Newmarket, Ontario. Self-portrait on a farm lane off Bayview Avenue.
Approximately N44 01.271 W79 26.859 facing East, circa May 2002
A never-to-be-seen-again view from a farm lane during one of the final seasons of agriculture on a massive 34 square kilometre tract of farmland that a …

The Greenbelt Act was put in place as a check against the ravages of development and to preserve land for recreation, heritage and agriculture. So what of lands just beyond or adjacent to the Greenbelt, in what the Neptis Foundation calls the “Unprotected Countryside”? This …

 
 
The pioneer cemetery of the United Empire Loyalist family of John Walker lies on the edge of a farm field in what the Neptis Foundation calls the “Unprotected Countryside”, land that is immediately outside Ontario’s Greenbelt and at greater risk of development pressure due to …

 After removal of the topsoil, the clay-laden subsoil becomes sun-baked and impermeable. Rainwater that pools in tracks left by heavy equipment either evaporates or runs off rather than being absorbed for replenishment of the water table as it would have been prior to topsoil removal.

 
 
On the former pioneer family farm of John Raymer, real estate billboards promote the sale of roughly 2,500 new homes built on the adjancent lands of his settler neighbours James and Adam Clendenen, and John Reesor. The Greater Toronto Area is growing at the rate …

As part of the extension of York Region’s $350 million mega-project known as the “Big Pipe”, land along the 9th Line in front of this 19th century farm house is dewatered so that workers can get deep into the ground, at or below the water …

View from atop a 20 metre high mound of topsoil scraped from adjacent fields, formerly farmed by the pioneer families of James and Adam Clendenen, and of John Reesor. At a commercial topsoil producer’s operation, livestock manure is mixed with soil from the mound. Rain …