For environmentalists, Ojibway Shores 'needed to be saved'

CEA in the News

Jarvis: Bizarre twist in Ojibway Shores saga, but I'll take it

ANNE JARVIS, WINDSOR STAR / Updated: February 12, 2020

Securing Ojibway Shores, the last natural shore on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, prize of the precious Ojibway Complex, will be city council’s crowning achievement.

I’ll take it any way we can get it.

But this is a bizarre deal.

We already own Ojibway Shores. It’s federal government land, administered by the Windsor Port Authority. And we’re Canadian taxpayers, as an exasperated Windsor West MP Brian Masse pointed out to the Star’s Brian Cross.

But the port can’t, and the government won’t, transfer the land to Windsor. So taxpayers here will have to pay for it. As Coun. Fred Francis says, there’s really only one taxpayer.

But for some reason, we can’t just pay for it. We have to obtain nine acres of private riverfront in Sandwich and swap that for Ojibway Shores. Mike Dorian, who owns the land in Sandwich, doesn’t want to sell it, so we have to expropriate it. The city has set aside $1.5 million for this.

We just learned what can happen when a city expropriates land. Ontario’s Local Planning Appeals Tribunal just ordered the city to pay $2.8 million plus six per cent interest dating back to 1997 to a family whose land was expropriated to preserve Spring Garden, a natural area on the southwest corner of the city.

That legal battle has been going on for 20 years. And it’s not over.

The port authority doesn’t even need the land in Sandwich. It’s not even suitable for a commercial port.

All this is only the latest twist.

Windsor actually did own Ojibway Shores until 1992. Get this — the city swapped the land in a deal with the port authority’s predecessor, the Windsor Harbour Commission.

The harbour commission owned waterfront land near the border with Tecumseh. Windsor — or, rather developer Chuck Mady — wanted that land to build luxury homes. It’s an exclusive enclave called Rendezvous Shores now.

“If there’s a saving grace to this, the city has been reaping substantial property tax benefits,” Hilary Payne said of the development. Payne was the city’s chief administrative officer when the city traded away Ojibway Shores in 1992 and a city councillor when the deal to reclaim the land was approved in 2018.

I guess the city can put all that money toward the expropriation.

“Nobody gave Ojibway Shores a second thought,” Tom Henderson, chairman of the Detroit River Canadian Cleanup’s public advisory council, said of the 1992 swap. “That was before we talked about climate change, trees helping to absorb CO2, the environment.”

Except for Rick Coronado, president of the Citizens Environment Alliance and later, his son Derek, who succeeded him as president. Rick tried to convince both the city and commission to save something for the public.

“We had these natural gems,” said Derek. “Why would we do anything to endanger them?

“This has been a multi-decade, multi-generational thing,” he said. “Now we’ve come almost full circle. It’s ironic, to say the least.”

Regrettably, Rick won’t see the city finally regain possession. He died last year.

Finally, we’re not getting much help from our own federal government, but we could get a lot of help from the United States.

Canada is a signatory to the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, an agreement among Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to preserve wetland and waterfowl. To help pay for that plan, the U.S. passed the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, which provides money to protect wetland and its wildlife in all three countries.

So Windsor could be eligible for money from the U.S. to acquire or restore Ojibway Shores.

“Isn’t it cool?” said John Hartig, an American visiting scholar at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research.

The rationale is that wildlife doesn’t observe borders. Protecting it requires cooperation.

Ojibway Shores is home to 141 of the 252 bird species in the Ojibway Complex. It provides a corridor to the Detroit River, which is at the intersection of the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways, two of the four main routes for migratory birds in North America.

“What a compelling case that would be,” said Hartig. “It makes a lot of ecological sense (to fund) Ojibway Shores, to be part of the solution to the Ojibway Complex.”

Creating a national urban park, as Masse advocates, would grant the Ojibway Complex the recognition it deserves. And as Henderson said, when it’s a national park, “the money starts flowing.” Eco-passages under Malden and Matchette roads? That’s nothing for the federal government.

And if the Ojibway Complex became Canada’s second national urban park, it could work with the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge across the river, the only international wildlife preserve in North America.

But designating a national urban park is another long, complicated process. In the meantime, “you have to take what you can,” said Henderson, “and in this case, it’s the land swap.”

I’ll take it. And thank you, council.