John Laforet » Scarborough Bluffs

Toronto Observer: Windmill Project Has Some Locals Spinning Mad

by John Laforet
posted on April 9th, 2010 at 21:30:43 pm

Below is an article originally published in the Toronto Observer that may be of interest to Guildwood and other waterfront residents. McLean, who is cronically wrong, is right that the government will utimately make this decision which makes it even more important that residents opposed to this project elect me to be thier voice so I can take our fight to City Hall and end Toronto Hydro’s misadventure off our shore.

Windmill project has some locals spinning mad

Sarina Adamo
Posted 08 April 2010

In five years, a wind farm may be spread across the waters off Scarborough — or not, if the opposition wins the debate to save the shoreline.

Despite the wishes of protesting Scarborough residents, an anemometer is currently under construction in Lake Ontario. A sign that Toronto Hydro is serious about continuing with the project, the anemometer collects data over two years to help determine if there’s enough wind.

More wind means the first offshore turbines in Canada are that much likelier to be built near the Scarborough Bluffs.

However, plans for the windmills are being delayed by Save Our Shorelines activists.

“It doesn’t make sense to build any industrial machinery where we get our drinking water,” says John Laforet, president of Wind Concerns Ontario and Ward 43 council candidate. “You have to draw the line and say that our health and our drinking water are too important.”

So many people opposed to the turbines, that he doesn’t see them being built by the time of the 2015 Pan Am Games, Laforet said.

The government must assess sediment movement before and after construction and how this may trigger environmental problems, Jovan Stefanovic , University of Toronto professor of geomorphology.
In the meantime, the project seems to be going ahead.

“You have an environmental assessment process so that everybody’s opinion can be aired, but really it’s the governments that decide whether they can proceed,” said Joyce McLean, Toronto Hydro director of environmental affairs.

It is impossible the turbines create enough noise pollution to cause health problems, McLean says, referring to the minimal noise heard from the onshore turbine at Exhibition Place.

“What we do know about onshore wind turbines is that when they’re turning you’re hearing the wind more than the actual sound of the machine,” McLean said.

Onshore wind turbines have an acceptable distance of 550 metres around them, she said. “You’re not going to hear them when they are two to four kilometers away.”

The location chosen for wind testing along the Scarborough Bluffs is in the middle of a 26-km province-approved stretch of land.

But finding locations to generate renewable energy is only one step in the energy consumption issue.

“Controlling how much we are using is a critical first step,” McLean said. “We’re looking at solar installations across the city and helping homeowners who wish to do that for their own means.”

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Simcoe Day – Sir John Graves Simcoe and the Scarborough Bluffs

by John Laforet
posted on August 3rd, 2009 at 07:15:41 am

Today is the Civic Holiday, or Simcoe Day as it is called in Toronto. Sir John Graves Simcoe is an important man in the history of our province and our city. Had Sir John Graves Simcoe not implemented many of the important policies he did during his short tenure as our first Lieutenant Governor, our province and country may have taken a very different shape.

As Lt. Governor, Simcoe moved the capital of Upper Canada to York, later Toronto and ordered the establishment of Fort York to defend it from possible invasion from the United States, whose army he’d known well from his time as a British Officer during the Revolutionary War. As Lt. Governor, Simcoe made Upper Canada the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to outlaw slavery. He also brought Upper Canada it’s courts, modern trials, english common law, and laid plans to develop much of our early infrastructure.

His establishment of Fort York was essential to Upper Canada’s naval defense during the War of 1812. The fall of Fort York in 1813 and the looting and burning of York undertaken by American troops was deemed justification for Britain’s burning of Washington DC in 1814.

Simcoe sent surveyors to survey the lands of other townships, including Glasgow, the settlement that would later be known as Scarborough after his wife, Lady Simcoe set eyes on the mighty cliffs that mark Scarborough’s shores. They reminded her of Scarborough England, she recorded in her diary, and later pressured her husband into changing it’s name. Those diary entries kept by Lady Simcoe have given scores of Ontarians that followed a window into life in colonial York and Upper Canada.

The Scarborough Bluffs are something I’ve often written about, and yesterday afternoon I took advantage of the beautiful weather and the long weekend by taking a walk from approximately Jack Miner School just East of Galloway Road to the Bellamy ravine – where I climbed back up. Along the way I took many pictures of the cliffs, whose image has changed much in my lifetime, and I suspect would not be recognizable to Lady Simcoe, but are nonetheless a truly magical gem we’re so lucky to have in our City.

I took over 100 pictures of various things I saw along my way, and will share others in due time. Today’s pictures are of the beauty of the cliffs, and the realities of erosion along the bluffs.

I hope everyone enjoys Simcoe Day, and takes a moment to imagine what life would have been like when all of our City was as natural and overgrown as the Scarborough Bluffs remain today. I know I can’t help but do this when surrounded by the beauty of the Scarborough Bluffs, a natural environment I will continue to fight with residents of Guildwood to preserve.