If you’ve been involved in an environmental cause in the Grand River watershed, chances are you’ve met Doug Ratz, whose volunteer involvement in local organizations dates back three decades.
Ratz, an Alma area resident, began as a watershed warrior, taking on the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) to halt a dam project he and others opposed.
Later, he worked from within the system to achieve his goals, joining the authority’s board of directors and eventually earning one of the GRCA’s prestigious Watershed Awards.
Originally from Kitchener, Ratz cut his teeth in community involvement while a student at Kitchener Collegiate Institute (KCI) where, as well as participating in sporting activities like football, he became the school’s Head Boy in his senior year.
Also while at KCI, he was influenced by English teacher Bob Minty, who encouraged Ratz in community involvement endeavours.
“We just got involved in all kinds of things together,” recalls Ratz.
After high school, Ratz spent a summer working at Stelco Steel, before joining the family construction business.
As fate would have it, he encountered Minty again around 1970, while working on a construction project at Laurel Vocational School in Waterloo.
“We’re looking for people to teach here at this school. Are you interested?” the teacher asked his former student.
Ratz was indeed interested and started working at Laurel Vocational the next year. With a contract in hand, he was eligible to earn his teaching certificate by attending teachers’ college the next two summers.
In the late 1970s, Ratz took his first step into environmental activism, becoming part of a small group heading up local opposition to the GRCA’s West Montrose Dam proposal.
“The dam was going to cover 4,500 acres of the valley out there (with water) and there were 68 families that lived in that valley – class one and class two agriculture all of it, the farmable portion of that land,” said Ratz.
For the next several years, Ratz said his basement became the meeting place for about 100 people, who eventually garnered in excess of 5,000 signatures on petitions.
“And we decided that the conservation authority was not building the Montrose dam,” he said.
The citizens, along with a local developer, challenged the dam proposal at the Ontario Municipal Board.
“We as a group took the conservation authority to an OMB hearing and beat the pants off them,” states Ratz proudly.
“It was the volunteer effort of all of those people, meeting in my basement every Monday night for years, that made the difference.”
Ratz continued teaching carpentry until 1984, when a heart attack prompted his doctor to advise him to retire from teaching. He suffered another heart attack in 1993, requiring a second triple bypass surgery. His health issues eventually led him to require dialysis, which today limits both his mobility and his ability to participate in the many organizations of which he has been a part.
While basically retired from volunteer work, Ratz is happy to draw on his wealth of experience to offer advice when asked.
“When I came home from teaching I sat around for a while – poor me … a heart attack … a young guy,” recalls Ratz, who by this time was living outside of Elora in a log home he built.
“I decided that that wasn’t my style of living … It was time to do something. So I got involved locally with the volunteer groups and that included Friends of the Grand River.”
In addition to his involvement with Friends of the Grand, Ratz is a founder of the Elora Centre for Environmental Excellence and part of Ontario Streams. He was also a member of the committee that formulated the Grand River Fisheries Management Plan.
The centre for excellence was initiated by a small group of people, including Ratz, who put a proposal together and got a grant of nearly $100,000 for local environmental work.
Some 20 years later the centre is still going strong, with it’s own fundraising arm to keep the programs happening. The centre provides energy assessment and upgrade assistance for homeowners, as well as operating tree stewardship and water quality programs.
Toni Ellis, who was also involved in the centre’s inception, says Ratz brings expertise and enthusiasm to any project.
“Doug is a very positive force. He is a visionary and a really positive person to have at any table; somebody who sees what can be done and somebody who is quick to help – just a huge asset,” said Ellis.
Over the years Ratz’s environmental work has also included helping to find funding to put up fencing to keep livestock out of Swan and Carroll creeks, and working with the GRCA and the Ministry of Natural Resources to establish many new river access points that opened up recreational use in the tailwater area of the Grand River south of Belwood Lake, which now boasts a world class trout fishery.
In the late ‘80s, Ratz became a provincial appointee to the GRCA board.
Because of his constant involvement in watershed environmental organizations and issues, Ratz was often at the GRCA offices. Eventually, they gave him a desk in the lunch room.
“They said if you’re going to be here every day you better have a desk to work from. Well, then I got to speak to anyone on the conservation authority that had anything to do with environment anywhere,” said Ratz, adding the contacts made in those days led to his eventual appointment to the GRCA board.
Bob Thomas, a member of the provincial Liberal party, told Ratz, “You really should get a different look at this thing.”
“So they (the governing Liberal party) appointed me and I became a member of the conservation authority board.”
For Ratz, the connection to the Grand is a natural one.
“I grew up on the Grand River,” he said. “It was a natural for me to say it’s part of my history, let’s get involved in the preservation of things here.”
During the 1990s Ratz, through organizations such as Friends of the Grand and the Centre for Environmental Excellence, was involved in the planning of about 60,000 trees between 1995 and 2000.
Many of those trees were planted by students from area schools, who got involved through Ratz’s efforts.
“Being a teacher, it gave me an access through a door where maybe I wasn’t allowed otherwise,” he noted.
Tree planting, says Ratz, is a key element of any environmental enhancement effort, providing benefits in many ways.
“It stabilizes our riverbanks and when I got involved with Friends of the Grand we realized if we were going to put brown trout in the river, and we’ve put three-quarters of a million brown trout in the Grand River since we started, they need shade. When you get a summer like last year, with that heat, they can only survive if they find cool places.”
Ratz feels the tree planting efforts were a key element in his selection for a GRCA Watershed Award in 2008.
That year the November/December issue of the GRCA Newsletter Grand Actions, describes Ratz as a man ahead of his time on environmental matters, stating, “Long before green was in and touted by politicians of every stripe, Doug Ratz worked to counsel others on environmental concepts.”
The Newsletter notes, “Ratz was part of many organizations, usually working quietly in the background and not in the limelight.”
In addition to the Watershed Award, Ratz has received other accolades for his work. In 1994 he was selected as Elora’s citizen of the year.
He also received the Bruce Buckland award from the Ruffed Grouse Society.
However, he prefers to avoid the spotlight, instead focussing on what can be accomplished by groups of dedicated volunteers working together.
“Communities cannot exist without their volunteers,” he states. “The town would go to crap if people didn’t volunteer their time to make programs work within their communities.
“Communities need to be more cognizant of the volunteer effort in their communities and help them finance the programs that will help them improve their communities. They don’t all do that yet. That’s a work in progress to me.”
Ratz said he believes, “The economy is going to improve in communities if we work toward improving our environment in those communities – and that’s trees, that’s rivers and parks and that sort of thing.
“So if I have any desire about things that need to be done, it’s the continuation and support of volunteer groups … to improve the communities in which they live.”
Years of experience have taught Ratz that technological advancement and environmental enhancement are not mutually exclusive.
“There are technological answers for the things that people want to do, you just got to get digging and find them. And I think the volunteer groups are the ones to do that.”
For Ratz, volunteerism, “gives me a reason to get up in the morning. It gives me a reason to be around people and it gives me a reason to feel good about what I do.
“I’ve spent since 1984 involved in some of these things and we’ve made headway, all of us together. And it’s the together thing that makes it work.”
