Dear Editor:
More than the issues of restricting community access to seeing and walking the Gorge or ignoring the local height, density and usage bylaws mentioned in several of the August issues of the Advertiser (5th, 12th, 19th), Pearle’s development of the Elora Mill and Mill South river banks, is emblematic of developer greed, unsustainability, utter disrespect of Canada’s Indigenous peoples and of local settler communities.
Since April 2021, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of Six Nations has, under legally supported treaty rights at federal and provincial levels, put a moratorium on development of the banks of the Grand River.
Has Pearle Development, the Ciancone family and their network of real estate investors like RISE, presented their development plans for Elora, Fergus and the banks of the Grand River to the Haudenosaunee Development Institute as legally required? I suspect not. Are local settler communities (and voters) allied with Six Nations against dense development of luxury condominiums sold to outside investors and beyond the reach of locals? I suspect “yes”.
To quote poet Alice Walker; “What we love can be saved.” Most of us moved here because we love the power, beauty and natural surroundings of the Grand River. Already private guardhouses and railings block access to the Gorge. One strains to see the Tooth of Time blocked by the Elora Mill spa and soon to be blocked even further by a private glass bridge for condo owners to cross the River to reach it!
While local pressure this summer had Pearle recently withdraw the application to amend local zoning laws, this is temporary, especially with Mayor Kelly Linton so supportive of Pearle’s takeover of Elora and its total disregard of Six Nations rights.
Please consider what is at stake here … the waters that support life, our local towns and villages, our future with Indigenous allies going forward in this time and the very quality of our community lives together.
Eimear O’Neill,
Elora