
Index
About the Author
In assembling the story of Laurier Brantford and the rebirth of downtown Brantford, I have benefited from the thoughts of many colleagues. While I am reluctant to single out a few individuals, I would like to acknowledge a special indebtedness to a handful of people who have, over an extended period, discussed the history of the Brantford campus with me: in particular, Gary Warrick, Tracy Arabski, David Prang, Holly Cox, and Sherri Bocchini. Outside the university, Wayne Hunter, Vyrt Sisson, John Starkey, Colleen Miller, Chris Friel, Mike Hancock, Mary Stedman, and others welcomed discussions of Brantford’s past, present, and future. Cindy McDonald-Krueger and the Brant Museum and Archives were always willing to help with research, and my good friends Arlene Mahood and Lynn Osborne-Way provided me with extensive comments on the finished manuscript. Lynn’s knowledge of local history, architecture, and Brant County, and her advice on how to tell a story were invaluable guides in finishing the present project. Bill Humber immediately understood the reasons why I thought it important to tell the story of the rebirth of downtown Brantford.
I am indebted to Barry Penhale and Jane Gibson for their interest in this book and their help in preparing it for publication. Their enormous contribution to the preservation of local history in Canada is something I am pleased to be a part of. Last but not least, I am grateful to Wilfrid Laurier University and the Brant Museum and Archives for permission to use many of the photos included in this book, and to Kevin Klein for helping me to assemble them.
| FOREWORD |
by William Humber, Seneca College
We all cherish well-loved places, be they scenic vistas, an apple orchard on the edge of town, a character-filled old building, or a favourite fishing hole. Then one day they’re gone and we sigh and reflect that this must be the price paid for that dreaded, non-contestable phenomenon called progress. It is amazing how accepting we are of such actions that seem so devastating.
One person who noticed and decided to write about it was Storm Cunningham, one of the world’s leading advocates of restoration. He is an avid scuba diver, but realized that his visits to some of the pristine waters of the world were too often a hollow reminder of how things had only got worse with time, including decaying coral reefs, loss of diverse fisheries, and the disappearance of quaint local lifestyles associated with such places. Then about ten years ago he noticed a startling change, at least in some places. Plans and actions were actually contributing to an improved world.
He originally set out to write a book on how that grand but illusive theme of sustainability must be the reason for this more hopeful world. But in investigating its practice he made a stunning discovery. Too often sustainability proved to be no more than a stop-gap measure by which preserving a little piece of property here, a green building there, or temporarily protecting a tiny living thing in the path of a freeway, were simply small thumbs in the dyke of irreversible damage — smokescreens for greater devastation rationalized by the “greening” of some built or natural feature, but achieved by depleting or eliminating another.
He recognized that an environmentally acclaimed new community built on a former wetland, or an accredited green building on a rural, agricultural site reachable by any reasonable measure only by car, were problematic and ultimately unacceptable responses to the loss of biodiversity, climate change, and the degradation of once-loved places. As a result, Storm’s first book, The Restoration Economy, told a far different story than he originally intended. It began with a significant history lesson. “For some five thousand years,” he wrote, “much of humankind, especially Western civilization in the past five centuries, has been in a pioneer mode of development that sustains economic growth by developing raw land and extracting virgin resources. New lands and virgin resources, however, are rapidly becoming myths from a bygone era.”1
He then described the second phase of the three-stage growth cycle as being that of maintenance and conservation, in which humans tackle challenges of breakdown in their built and natural environments through increasingly patchwork strategies — for instance, preserving small wooded areas disconnected from the necessary routes living things need to move from one place to another, or refurbishing older buildings without attention to the economic catastrophe surrounding them.
Today he argues we are confronting three crises as a result of this development style. These include contamination, in which a majority of soil around the world is degraded and oceans are increasingly acidified and filled with toxic waste such as carelessly disposed-of pharmaceuticals and plastic detritus; corrosion, in which much we currently build is virtually garbage the first day it is occupied; and constraint, in which we suddenly find that our magical gift for generating new solutions for resource depletion is running up against a world challenged by peak oil, the loss of biodiversity, and potential food shortages.
We are left with little choice but to enter into the third stage of development, namely restoration. It is a comprehensive and integrated approach to restoring the integrity and interconnectedness of built and natural environments. We do so despite living in a world still engaged in pioneer modes of development. In the process we continue to deplete limited resources, overwhelm ecosystems, destroy downtowns, and empty countryside locations that have provided comfort to their inhabitants but less apparent value to their despoilers.
Dams are still being built, landscapes flooded and tar sands mined, though in the case of the latter, the cost reflected in cleaner energy used for this purpose and fresh water expanded might, if ecosystem services were properly calculated, challenge the economic merit of such a project. So while there has been a great human shift from nomadic to settled existence, we still live as if we are nomads, damaging the places we live and moving on. Except that now there is nowhere to move. The carbon-based economy, which allows us to off-shore cheaper production to China, haunts all of us.
Restoration on the other hand is premised on bringing places back to life, creating new value and employment opportunities, and enticing investment, which asks only what way the market is going and spends its dollars accordingly. Its magic lies in the way it includes market-based integration with a deliberate uplift of the soul. A philosopher such as Leo Groarke might call this a “metaphysics of restoration.” It is predicated on leaving places better than we found them, an approach taking us far beyond new development models equating economic growth with conquering new lands and extracting virgin resources. Restorative development is an economically resilient model that understands, for instance, that the eventual cleanup of a gold mine or nuclear facility should include the site’s necessary restoration to have a true picture not only of the project’s complete cost but also its opportunity.
It reflects a shift from artificial and simple static mechanical models to complex dynamic living ones. It recognizes the messiness of reality and the challenge of finding tools to begin modelling it. It celebrates an ability to differentiate, select, and amplify multiple options.
It acknowledges that what briefly benefits a few now may poison everyone’s children for a long time. All restorable human-made assets were, of course, originally created by what Cunningham calls “dewealth” activities, which failed to recognize the value of perpetual ecosystem services, such as air, water, and wildlife. Nor did they account for nature’s regenerative powers characterized by its ability to break down harmful compounds and sequester harmful elements. For most of human history this approach was manageable and even acceptable though we now know that civilizations have disappeared because of their failure to appreciate their resource limitations.
In our advanced western societies this harmful decoupling of the economy from its resources dates back to Adam Smith. Neoclassical economists following in Smith’s path have argued that as a resource becomes scarce its price will increase, providing incentives to develop substitutes. But when we depend on non-market-based ecosystem services, which have no price (such as climate, clean water, and waste absorption) and these become increasingly scarce, there has been no market incentive to produce or restore them — until now, that is.
Increasingly, our success