There will be a five day walk starting at Queens’ Park at noon on Earth Day and finishing on April 26 in Melancthon Township.
The walk will feature Native drumming and singing to ask Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and opposition leaders Tim Hudack and Andrea Horwath, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, and Elizabeth May, to stop the mega quarry open pit mine that a Boston hedge fund is proposing for the township.
The hedge fund, operating in Canada as The Highland Companies, has applied for a licence to build an open pit quarry of nearly 2,400 acres in Melancthon Township. It will be the second largest open pit mine in North America, and the largest in Canada.
The area chosen is the highest point in Southern Ontario, right on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, an officially declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Below that land lies limestone, which filters the water and an aquifer that is the headwaters of several major river systems in Southern Ontario.
Organizers say the quarry will severely damage these water systems, Ontario’s food supply, and the drinking water of more than one million people. Thousands of acres will be blasted 200 feet below the water table.
As proposed it is one-third the size of Toronto. Another serious concern is that the Highland Companies own more than 8,000 adjacent acres.
Organizers are asking that Queen’s Park Earth Day, April 22, at noon, or anywhere along the walk.
