A stalemate drags on in the conflict over logging in Temagami’s old growth forest in Northern Ontario that saw more than 300 aboriginal and environmental activists arrested 25 years ago.
“The result was the forest is still standing,” said Gary Potts, who led a blockade of a logging road in the Temagami region—100 kilometres north of North Bay—as chief of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai aboriginal band in late 1989.
“Indigenous people from all over Ontario and non-Indigenous people, settler people, were supporting us,” said Potts, one of the many arrested in several blockades that took place between June and Dec. 1989—along with Bob Rae a year before he was elected premier. “They were supporting our objective that the road was not to be built and that the forest was not to be cut.”
Construction of the Red Squirrel road was never completed after the Ontario government agreed to a partial halt to logging in the disputed area in 1990. Logging has been nearly stalled since, but the future of the ancient pine forest is still “in limbo,” said Second Chief Joseph Katt of the 500-plus member Temagami First Nation, located on Bear Island in Lake Temagami.
The Teme-Augama Anishnabai’s control over their traditional lands remains elusive following a 1991 Supreme Court ruling that rejected their bid for aboriginal title to 10,360 square kilometres in the region.
The court also ruled that the Crown had breached some of its treaty obligations. Those breaches are the subject of negotiations between the First Nation and the Ontario government that have also reached an impasse.
A settlement was nearly reached in 1993. The Teme-Augama Anishnabai council, which represents both status and non-status Indian community members, approved the settlement. But the Temagami First Nation band council, which represents only status Indians, rejected it.
Since then, the Temagami First Nation changed its membership code to extend membership to non-status Indians. But Katt said the federal government requires that a majority of band members vote in favour of the updated membership code before negotiations can start again. That majority vote has so far proven hard to get.
“I wish the federal government and the provincial government would do the honourable thing and come back to the table and say, ‘let’s resolve this issue’,” Katt said. “I have a generation following up behind me, of children and grandchildren that need a secure future and cannot get a secure future until we have a secure land base we can identify as our own.”
Meanwhile, in the hands of the Ontario government the ancient red and white pines are mostly available to be harvested now, if logging companies want them.
But according to Ministry of Natural Resources forester Don Farintosh, low demand for Ontario lumber has kept many loggers out of the area. Logging companies have opted to harvest from forests that are closer to lumber mills and have better access roads, he said. A lumber mill in the town of Temagami was bought and closed by the province in 1990 following the decision to temporarily scale back logging in the area.
“There hasn’t been as much cutting as originally projected back there, just because of the higher costs and the low demand,” Farintosh said.
But the risk of another protest might be part of what’s keeping the loggers at bay.
“They’d prefer to stay away from a contentious area, but they’re sort of reluctant to back away too much because then they’ll lose options in the future if they walk away from any area that’s under contention,” Farintosh said.
Judy Skidmore represented a pro-development group in favour of logging in the Temagami forest during the blockades in the late 1980s.
“Temagami was just the tip of the iceberg,” Skidmore said. “We still have an Ontario government that’s completely ignorant of the economy of the whole province.”
“Things are worse now than they were 25 years ago.”
