Cloud Lands of Ontario
Exploring the Cliff Edge Ecosystems of Ontario's Mount Nemo
Mount Nemo exists in an Ontario that time forgot. Sprawling farmer’s fields nestled at the base of limestone cliffs and ancient old growth. Barns adrift in a cloud land.
It was a band of artists and nature lovers in the 1960s who fought to conserve this cliff forest ecosystem and establish the Bruce Trail. The renown Canadian painter Robert Bateman was one of those activists. His paintings of Mount Nemo perfectly capture the dream-like atmosphere.
Bateman and his friends were a band of merry artists and naturalists. When I look at this picture taken of them in the summer of 1962, their feet pruned, swollen and taped from weeks of hiking forest trails they were fighting to protect, all I see is pure joy.
The 1960s were a heyday for conservation efforts and a turning point in how Canadian culture valued adventure and the outdoors. Growing up as the daughter of a career Summer Camp Director, I was acutely aware of the balance between conservation and outdoor recreation, and how the two go hand in hand. I was always captivated the stories my Dad would tell, born and raised in Hamilton, about going to YMCA Camp Wanakita as a young boy in the 1960s.
In 2013, I made a short documentary about the history of his camp, and unearthed incredible archives, black and white photos of youth from Hamilton, Ancaster, Dundas and the surrounding area, arriving via bus and trekking carrying all their belongings for multiple kilometers into the Haliburton bush to make it to the shores of Kashagawigamog Lake.
In those early years, a lot of the boys were from low income families and were “selected” to go, an opportunity to get out of the city and experience the wild north of Ontario, an opportunity to fall in-love with nature.
The efforts to conserve and protect the wild places of Ontario have a long-standing history of using camp, art, storytelling, adventure, friendship and community to succeed, and the efforts of Bateman and his friends to establish the Bruce Trail and Mount Nemo Conservation Lands felt familiar and important to me.
Technically, Mount Nemo is part of the District of Hamilton: “its name can be found on the map of Hamilton and district, way up in the hills. But the post office [from where it earned its name: NO ONE] is a thing of the past, having given way to the more popular rural mail delivery and there is still nothing to mark the place except a district of fertile farms and about 120 residents all told,” writes the Killbride History group.
It was one of these forgotten fertile farms that my husband Kal and I had agreed to caretake while its owner, our good friend Brett, escaped with his family for a much needed week-long camping trip. We arrived at the hobby farm, nestled quietly at the end of a long gravel road, and immediately I felt over-whelmed with gratitude. I wandered over to the sheep pens while Kal and Brett immediately got to chatting. Brett explained he was just waiting for his boys to finish day camp at the large Boy Scout camp two minutes from the farm, called Camp Nemo.
“Oh ya, I went to Camp Nemo as a Scout!” exclaimed my husband, Kal, another Hamilton-born native.
“Crazy!” replied Brett, smiling widely.
I grinned in wonder at such a small world.
I couldn’t wait to explore the area, but first things first, I was there to gain experience caring for sheep and chickens.
Brett warned before he left that his sheep were mooches, and he wasn’t wrong. His sheep were mooches, and there were nine of them.
Three Mamas, each with a set of Twins.
I couldn’t help but empathize. I breastfed; I can only imagine the pain of twin hunger.
Brett and his family took off and we were left to our own devices on the farm.
Now, I have a fantasy of owning my own hobby sheep farm. I don’t know really if it is a realistic dream or even something that I would enjoy long-term…
…but I like the idea of it.
For me, I looked at this farm stay as a little test run, a fine opportunity to see what caring for sheep and chickens and a small family and two dogs was actually like.
The sheep were very quickly…annoying. Their constant braying for bucketfuls of chicken feed was exhausting. It didn’t take me long to realize my little helper was secretly feeding them. Zazie’s little fists were filled with chicken feed every time I turned my back. Her tell tale signs were giggles of glee as they nibbled sunflower seeds and nipped corn from her palms.
She’d bravely stroke their fluffy backs, before running off to catch a chicken.
While the sheep I was still on the fence about, in the garden I was happy and at ease.
On the second Root Day in July 2024, I brought in the garlic. I was happy the timing worked out with the job. The sun was incredibly hot. The garden and I were wilting, but it made for quick work. The beds were dry and easy to harvest. I loved the smell.
One sunny afternoon, we wandered down to Bronte Creek along the Bruce Trail. The water was crisp and cool and clean. Following a little side path led us to a perfect swimming spot, and we climbed over river rocks and I taught Zazie to float in the current like a toad drifting in the wake. It felt so private and so magical.
Drifting above the busy city sprawl, the escarpment felt like a hidden paradise worth exploring…but here I was, wandering around the backroads, and I couldn’t help but notice lawn sign after lawn sign that says “Stop the Nelson Quarry”.
It seems the battle to protect Mount Nemo, the Bruce Trail and the UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve’s rare cliff edge ecosystems of Niagara continues.
The battle for aggregate in Ontario is long and storied. I was a part of a movement to stop a proposed mega quarry in Melancthon in 2010, and I have hours of footage interviewing representatives from the Ontario Land Tribunal and residents alike. The aggregate companies want the dolomite limestone to build more roads and side walks and houses. The Niagara Escarpment taunts them, a supple spine arcing through the heart of one of the most fertile and unique ecosystems in the world; at its mouth Niagara Falls, and at its highest point, the source waters in Melancthon.
All waterways lead to Lake Ontario, the source of drinking water for millions.
At a May 21, 2024 meeting, Halton councillors passed a motion asking the province to deny Nelson Aggregates’ expansion into Mount Nemo. The motion was put forward by Mayor Marianne Meed Ward and Ward 3 Coun. Rory Nisan.1
My interest is always piqued when I see a community galvanized to protect vital farm land, and this fight strikes many similar chords as the mega quarry movement. There are many generationally-owned homes, and an irony is many of these families that settled in Mount Nemo did so to work at the quarry.
The deal Nelson Aggregate got when they first were issued mining rights was the deal of the century. In the original contract between Nelson Aggregate and Hamilton / Halton, there is almost no governance. The only stipulation was that after extraction, they would convert the open-pit mines back into an “environmentally safe” environment and call it a conservation area. As of this May 2024 CBC Article, Nelson had still not confirmed how it would restore the land after it was done mining.
When you wander through the extensive archives of the Kilbride History Group, a website managed and maintained by a group of current and former village residents of nearby Kilbride, they detail stories of the first settlers of Mount Nemo, explaining almost everyone worked at “the Quarry”, and settler children ran the gravel roads down through the forest trails to play in the waters of Bronte Creek before returning home at dusk, but the story of the Bronte Creek Watershed goes back 7000 years.
According to historians, the Bronte Creek Park was a home for prehistoric people during the archaic period in 5000 BC, making it one of the oldest human settlements in North America. Over 70 prehistoric sites have been located in and around Bronte Creek Provincial Park area since the first archaeological resource inventory work began in 1971.2 We're talking pre-Iroquois times, before European contact.
The watershed was later occupied by the Mississauga tribe after the war between the English and French, an occupation which lasted until 1820.3
Tribes relied on the abundance of food the creek provided, arriving seasonally to fish its waters.
"The rivers teemed with fish: pickerel, sturgeon, cisco, catfish, perch, sucker and trout. Game of many types, including bison, elk and deer, was extremely plentiful. Furbearing animals like fisher, marten, wolverine and lynx abounded. There were large predators such as bear, cougar and the timber wolf (Bakeless, 1961).”
The first Jesuit explorers arriving in the 1700s described Bronte Creek as literal paradise4, and paradise is exactly how I would describe it today.
I was overjoyed to see how clean the creek’s waters were, how vibrant and green the ecosystem felt all around, how old world and untouched the trees seemed to be. Any threat of quarries or industrial expansion felt far away and distant - but as soon as we exited the Bruce Trail onto Britannia Rd, the lawn signs again were too numerous to ignore. Driving down Guelph Line to grab groceries, we descended into Burlington’s sprawling suburbia within minutes.
These holy places in Ontario, the quiet trails and waterways hidden along walls of limestone and cedar, exist in the shadow of industry, exist despite industry, and are preserved thanks to local residents, artists and nature lovers. Mount Nemo’s fertile farm land and rare wildlife ecosystems deserves to be protected for future generations.
The district of Halton is formally asking the provincial government, including Premier Doug Ford, the Minister of the Environment, the Attorney General and local MPPs, to deny Nelson Aggregate’s application and establish long-term protection through the redesignation of the Mount Nemo Plateau as protected escarpment territory.
The case has gone back and forth since 2020, culminating with a Hearing via video conference at the Ontario Land Tribunal this coming week on Tuesday, August 27, 2024. You can read the case details and current information here.
You can read Halton’s Objection Letter here.
We should all be watching…
If you want to join me in my latest Robert Bateman obsession, please enjoy this incredible documentary on his life that details an epic road trip he took around the world to explore and paint, sponsored by Land Rover. So cool.