John Muir, Ontario, & a Controversial Highway

 

Many of us know the name of John Muir because he was a pioneering environmentalist of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Scotland and grew up in a harsh and humourless Christian household where he was literally beaten into memorizing the scriptures and hell and damnation were constantly emphasized. 

It shouldn't be a surprise that John eventually departed this suffocating environment after the family moved to the United States and eventually turned to what has been described as the Gospel of Nature. He travelled widely in the US and was eventually involved in protecting the land which became Yosemite National Park and establishing the Sierra Club. It should be noted that not long ago the Sierra Club issued an apology for Muir's derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes.

Muir also lived in Canada for a time and did a lot of botanical work as he explored Southern Ontario, including the Holland Marsh. It was in the Pottageville Swamp of the larger marsh that he identified a rare northern orchid, an event which shaped his commitment to preserving the natural world. There is a Pottageville Swamp Natural Area adjacent to the fertile farmland which is now the Holland Marsh. Lots of people know of Muir as a key figure in what became the modern environmental movement but few know of this Canadian connection

Today,  conservationists are working to protect sensitive habitats and waterways in the Holland Marsh from the development of a 16 kilometre, multi-lane highway right through them, including an area already designated Environmentally Sensitive Wetlands. 

The Conservative government in Ontario calls it the Bradford Bypass but those who are seeking protection call it the Holland Marsh Highway as a reminder that this isn't just a road around a town. 

I do think that John Muir, nature mystic and activist, would approve of the resistance to this highway as part of the greater good for God's Creation.