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History
Native history
Huron village archaeological site web site:
http://www.rivernen.ca/1500_hv.htm
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/archeo/oracles/draper/drape.htm
Altona School House - Built in
1911
Timeline
1799 first settlers
arrive. Peter Matthews & his United Empire Loyalist parents,
Capt. Thomas & Mary Matthews.
1819 Mary Matthews sells
50 acres of her UEL grant to first Scottish settler of
Pickering Township, Elder George Barclay.
1835 Bentleys open store
and the intersection is called Bentleys Corners.
1836 Elder Barclay
becomes the first postmaster.
1837 Rebellion of 1837.
Military manoeuvres, under the guise of turkey shoots, are
held on Barclay farm. Many from Radical Corners (Brougham)
arrested, including Elder Barclays sons. Barclay removed as
Postmaster.
1838 April 12, Barclay's
immediate neighbour, Peter Matthews, is hanged for treason.
1850 Brougham Post Office
is moved into town and Bentleys Corners officially becomes
Brougham.
1854 Brougham Community
Hall is built by residents. For the next century Township
Meetings are held in Brougham - the geographic, social and
political heart of Pickering Township.
1959 New school is opened
on Highway Seven.
1960 Residents of
Brougham and farmers from the area create the Pickering
Township Museum.
March 2, 1972 THE
PICKERING INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT PROJECT IS ANNOUNCED.
EXPROPRIATIONS BEGIN on 18,000 acres, mostly class A
farmland. Simultaneously, the province announces the
creation of a supporting city and infrastructure to the
south. After failed attempts to purchase lands, province
commences expropriations on 17,000 acres.
A meeting is immediately
held in Evergreen Villa, home of Elder Barclays youngest
son, and PEOPLE OR PLANES is formed. There follows a massive
campaign of protests led by such people as MPP Dr. Charles
Godfrey and artist Bill Lishman, resident of the lands.
70-year-old Helen Auld (nee Barclay) lies down in front of
bulldozers to save her family home, Tullis Cottage, 1840s
dower home to Elder Barclay.
1973 Robert Miller
publishes The Ontario Village of Brougham: Past! Present!
and Future?
1975 Three women occupy
the historic farm home of Ernie Carruthers, imposing sister
house to the Bentley House in Brougham. After hundreds are
expropriated and dozens of family homes and heritage
structures are demolished, the airport is stopped. Transport
Canada becomes a landlord. The Brougham School becomes the
rental office.
A process of slow
strangulation of the communities of North Pickering for the
next quarter century. The new school
is closed and becomes the
Airport Information Centre. Not one new building is
constructed on the lands, buildings deteriorate, some are
lost to arson, others boarded up.
1992 The Bentley House is
given federal heritage designation.
1994 The GTAA releases a
draft plan calling for a regional/reliever airport. In
response, Voters Organized to Cancel the Airport Lands
(VOCAL) is formed.
2001 The next generation
of Barclays is ordered to leave Tullis Cottage so that it
can be bulldozed. They fight the order with a media campaign
and assistance from local politicians and historians, and
win. They are allowed to stay with the promise that they not
talk to the media for two years.
March, 2002, after
renovations totalling $500,000, the restored Bentley House
is opened as the office of the Greater Toronto Airports
Authority.
2004 November 17th, GTAA
announces a new scaled down version a 'regional reliever
airport'.
2005 January New round
of evictions for the purposes of demolition including
Tullis Cottage.
January 18 LAND OVER
LANDINGS is formed as tenants refuse to leave, choosing to
fight the eviction orders. Demolitions begin in earnest,
despite protests. Local councillors object and MP Mark
Holland obtains a temporary halt while community scrambles
to protect heritage structures and family homes.
March 12, moratorium ends
and demolitions resume. 18-year-old Sara Barclay videotapes
the bulldozing of the Annis House on the corner of Highway 7
and Brock Road, a large red brick house that had recently
received all new windows and aluminum siding.
April After a packed town
hall meeting in Claremont, MP Mark Holland announces he is
opposed to an airport of any kind.
July After touring the
site with members of LOL and visiting several condemned
houses, Holland gives his support to the fight to stop
unnecessary evictions and demolitions.
October After months of
investigation into Public Works management of the site, and
studying evidence from the Tribunals and tenants, Holland
takes the matter to the GTA Liberal Caucus and receives its
support in calling for an immediate moratorium on evictions
and demolitions until the entire process can be reviewed and
the management of the lands taken out of the hands of Public
Works, which he says has not behaved as "a responsible
landlord".
October 31 At the request
of Holland, City Council approves heritage designation of
five buildings on the federal lands, including the Brougham
Hall and the old Brougham schoolhouse. Tullis Cottage tops
the list. Council asks Transport Canada to immediately
rescind the order to evict the Barclays and demolish their
house.
Land Over Landings Backgrounder
Land Over Landings came into
being in January 2005, to protect tenants on the Pickering
Federal Lands from their landlord, the Ministry of Transport
and its management agent, the Ministry of Public Works &
Government Services.
It includes tenants on the
lands and other members from the GTA and surrounding
communities, whose aims are; stop the evictions, ensure the
survival of the lands heritage homes & communities; and to
implement a 'smart, sustainable' new paradigm, for future
uses of these fertile farmlands, forests, waterways and
wildlife in a relatively pristine state on the very
'doorstep' of the GTA.
The members of Land Over
Landings allege improprieties and mismanagement by Public
Works for Transport Canada, dating back decades, on the
Federal Lands in Pickering, supposedly worth $6 billion.
Some are documented - contractors paid for work not done etc
- and include bull-dozing the evidence away!
Land Over Landings is calling
on Prime Minister Martin to initiate a public investigation
of bureaucrats & politicians at Works & Transport for their
mishandling of the Public Trust on these lands, comprising
over three hundred homes and 18,600 acres of prime farmland
- expropriated in 1972 for an airport that is still not
built, nor might ever be - for which neither need, nor
location in Pickering, has ever been proved.
MP Holland has several times
in the past called the current practice of evictions and
demolitions "unacceptable" - also reiterating his belief
that local residents are correct when claiming there is a
systematic policy to "depopulate"the lands.
Lease-lapsed homes in good
condition are being left vacant to rot by Works and then
demolished; occupied homes not maintained, to the point
where some are no longer economical to repair, leading to
spurious eviction notices. This is causing a negative impact
on communities such as Brougham and Altona - as well as
creating emotional and financial havoc for individual
families.
All around us developers
encroach at high speed; agricultural easements are traded,
environmental agreements changed, federal and provincial
lands 'swapped'. Minister Lapierre has frozen the
Environmental Assessment the GTAA needs to proceed for 5
years. There will be no airport for a decade or more. Why
the sudden, indecent haste to clear the land of tenants?
Early this year, as part of a
new push to clear the land, Works issued a batch of 13
eviction notices and demolished 25 buildings. Though no
evictions notices have been issued since, no official
moratorium on evictions has come into being and Works has
applied for at least 40 new demolition permits. These are
'on hold' pending the results of the Ont. Rental Housing
Tribunal eviction hearings for 7 of the 13 tenants, who
refused to be intimidated or bullied out of their homes of
decades by their government's attempt to bankrupt them
through legal proceedings.
Findings in recent hearings
at the Tribunal on the evictions stated that Public Works
were in breach of their responsibilities, had not behaved as
a responsible landlord and that buildings had not been
appropriately repaired or maintained.
Works has functioned as a
'slum landlord', periodically ignoring, abusing and
intimidating its tenants here - levying extortionate rent
increases on some and favouring others if they would stop
bringing the glare of publicity upon Works' duplicitous
activities.
On October 26 MP Mark Holland
met with Minister Lapierre and his airport officials in
Ottawa on behalf of his constituents, the tenants, to try
and resolve the evictions issue, which he has called
"unconscionable" in the past. Land Over Landings was very
disappointed to discover that the Minister was not willing
to change his position and rescind the evictions. It is
apparent that airport officials are misinforming and even
lying to Minister Lapierre. We decided to take action to
bring the voters' attention to what Works is doing here in
Ontario.
Land Over
Landings Recent History
- At an October 14 meeting
with three of the 'evictee' representatives in Pickering
Holland reiterated the position which he is presenting to
the Minister on evictions, demolitions and future land uses,
which is:
1. Evictions, demolitions
and the policy to de-populate the lands should end.
2. Buildings should be
brought to a safe and habitable condition by the landlord
through the implementation of a 'fair and transparent
process' for evaluation of the homes.
3. Tenants should be given
long-term renewable leases, (maybe 10 or 15 years) - rather
than recently offered 1 year/ 30 day leases.
4. Public Works should be
replaced as administrator of the lands by the Housing Dept.
or a suitable property management contractor for the
government.
5. A new paradigm should be
evolved and put in place for the continuing use of the lands
- and here he mentioned that Pickering Councillor Brenner
had discussed the possibility of putting a wind farm on the
Federal Lands, of which he approved. Holland is absolutely
in favour of a new paradigm for the lands. He says it is
vital because of the changes we see all around us in the
climate and environment.
- At an October 5 meeting
of the Greater Toronto Area Liberal Caucus (GTA Caucus),
members unanimously passed a Mark Holland resolution calling
for "...an immediate moratorium on all evictions and
demolitions on the Pickering Airport Lands until there is a
transparent and fair process in place to deal with tenanted
lands." The resolution also called for Transport Minister
Jean Lapierre to appear before GTA Caucus in the near future
to discuss this issue.
- "On September 09 the
Minister announced that Transport Canada would coordinate
further study on the role of airports in the southern
Ontario area in accommodating future air traffic growth. In
addition, the Minister confirmed that Transport Canada would
conduct a comprehensive due diligence review of all related
airport planning studies. A decision on an airport on the
Pickering Lands will not be made until at least 2009".
- On Thursday May 19,
Holland presented a petition on behalf of the tenants in the
Commons. "...The constituents are opposed to an airport in
Pickering now or at any point in the future and feel those
lands would be best left in their natural state. These lands
immediately abut the Oak Ridges Moraine and could form the
largest urban park in North America. The constituents also
feel that it would be best to either expand facilities at
Pearson or, if there is an overflow at Pearson and a need to
expand, Hamilton is a better location..."
- In Jan/Feb '05 PWGS
issued 13 new eviction notices to tenants and demolished 25
more homes, including some heritage buildings, without first
applying for demolition permits from the city of Pickering.
In an effort to halt the demolitions Pickering Councillor
Maurice Brenner applied 'stop work orders' until proper
demolition permits were applied for.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Pickering-Airport
(a brief backgrounder)
http://www.gtaa.com/en/community_relations/pickering_project/
this link will take you
directly to the page that has the plan to download.
http://www.tc.gc.ca/OntarioRegion/pickering/azr/en/menu.htm
(for Transport Canada - maps and airport zoning regulations)
This
is the Mach-Pelah Cemetery, formerly the Gostick Cemetery,
circa. 1836
on the 8th Concession and Sideline 24, Claremont.
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