Developer Silvio De Gasperis deserves a medal for his ceaseless, often misunderstood efforts to improve the urban environment -- maybe even a statue. Nobody has done more to promote the inspiring new vision of our big sprawl as a coherent city-region bound in nature and respectful of its limits. Nobody has succeeded so well in demonstrating the new vision's wisdom and power. Thanks to him, it is becoming real faster than anyone could have predicted.
The developer performed his latest public service this week when a panel of judges on the Ontario Superior Court quashed his bid to halt the imminent development of Seaton, a new model town northeast of Toronto. It was the latest in a series of losses Mr. De Gasperis has sustained in his long battle against the new laws and policies that forbid conventional suburban sprawl in Southern Ontario. With each of his losses, the new regime becomes stronger and more definitive.
Mr. De Gasperis's failed Seaton lawsuit was one of his most inventive sallies. Taking a green line, he argued that the prospective townsite was too sensitive to be developed -- despite strict provincial planning controls designed to ensure Seaton is an environmental showpiece that sets a new standard for green fields development in Ontario.
In response, the Crown filed documents saying something many suspected but could never dare utter: that the developer's professed environmental concerns masked a "hidden political and financial interest" in developing protected land under his own control.
"That's what they're hot and bothered about," Ministry of the Environment official Jack Coop told the court, referring to Mr. De Gasperis and other would-be developers who rallied to defend Seaton. Their "true interest," Mr. Coop said, was to pressure the government to permit the sprawl they wanted to build closer to Pickering -- on land now officially protected as part of the greenbelt.
As with all his former attempts to develop the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve, Mr. De Gasperis's latest loss has further entrenched its protection. Just as important, his failed campaign is resonating across the entire region, helping to embolden green politicians and activists from Burlington to Oshawa. If he was as badly treated by the new laws and regulations as he claims, they must be working.
There is no question that Mr. De Gasperis stood alone among major developers in his open opposition to the new regime -- and in his willingness to bet against it. After the Mike Harris government sold off the provincially owned preserve in low-priced lots that were supposedly protected by permanent conservation easements, Mr. De Gasperis made deals with many of the purchasers, gaining control of a large assembly centred on the hamlet of Cherrywood, and went to work on the easements.
Proving the then-prevailing wisdom of scoffing at such feeble protections, Pickering council was more than happy to cancel the easements, preparing the way for the sprawl local politicians preferred rather than the more distant, model eco-town the province had begun to champion. But that also led to Mr. De Gasperis's first great public service, forcing the government to pass an ironclad statute expressly forbidding the development of the agricultural preserve once and for all.
He contributed again when he tried to persuade Durham Region Council to designate the Cherrywood lands for "future growth," despite provincial prohibitions. Although local politicians were again prepared to go along, public outrage forced them to back down.
In that case, Mr. De Gasperis played a key role in proving to the world how popular the anti-sprawl initiatives have become -- and, by extension, how politically dangerous it is for politicians to swim against the new mainstream.
It would be a stretch to give Mr. De Gasperis credit for this week's announcement that 600 hectares of provincially owned land will be added to the new Rouge Park, joining it to the existing agricultural preserve to form a swath of permanently protected land linking the Oak Ridges Moraine with Lake Ontario. For that, the McGuinty government deserves full credit. But this does represent another victory in the same war -- and such events are always sweeter when they dash the hopes of local speculators.
To environmental lawyer David Donnelly, a central figure in the eastern greenbelt wars, the announcement dramatizes a remarkable turnaround in the provincial government's attitudes and the practices of the Ontario Realty Corp., its realty arm. Five years ago, he says, the ORC was parcelling up and swapping land to abet development. "Today, the ORC is an instrument for creating parkland, which is what it always should have been."
The latest link in the belt has created a "continentally significant" natural preserve, according to Mr. Donnelly. "There's nothing else like it in North America -- to have cold-water fisheries in an urbanized area, with forest and park on this scale, and with this biodiversity, protected in perpetuity."
Mr. De Gasperis cannot escape all credit for helping bring about that achievement, now fully supported by provincial statute and the courts. Indeed, his beneficent influence is bound to spread beyond the boundaries of that priceless new green asset, one that will inspire future generations to salute our foresight. By losing so big, so often, he has emerged as a most edifying example to all his peers.
So don't begrudge a speculator. He deserves our thanks.