This is me standing next to an old growth White Oak. He was already tall and proud before there was an entity called “Canada” and was already serving his role as a pillar of his community and keystone species of this region before people harnessed electricity here.

The place he calls home falls within one of the government’s/ hydro corporation’s proposed routes for a high voltage powerline for electric car manufacturing and data centers in southern Ontario.

We live in a time when governments and corporations are arriving at our front doors with a smile on their face telling us we need to allow them to seize our land in the name of “the public good” so they can clearcut the old growth trees and build industrial scale powerlines to perpetuate and scale up their racketeering operations. They tell us it is “sustainable development” they inform us that they do not care that 200 year old oaks will have to be cut down for their powerline to go on their intended route.

They talk about clearcutting some of the last bits of Carolinian Forest and old growth trees we have left in this county (after over a century of industrial development has decimated 99% of the forests here) with euphemisms like “vegetation management” and they try to tell us this appalling ecologically degenerative behavior is “necessary”.

I refuse to buy their lies any longer and I will not sit by while they destroy the few elder trees that are left here carrying the ancient genetic resilience and memory of this land for e-cars and AI data centers.

We are told that electric vehicles are “sustainable” and A.I. data centers are “necessary” and yet they want to sacrifice some of the last mother trees we have left in the Oak family here in Southwestern Ontario on the alter of “sustainable development”.

How is that sustainable ?

We have less than one quarter of one percent of the original Carolinian forests left in our county.

It’s time we said enough is enough and stood up to protect what’s left!

The goverment and their corporate partners want to weaponize the legal system and my tax dollars to steal the land these trees are growing on from the family that has been stewarding them since 1840 and chop them down for “sustainable development”.

We intend educating our community about why that would be a massive mistake and resisting this ecologically degenerative (and unnecessary corporation benefitting) powerline with steadfast determination.

For those that think this powerline is absolutely necessary (which it isn’t) it seems obvious to me that path of the powerline should be only going over land that is already deforested (which already makes up the vast majority of Essex county).

No one should have to sacrifice their farmland or their homes for projects like this (for “fair” compensation against their will) if they do not want to, but above all else, it is unthinkable that they would clearcut intact forest in this place that has so little forest left for a powerline.

We have been conditioned (through a lifetime of indoctrination into statist ideals and dogmas) that it is “normal” and “acceptable” for a faceless entity called “government” to declare that people must uproot their lives and move out of the way when the machines of industry want to decimate the forests, wetlands and farmlands so that corporations can continue their march of profitable exploitation of the earth forward.

That conditioning obscures the reality of such an action from being seen for what it really is, for if someone without the proper uniform and papers were to arrive and demand that we leave our property “or else” and that they will give us “fair compensation” for the land, many of us would see them as organized criminals, and perhaps take physical action to defend the land we are stewarding. Yet, when this group of humans that call themselves “government” engage in this same behavior many lay down, move aside and accept their meager bribes telling ourselves “there is nothing you can do”.

There comes a time when the “sustainable development” and “necessary for the public good” rhetoric becomes so transparent and obviously a smokescreen for nefarious exploitation of the sacred lands we steward, that we must take a stand and say Enough Is Enough to protect what is left for future generations.

Now, is that time.

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Stay tuned for a full article on this situation on my blog..