The Storm that Wasn't!

Listening to the radio and checking the forecast as well as the radar for our area Thursday, I was convinced we were in for a pretty messy winter storm, with freezing rain changing to snow.  Freezing rain is the worst because icy conditions can lead to accidents very quickly.   These are just photographs of a computer screen, so apologies in advance for the blurriness. 

It was forecast as a large storm sweeping up from the States, and moving northeast across Ontario into Quebec, a common pattern for our winter storms.  On this radar shot the small white 'hand' is our location here in Meaford, blue is snow, green is rain, and pink is freezing rain.  As you can see, it looks like we're in the middle of the storm.  But we're not!   

Even though we should have been getting heavy snowfall, we were not actually getting any.  And we haven't got any either.  Nor did we get more than a trace of freezing rain. 

This shows a closer view, with an extended area of freezing rain approaching us.  It never arrived, or was such a trace amount that we didn't notice.  Municipalities actually do a good job of managing winter roads here, spraying a brine solution on the roads before storms arrive, which helps prevent freezing on the road surface.  They also spread sand and salt mixtures (known as 'pickled sand', on the roads if needed.  It takes a really bad storm to overwhelm us!  

This one certainly did not!
 

The Crevice Hike

One of my favourite hiking memories is of my hike through a crevice on the Bruce Trail just a few months before I ended up paralyzed, so this was in 2017 .  I had read of this crevice being particularly narrow and thought it would be interesting to see.  It's not too far away.  Crevices along the Bruce Trail are deep and often narrow cracks in the dolostone bedrock along the face of the Niagara Escarpment. 

It was easy to follow the trail, though the day was grey, cold and damp. 

The mosses and ferns were still bright green on the forest floor.

And then we came to the warning, the only one I've ever seen along the trail.  And my hiking buddy did admit that he was a little claustrophobic.  He actually stayed above, on the bypass trail, while I jumped down into the crevice. 

The entrance was quite easy. 

Then I found myself down in a narrow corridor, with vertical rock walls hemming me in.  

It did get narrower at that point, but only for 30 feet or so.

Still I could see how someone with a tendency toward claustrophobia could feel uncomfortable.

And then the trail burst out into the open, not a big deal at all.  As I recall my buddy did hike through the crevice with me on the return trip.  I guess he figured if I could make it safely he could too. 

We did go on a bit further, to the point where a large spring emerges at the bottom of the slope.

This is one of those remarkable escarpment springs where there is a disappearing stream above the slope.  Almost all year long the water drains down through the bedrock and forms the spring at the bottom.  But in early spring when water flow is high it tumbles down over these boulders to the bottom. 

This photo is from a slightly different angle, but it shows the waterfall that exists only for a week or two in spring.  I got this shot on a hike the year before in early spring.  I always think of this hike at this time of year. 

The Legend of 'Blue Eyes' and TCE

Two more stories about the land known as the Meaford Tank Range, or the 4CDTC. 

The story of 'Blue Eyes' features a pretty little girl who lived on a farm in the area now occupied by the army base early in the last century.  The story is that the girl went out to gather flowers before supper one day, and never returned.  Though they searched everywhere she was not found until too late.  It turned out that she had wandered into an area where she was not allowed and fell into a deep well, drowning before she was found.  She is buried in the small cemetery there.  

What makes this an interesting ghost story is the number of army personnel who have reported a 'hair-raising' experience when nearby.  Most reports seem to occur at night.

One man reported being on a reconnaissance patrol in the area at 3 am, checking out an old forest road to see if it could still be used.   Learning to operate as a team in the middle of the night is an important part of training.  Soon the team reported the air turning ice cold and the hair on their neck standing up as they felt they were being watched.  Then they saw a moving white apparition far through the woods.

A year later the same man reported, again in the middle of the night, through IR goggles, seeing a little girl in a flowing white night gown.  I should add that this training also included sleep deprivation.

Several other people have reported feeling they were being watched, or seeing shadowy human figures through night vision goggles when operating in the area of 'Blue Eyes' grave.  In the reports I have found there have been no harmful episodes apart from that of the original girl who drowned.  

The TCE Proposal 

Moving from one end of the time scale to the other, Trans-Canada Energy is currently proposing to construct a large pumped storage plant on the army base in Meaford, and the proposal has drawn a lot of opposition from Meaford residents.    

In this image you can see the present base buildings in white in the upper right, and Georgian Bay in blue in the lower left.  This is an unusual perspective, from the northeast.   A new lake (in blue) would be constructed on the base, with a pipe to Georgian Bay.  The simple concept is that water is pumped up to the lake at night when energy prices are lower and demand is less, and then power would be generated during the hours of high demand by allowing the water to run back down hill, when energy prices are high. 

At that point it stops being simple.

You can first consider the immediate local impacts.  Fears of fish being sucked into the intake valves are probably number one, the impact of a new hydro corridor is a close second.  Will it use land the base requires?  And what will be the impact on Meaford during the period of construction, from both trucks on local roads and the number of workers involved?

Portraying itself as listening to local concerns, TCE has proposed three important design changes, first moving the generating station underground, second screening the intake valves to avoid harm to fish, and third, running transmission lines through Georgian Bay and underground to the junction at Essa, southwest of Barrie, all at a cost of an extra $1 billion. 

These points are illustrated in the diagrams below. 

This shows, in a conceptual way, the generating station underground, fed by water from the new lake above, with outflow/intake pipes running underground out to Georgian Bay.  

And this shows the alternate transmission lines.  Obviously the under Georgian Bay option will be much more acceptable locally.

However, all of this just looks at local impacts.  Comparisons to other projects are also important to look at, since TCE has described the project as contributing to making Ontario's hydro production 'greener'.  

First TCE claims that it would be 'greener' than a gas-fired plant, but there is no proposal to build a gas-fired plant, so that comparison doesn't seem very legitimate.  Then the Ontario Clean Air Alliance came forward to point out that we could import power from Quebec (which has plenty of surplus hydro power), at a very small cost in comparison.  It leaves me wondering just how this decision will get made.

It has also been pointed out that the cheap overnight energy prices that TCE will be paying come because the nearby Bruce Nuclear Power Plant has the energy available, and TCE owns 49% of the Bruce plant.  

Personally I'm left confused, but there you have it, a new lake on the base and everything else underground and out of sight.

****

In case you're wondering, Ontario has one of the lowest rates of carbon-producing energy production in the world.  We are heavily dependent on nuclear energy and hydro (thanks to places like Niagara Falls).  Coal was phased out some years ago and only a limited amount of natural gas production is used.

 

More on the 'Tank Range'

Continuing my story of the tank range training facility, I should first acknowledge the hardship of the farm families who were pushed out during WWII.  Expropriation came with its own hardship and disruption as families were torn apart and had to find new places to live, but there was confusion too. . 

First, some misunderstood what expropriation actually meant, some thinking that if they did not sell voluntarily at a set price, the government could take it for nothing.  Others thought they could return after the war.  On the other side of the coin, patriotism was a big reason for selling - 'If others were giving their lives, the least we could do was give our farms'.

There was certainly resentment over how the move-out was handled.  Deadlines were rushed and no help was provided, either for finding a new farm or for the effort of moving itself. Harvest was often incomplete so the government was forced into making available dates when farmers could return, especially to complete apple picking.

The Sherman Tank, in use from 1942-52. 

Never-the-less, people moved out, soldiers and tanks arrived, and training began.  The Meaford Military Camp began operations.  Initially training focused on tank warfare, and the base continued to be quite active into the 1960s.   

The Centurion Tank, 1951 - 1977, and  

a Lynx Reconnaisance Vehicle, 1967 - 1993 

Vehicles changed over the years, and the transfer of some training to Camp Gagetown in New Brunswick led to the Meaford base being mothballed in 1970.  Only five security guards remained.   

However, reserve forces (apart from regular full-time paid forces) from the Toronto area began using the base informally to save the time and cost of a drive to Petawawa, another base in Ontario east of Algonquin Park.  It only took a year or two before plans were made to re-activate the centre as a training ground for those reserve forces.   

Several light armoured vehicles. 

Into the 1980s and the early 90s the area saw steadily increased use as the government expanded the number of reservists and new light armoured vehicles were introduced.  By the late 1980s major investment began to build a state-of-the-art facility, which it is today.  Over $80 million in construction provided new buildings and other infrastructure, so the base can support 600 trainees at any one time. 

By the mid-1990s it became the Land Forces Central Area Training Centre.  Today it provides some year round training for regular forces, and expands during summer with training for reservists.  Basic courses for infantry and artillery (the guns we hear) are held, covering rifle training as well as the use of bigger guns up to and including howitzers.  This includes full time summer employment for student reservists, as well as numerous weekend training workshops

A howitzer being fired during a training exercise two weeks ago, 

image from 4 CDTC Facebook page Nov, 28, 2022. . 

In 2013 it became the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre or 4 CDTC.   It offers both the military training as well as other workshops ranging from mental health to financial management.  Today police forces and other security units use the base for training,, and participants come from across the country as well as several other countries. 

The 'Tank Range'

I was hearing the muffled booms of the big guns last weekend, obviously from a training event up on the army base.  It just sounds like rolling thunder in the distance, but it can go on for several hours.  I thought you might be interested in a bit of the history of  our local 'tank range'.

It was 1941 and WWII was well underway.  German tanks had overrun much of France and the Allies realized they needed more tanks and more tank training.  They started looking for a site where they could establish a training base.  A quiet survey was done in the north half of St. Vincent Township and a decision was made.  One advantage of this site was the chance to have live firing exercises with the big guns aimed at the waters of Georgian Bay.  Residents received notice that their properties would be expropriated in early 1942.

On this Google image, you can easily make out the large area extending out to Cape Rich that is no longer used for settlement.  The army still uses a few roads, but most have grown over, and all buildings have been removed.  Only the small rural cemeteries remain.  However, the pattern of the former farm fields, the woodlots and the forested slope on the north and east, as well as long narrow Mountain Lake are all very apparent.  You can actually see the location of our house down in the lower right corner, inside the town of Meaford.

Before I pick up the story of the original expropriations and the operation of the base today, let me try and tell you a bit about the landscape, even though I can't get onto the base to take pictures.  I'll make do with pictures from nearby that help tell the story.  This is the view from Irish Mountain, just outside the entrance.  You can tell we're up on a hill, the entire base sits on top of this hill.

You can see in this closer view that varying geology obviously underlies this landscape, though the forest cover disguises it.  The farthest slope here is Blue Mountain, with a very flat top; the closer is the ancient glacial shoreline just east of Meaford.  The geological layers that underlie those slopes also underlie the base; in fact the base is almost identical geologically speaking, to Blue Mountain.  

You can also faintly see the claybanks just east of Meaford, steep slopes dipping down to water level, and all the light-coloured sediment that's been eroded from those clay deposits.  Very similar claybanks exist at the north side of the base, dipping down into Georgian Bay.

These are the thin beds of dolostone, the Manitoulin Formation, that underlie the main part of the base, as seen at Irish Mountain Lookout.  The base is an 'island' of higher bedrock, just like Blue Mountain. They are both plateaus of this bedrock, underlain in turn by Queenston Shale.  Both are part of the Niagara Escarpment. 

The claybanks east of Meaford look like this, taken on a paddle a few years back.  I presume the claybanks on the north side of the army base look like this too. 

Over 150 farms, 2 old one-room schools and 2 churches have vanished.  Replacing them is a cluster of dormitories, offices and other facilities that shows up as the white patch at the lower edge of this area on the air photo above, the the entry point for the base. 

Officially the base is known as the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre today, following the most recent re-organization of the Canadian military.  Until 2018 they provided occasional tours of the base, so I have been there, though my memory is faded.  They also have a gym facility which was open to public membership for a time.  Today the base is closed to any public visits though; we just hear the guns!

I got Interviewed!

A few weeks back while downtown I discovered I had lost the book bag that hangs on the back of my wheelchair when I go to the library.  And it had two library books in it!  I frantically retraced my route along the block back to the library with no luck.  As I was asking the librarians if they had seen it, a kind young woman standing nearby said she thought she had seen it and offered to go looking for it.

Soon she was back with it (our main downtown is only one block long), and I got to meet an interesting lady who works for the town.  While I thanked her profusely for rescuing me, we got to chatting and eventually she asked if I'd like to be interviewed about my use of the library.  Of course I said yes!

So Friday was the interview and Mrs. F.G. kindly drove me downtown.  I had to go to the bank first; they still haven't got our credit cards sorted out six weeks after our accounts got hacked.  Then I rode across to the library and headed for the reading room to wait.  My interviewer arrived soon after.

We sat and chatted for an hour and a half about the importance of the library in the community, while listening to the loud voices of young children in the background.  I'm well aware that not everyone goes to the library, but books have always been an important part of our family, as well as my career.  When we were travelling across country with young children, the reward for good behaviour in the car was a trip to the next bookstore we found.

Today I love coming to the library both to sign out books (I always have at least one book on the go), and to visit the reading room where I catch up on magazines I otherwise would not see.  I'm particularly fond of reading Macleans, Canada's national news magazine.   And the librarians are always helpful, putting books in and out of my book bag, which I can't actually reach myself.

This library is where I feel myself part of the community.  It's free, it's totally accessible, and a bright airy space where you can get help if you need it.  I think the renovations to the old grocery store transformed it into a great public library, and of all the public facilities in town, it makes me feel connected.

The small news item based on ,y interview will appear in the magazine-style program listing the municipality puts out in the spring, covering all recreation programs in town.  And yes, the library is part of that, as the loud voices of the young children reminded us.

And here's an 'official portrait' to accompany the article!

   

Time is Flying By!

It's December already!  Yay!  Since I can't really get out and enjoy it, I no longer appreciate winter at all!  You can't ride a power wheelchair in the slush and the grit, so I stay indoors.  It's too cold for my shattered thermometer anyway.

Dec. 1st however always reminds me that in only three short weeks the days will start getting longer. How's that as a cause for celebration?  Within a few days of Christmas I expect you'll notice the days starting to feel longer (for my readers in the northern hemisphere anyway).

So I sit at the window and watch as the season unfolds, and for my money the faster the better!

In the meantime Christmas is unfolding all around us.  Music on the radio here abruptly changed to Christmas music this morning, 100%.  I think they have a box of Christmas music someplace in the basement that they drag out each year.  And the way pop singers can mangle a traditional Christmas song is appalling!

There is shopping to be done, traffic and crowds to cope with, presents to decide upon, and then they have to be wrapped and sent out by the Post Office deadline.  For me, getting out to shop is almost impossible, and I'm left with a distinctly inadequate feeling for not getting great gifts that are a surprise.  I have to come up with a surreptitious way to acquire a surprise gift or two this year. 

I find myself wondering though, how many shoppers remember where the tradition of gift-giving at Christmas originated.  Just what is the Christmas season all about?

Sending out Christmas cards does remain meaningful to me.  It's a chance to stay in touch with friends and relatives at least once a year, though I always know it should be more often.  And I know I should write a more meaningful, personalized message in each card.  My best effort will just have to do.

I hope you can cope with the rush of December, and I hope that spring arrives soon!