I read an interesting quote the other day in Canada’s History magazine. It was  Siksika Chief Isapo-Muxika (Crowfoot), spoken during treaty negotiations way back in 1877.

“Our land is more valuable than your money,” he said. “It will last forever. It will not perish as long as the sun shines and the rivers flow and, through all the years, it will give life to men and beasts. We cannot sell the lives of men and animals, and so we cannot sell the land. It was put here by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not really belong to us.”

I thought of that quote as I read the article “Fight for Farmland, two years on” in the March issue of The Rural Voice. What would the Chief think if he read the story of the attempts to buy farmland in Wilmot Township, Region of Waterloo? 

The Chief lived in an era before cities, when urban settlements were small and so most of our land was available for hunting or growing food. When land goes from farmland to urban development, it is lost forever for growing food.

In Waterloo Region, land on one side of Countryside Line was zoned for development, so farmers there knew their land might be used for future development. But farmers on the other side of the road thought they were protected from development. That was before March 2024, when an American company visited six farms and six residential homes, saying they had the option of selling or facing expropriation. These land owners thought they were protected from land speculation.

Waterloo Region is one of Canada’s fastest growing regions, with speculation it will have a million residents by 2051.

In May 2024 Regional Council chair Karen Redmond told assembled hand-picked journalists at a meeting to which land-owners were not invited that the land was being assembled for a “mega-industrial site”.

During Regional Council meetings, according to author A.S. Compton,  opponents of the development of the farmland generally have at least one representative in attendance. 

In the two years since they were first approached, half the farmers have agreed to sell.

We’re talking here about only 600 acres, but it’s indicative of the enormous loss of land to urban development. In the past 35 years, Ontario has lost 2.8 million acres (18 per cent) of its farmland to non-agricultural land-uses like urbanization and aggregate mining.

Unfortunately, Siksika Chief Isapo-Muxika was wrong when he made that statement about land being around forever. Once this land is paved and covered with houses, it is lost to growing food forever! You cannot grow crops on land that has been covered by concrete.

Ontario is so urbanized these days that our leaders don’t realize the importance of this farmland that we are burying. As long as food stores are filled with fresh vegetable and meat, our consumers won’t understand what we are losing.

That is just the provincial government. As I was researching to write this article, I read a story in The Toronto Star about the shock farmers in eastern Ontario and western Quebec got when the federal government announced plans of a 1,000-kilometre high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City. The trains will travel at 300 km/hr so there can be no level crossings as we are used to. The track will be fenced off and if a farm is cut in half, farmers must adjust.

Ontario is one of the most prosperous farming areas in Canada, but primarily in southern Ontario. Huge areas in northern Ontario have no farmland. But urban settlement doesn’t go there – it goes to irreplaceable farmland down here.◊