Supreme Court Decision Encourages Environmental Activists

Legal eagles excited over proposed new bans of ‘cosmetic’ pesticides

            “Without question, many consumers have the impression that the use of pesticides on our landscapes do nothing more than ’cosmetic,’ and that our landscape do not warrant the use of these products to keep them healthy and vibrant.  We must do a better job of communicating to the public that this is not the case,” Ken Pavely, Healthy Lawns Information Coordinator, Horticultural Review, May 2001.

            “Years ago, we started this process by looking at phasing out pesticides on all public property.  We are about 90 to 95 per cent of the way there on public property.  Now we’re taking the next logical step in light of the decision of the Supreme Court that municipalities have the authority to regulate, restrict pesticides use.”  Toronto Councillor Joe Milhevc, chairman of the city’s Board of Health, proposing to ban the ‘cosmetic’ use of pesticides in Toronto as well as their sale, July 2001.

“If I were a gardener or a homeowner I would be pretty concerned about this ruling.  It’s about the ability of Canadians to make decisions themselves about what they want to do on their own personal property,” Kimberly Bates, executive director of the Urban Pest Management Council.

“We see this as a double victory for democracy and the environment.  Municipalities can now decide if this is something they want to do,” Peggy Land, an Ottawa-based environment activists.

It simply irritates green activists to their core that many people, maybe most, have a penchant for order and think green grass is aesthetically pleasing.  It’s a sign of human intelligence and achievement.  Neat, tended and orderly ground space is evidence of human beings enjoying themselves.”  Terence Corcoran, National Post, May 25^th, 2001.

“We’re thrilled.  We’ve had municipalities across Canada just waiting with their fingers crossed for this decision.” Angela Rickman, Sierra Club of Canada.

There are around 7,000 pesticides approved for use in this country by Health Canada.  In 1991, residents of Hudson, near Montreal, decided they wanted a by-law banning their use.  Chemlawn and Spraytech, two companies engaged in keeping residential and commercial properties free of pests, diseases and weeds, challenged this by-law.

It has taken a decade to fight the matter all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada.  The pesticide company’s arguments were in vain.  Municipalities now have the legal right, it would seem, to ban the use of pesticides for ‘cosmetic’ purposes, if not for agricultural use.

Even Councillor Milevc admits though, that it is dubious if Toronto has the right to ban the sale of pesticides.  Certainly any such attempt would face prolonged legal challenges, if nothing else.  And in the end all would most likely be for nought.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, has successfully passed a law to ban the use of pesticides but not the sale of them.  The result?  Sales in the city have remained the same, according to pesticide manufacturers earlier this year.

Another Toronto Councillor, Michael Prue, has pointed out that fifty years ago, if gardeners wanted a weed-free lawn, they dug out dandelions and the like with knives.  Not all residents of Toronto, some 10 per cent of Canada’s population, are so enthused as a politician in regressing a half century.  Still, this has been advocated as such an alternative in the past pages of City Gardening.

Undoubtedly, enthusiastic councillors under very vocal pressure from environmental activists, a considerable proportion of the populace mass will simply ignore such legislation.  Many will do so because they are functionally illiterate and cannot read a product label, much less a by-law.  The same unfortunately is true of at least some garden centre operators and their staff.  Despite not holding a provincial spray operator’s permit, they spray pests on their plants.  Then, also in defiance of Ontario laws, they fail to post warning signs.  At least one such offending Toronto outlet even features a well-equipped children’s playground.

Neither are spray companies with their supposedly trained technicians always in safe and sensible compliance.  Recently a crew were seen to apply herbicide to an apartment lawn despite strong winds blowing the spray over an adjoining well used municipal sidewalk.

It may be possible to legislate against pesticide use for ‘cosmetic’ purposes.  But it will be impossible to enforce such legislation.  The choice will remain with the home gardener, if not the professional.

Horticultural Happenings

Events of interest to gardeners in the Toronto area and elsewhere

Spadina House Gardens

            Historic garden tours Wednesday & Sundays from 1:30 to 3 p.m. conducted by knowledgeable gardeners; free with $5 admission to the house.  285 Spadina Rd; for more information call (416) 392-6910

Toronto Field Naturalist Outings & Talks

            Free guided walks; children welcome but please no pets; all are TTC accessible; dress according to weather, bring beverage, camera, notebook and binoculars; for more information on walks call (416) 593-2656

   August 1^st  –    East Don Parklands birds & butterflies; meet at 9:30 a.m. Northeast corner of Sheppard East and Leslie; bring a lunch; also wildflowers in abundance.

   August 8^th –     Beltline evening ramble; meet at 6:45 p.m. at Lawrence West subway station.

August 18^th  –    Little Norway Park & other Gardens cultural heritage; meet at 2 p.m. Southwest corner of Queen’s Quay West and Bathurst; includes the new Music Gardens, as well as others.

August 22^nd  –    Toronto Island butterflies; meet at 10 a.m. ferry docks at foot of Bay St; bring a lunch; birds, butterflies, wildflowers.

August 26^th  –    Burke garden tour; meet at 2 p.m. southeast corner of Eglinton East and Bayview Ave; urban ecology and gardens.

August 29^th  –     Todmorden Mills insects; meet at 11a.m. at bottom entrance of the Pottery Rd hill, which runs west off of Broadview; also herbs, wildflowers, etc.

Farmers’ Markets in Toronto

            Titillate the taste buds with fresh Ontario produce: Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto City Hall 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Wednesday June 6^th to October 3^rd.

               Mondays  – East York Civic Centre, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 11^th to

                                       October 1^st.

Thursdays  –   Mel Lastman Square, North York Civic Centre, 10 a.m. to

                           2 p.m., June 14^th to October 25^th.

Saturdays   –   Etobicoke Civic Centre 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., June 6^th to October 20^th.

High Park Walking Tours

August 7^th – 6:45 p.m., forest fire – friend or foe?

May 29^th  – 8 p.m., moth night (great for kids too), meet at Grenadier Café on the West Road in the park; each walk is about 2 hours long; for more information call (416) 392-1748.

International Society of Arborists

August 12 to 15^th  –   ISA’s International Conference at the Hilton          Milwaukee City Centre, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; visit www.isa-arbor.com for details.

Avonlea Community Garden

            Planning is underway for a new community garden in East York; meet August 2^nd at 7 p.m. in Main Square Community Centre, 269 Main St and become part of a unique neighbourhood project; for more information call (416) 693-6278 (Jill) or (416)-991-7490 (Solomon).

Still more, outside of Toronto but of Special interest, are these events:

Richters Free Seminars

Sundays   – 2 p.m. 1km east of Goodwood on south side of Hwy 47 (Bloomington Rd at Hwy404); for more information call (905) 649-6677 and/or visit www.richters.com

August 12^th – Harvesting Herbs.

August 19^th –  Organic Herb Gardening.

Also …

August 19^th  – 5^th Annual Richters Herb Farm: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with door prizes, lucky draw; herbal foods, products and gifts by local artisans, free demonstrations, kids corner, herb walk, music.

August 26^th  –  Workshop: Building Smudge $40 as with all Richters workshops pre-registration two weeks in advance is required; limited space; all materials included in fee; commences at 2 p.m.

4^th Annual Gardens of Inspiration

August 26^th – The Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation holds its fund-raising full day themed garden tour for gardening enthusiasts.  Tickets $200 includes breakfast, luxury coaches to gardens in the Lake Simcoe area, gourmet food and tips from gardening celebrities.  Proceeds go to support the hospitals Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Program.  Call (416) 946-4574 of visit www.princessmargarethosp.com for further details.

Horticulture Magazine’s Garden Program

August 24^th to September 7^th –    Springtime in the Western Cape, South Africa including famed Namaqualand and Kirstenbosch; small group limited space and numbers.  For more registration details call 1-800-395-1901.

Potato Days

August 24 to 25^th  –   East of Fargo, North Dakota.  Don’t miss celebrating the Red River Valley’s pre-eminent potato producing place with mashed potato wrestling, potato picking and mashed potato sculpture contest; for more information call 800-525-4901 or visit www.potatodays.com

News from a Gardener’s View Point

City Gardening peers at the past month’s news from Canada and elsewhere

Landscaping

☻     Turn Singapore into a garden city, the Prime Minister urges 4-million citizens, by creating high-rise gardens and forget pettifogging bureaucratic controls.

☻     Rosedale ratepayers are aghast as Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman tear down a neighbouring house to enlarge their garden, after already demolishing a second home for the same purpose and purchasing two more adjacent properties.

☻     The ubiquitous pressure-treated lumber, known as ‘PTL’ in the trade, will shortly carry warning labels as, according to research, the arsenic compounds with which it is impregnated can leach out over time.

Trees

☻     A proposed parking lot for a visitor centre to Vancouver Island’s “Cathedral Grove” of old growth forest in MacMillan Park has environmentalist scandalized.

☻     In an attempt to head off confrontation between environmentalists and scientist creating genetically modified (GM) trees, a symposium is held in conjunction with the International Union of Forestry Research Organization (IUFRO)

☻     France’s Minister of Agriculture, Jean Glavany, causes an uproar when he labels the classic rows of plane trees lining French rural roads as a “public danger” and “we can cut them down and plant them elsewhere.”

☻     Black ash, essential to New Brunswick native people’s basket making and medicine, is in short supply so a reserve there will use a $25,000 provincial Environmentalists Trust fund grant to seek our more sources.

☻     A tree falling on a Strasbourg, France, concert kills 10 and injures 85

☻     Calgary residents are instructed to water trees or lose them do to severe heat, but the city’s tree canopy is already less than what is considered desirable.

☻     Trees can respond aggressively to the light cast by their neighbours, reports the journal Nature.

Lawns

☻     A U.S. study urges hearing protection for children, especially from loud lawn mowers, concerts, fireworks and toys.

☻     Officials prowling the city to detect miscreants in the early morning hours enforce a Cranbrook, B.C., ban of garden irrigation.

☻     A Swedish researcher reports that since, unlike U.S. lawnmowers, European ones along with other gas engine garden machinery, are not fitted with catalytic converters, pollutants including carcinogens and carbon monoxide are being spewed across the continent.

☻     “We all know that car emissions contribute to air pollution.  But did you know that running a lawn mower for one hour is equivalent to driving a car 500 kilometres?”  David Anderson, Environment Minister, to Senate Standing Committee on Energy, Environment & Nature Resources.

Flowers

☻     “colour is another easy trend to apply to your wardrobe.  Guys can sport pastels such as lilac, mint and hot brights such as purple and fuchsia.”  ‘Street Style,’ GTA Today.

☻     Two years after the discovery, New Scientist catches up with a paper in the British Medical Journal entitled “Viagra makes flowers stand up straight,” which demonstrates the drug prolongs the lives of cut flowers.

☻     Long’s Braya, an endangered plant that only exists in a very small area of Newfoundland, has hundreds of specimens destroyed by a careless construction crew seeking to improve an airstrip to accommodate pesticide-spraying planes used to preserve balsam firs for the pulp paper industry.

☻     A new perfume to be worn by cats and their owners, ‘Oh My Cat,’ is composed of bergamot freesia, jasmine, magnolia and mandarin orange to attract humans, together with a touch of olive leaf oil to appeal to the felines, just US$32 per 50ml.

Down in the Vegetables

☻     The Canadian Tomato Alliance files a complaint with Canada Customs, alleging dastardly U.S. growers of dumping tomatoes onto Canadian markets.  A few weeks earlier, strangely enough, the same U.S. growers accused their Canadian counterparts of similar reverse action.

☻     Grading tomatoes by tapping the opposite end to the stalk and making them vibrate is recommended by the Laboratory of Agricultural Machinery and processing in Leuhaven, Belgium.

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