This chronicle of our trip across the east half of the country is now drawing to a close. It was a glorious trip, because we have a glorious country. We had a wonderful stay in Ottawa with Chris’ sister, brother-in-law, and niece. With them we visited the Canadian Art Gallery a wonderful place to spend an afternoon. This time we saw mainly new art from students. I also saw and enjoyed Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire which caused such a great stir when the museum purchased it for $1.76 million in 1990. But now it is considered wrth more than 10 times as much. A great investment. But I consider such values for art absurd. No art is really worth the prices paid for it, except it must be worth what people are willing to pay for it.
I just wanted to make a comment about Sudbury where we went to visit my cousin Bruno and his wife Lily. Bruno was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and died a month or two late. It was great to have one last visit with this gentleman. This is what he was—a true gentle man. Very glad to have one last visit.
I want to close this chronicle with some comments about Sudbury, which we had little time to see on account of that visit and our weariness and eagerness to go home.
Sudbury is a miracle story. It proves that nature always bats last! We must not forget that. At one time things looked bleak in Sudbury. They were desperate. Sudbury was the world’s largest atmospheric source of sulphur pollution, with vast associated biodiversity damages. The landscape around it was literally a moonscape. I remember the desolation from my first trip through Sudbury in 1967 on the way to Montreal.
The damage was caused by the chemicals emitted during the process of mining nickel. The damage was incredible. Some considered Sudbury completely destroyed.
Then after realizing the awful devastation, people came together to try to repair that damage. It seemed an insurmountable task.
Since the late 1890s, Sudbury was an important part of the mining industry in Canada. That industry created an environmental disaster in the area. There really is no other way to describe it. According to Climatefast,
“Sulfur dioxide released into the environment from the smelting of copper and nickel ores caused acid rain, and formed a black coating on rocks in the area, still visible to this day. Surrounding lakes were acidified, wreaking havoc on their ecosystems. Furthermore, copper and nickel accumulated in the soil, making it inhospitable for plants to grow.”
40 square miles around the city of Sudbury there was nearly no natural vegetation at all. It was hell. And environmental hell.
In 1971 and 1972, 4 years after I visited the area, NASA used the area for mimicking the surface of the moon for experiments with their prospective astronauts during the Apollo 16 and 17 operations. Sudbury had an international reputation for being a hell hole.
People got together and asked themselves what they could do about the disaster. Researchers told them that treating the toxic metal-contaminated soil with lime might help and enable vegetation to grow again. In 1978 volunteers and students including university students from Laurentian University started working at liming the ground and planting seeds of various plants as well as saplings. The campaign was an astonishing success. The area started to regreen.
Over 10 million trees were planted in the cleaned-up soil. Amazingly, the city now has some of the cleanest air in Canada! That re-greening project is ongoing. The newly grown trees and shrubs have helped to trap CO2 from the atmosphere.
The surrounding area is now habitat for wildlife and renovating the entire community.
At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15 ) in Montreal in December of 2022, a landmark agreement was made to guide global action on nature through to 2030. Representatives of 118 governments from around the world gathered for 2 weeks in Montreal and came up with the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) on the last day of negotiations. That framework agreement tries to address biodiversity loss, and the crucial need to restore biodiversity losses, and protect indigenous rights.
The plan includes concrete measures to stop and even reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of degraded ecosystems under legal protection by 2030.
At that conference delegates recognized that the stakes for the world could not be higher as the planet was experiencing the largest loss of life since the dinosaurs! One million plant and animal species arenow threatened with extinction, many within in decades.
At that conference Laurentian University showcased the important work that had been done in the Sudbury area and what could be accomplished with hard work and dedication. This has been called “Sudbury’s Regreening Story.”
Since the project began the following has been achieved:
- A 98% reduction in air pollution from an industry that is still thriving;
- Nearly all air quality advisories have been eliminated;
- 10 million planted trees and shrubs have been planted by the community;
- 50% of the lost sport fish populations have been restored;
- More than 3 million tons of carbon have been sequestered by those newly planted trees and shrubs;
- 22% of the zone that was damaged has been converted into lovely parks. I can testify to the beauty of much of the area that was once a despoiled wasteland. Unfortunately, because we had a deadline to visit my cousin I did not have time to go back to provide photographic proof. My bad. I will do better next time;
- One species (aurora trout) has been delisted from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada ( COSEWIC) which recommends what species should be placed on or taken off of the list of critically endangered species;
- The area has seen the emergence of a biotech industry based on a sustainable harvest of critical metals for the e-economy.
The successful restoration, which is not complete but is ongoing, was made possible by an energetic public, and extensive partnerships between citizens and various governmental, scientific, and business communities. The work here was also instrumental in encouraging the establishment of a very successful international treaty to stop the generation of acid rain.
That really is the key—avoiding the catastrophic losses in advance. The United States has forgotten about this, as under Trump II they are relentlessly dismantling many environmental protections in favor of giving businesses free reign to do about whatever they want. I believe that is a huge mistake. Sudbury shows that to us all. It is much easier to prevent environmental degradation than mitigating it.
The community has become involved in the demonstration of how damaged nature can be restored even in extremely difficult circumstances. A story about the project was included in the Jane Goodall film Reason for Hope. I think the maple leaf symbolizes that.
There is reason for hope! Nature does bat last. But we have to be smart.
