Thorn in City Hall's side dubbed conservation pioneer Sue Yanagisawa Kingston Whig-Standard November 1, 2000 Local environmental activist Janet Fletcher may not be a favourite around Kingston's City Hall when the subject of Belle Park comes up, but in conservation circles she's just been recognized as a pioneer of the movement. Fletcher was nominated by the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario as one of six Pioneers of Conservation. She received her award at this year's AD Latornell Conservation Symposium in Alliston last week. The experience left Fletcher feeling self-conscious and a little mystified. "It was the last place in the world I would expect to get an award from," she said. "We don't share the same philosophy: We do to a great degree, but not entirely." She respects the work that conservation organizations do -"They love nature and they want other people to go and look at it and see it for what it is and appreciate it" - but the vistas she champions are often far from attractive. Fletcher donates much of her free time to polluted places and stopping the people and organizations responsible. "We just have a different approach to it, that's all," she said. She views her award as an indication that conservationists agree with her approach of confronting recalcitrant polluters with private prosecution. She was also impressed by the company in which she found herself. Fellow recipients this year included Ray Lowes and Arthur D. Latornell. Lowes is credited by the awards committee with originating the idea of the Bruce Trail in 1959 and organizing the committee and association that made it a reality. Latornell, the man for whom the symposium is named, spent almost 50 years with the Ministry of Natural Resources, became director of its Conservation Authorities branch in 1973 and was a director and member of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He died in 1991, leaving most of his private estate of more than $2 million to the University of Guelph. Fletcher is inclined to play down her own achievements by comparison and said it's "sort of weird" now to have the award. "It really feels strange." David McRobert, who initially suggested Fletcher's name, sees nothing incongruous about the nomination. McRobert, a lawyer, is in-house counsel for the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, which was one of 15 sponsors of the symposium this year. He recalls that John Ferguson, an education officer with the Commissioner's office, "came to me and said we were eligible to nominate someone, 'Who would you recommend?'" pioneering work McRobert, who met Fletcher during her fight to eliminate environmental problems associated with the Storrington dump, said "I went through my Rolodex and came up with about 15 people - and narrowed it down to Janet." It wasn't a very difficult choice, he said. "She's doing a lot of really pioneering work. You have to admire her." In the short summation McRobert wrote to introduce Fletcher at the symposium, he notes that for many years she was the eastern Ontario representative on the steering committee of the waste caucus of the Ontario Environment Network. Her activities, he observes, included consultations with the Minister of Environment on new legislation on waste management. She's been a volunteer at waste reduction seminars and on action committees dealing with waste. She has also participated in roundtables providing advice to the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario on the effectiveness of the Environmental Bill of Rights. She was a founding member of Storrington Committee Against Trash and in 1993 received the Canada 125 Medal for the significant contribution her environmental activities had made to the community. Four years later, she took Kingston to court over leachate seeping from the retired dump site under Belle Park. She had to endure personal attacks on her character and motives in the courtroom, but the city was eventually found guilty under the Fisheries Act, fined and ordered to come up with a plan to properly close out the old dump site. The municipality is appealing. decades-old failure Fletcher is also involved in taking the provincial government to court over its decades-old failure to contain and clean up the old Deloro mine site on the Moira River north of Belleville. The orphaned mine property is known to have contributed significantly to the levels of arsenic and other pollutants in the Moira River over the years. Last year, Canadian Geographic magazine called Fletcher a champion of nature. Now, she's also recognized as a trailblazer in conservation. Return to Conservationist Pioneer Award Return to EBI Advisory Panel

We investigate | We prosecute | You can help | Staff | Index | Email EBI | Links

Home | News | News archive | Log-in