ANGELA GLANZMANN

HEBER DOWN CONSERVATION AREA, 2020

This body of research is an ongoing project about the Heber Down Conservation Area and the politics of land use that affect this site. Thank you to the Roundtable Residency for their support in the revisiting and development of this unfolding project. Thank you also to Jhordan Layne, Sarah Bella Akande and Kendra Hinds for their recollections and memories.

I feel weird feeling grief, who am I to have a sunken pit in my stomach when I drive by the forest that is now razed to nothing? I haven’t lived here for a decade, my ancestors did not live here, my family home was built in the same way. Blowing kisses to the pile of dirt seems to be something small that I can offer in the moment driving down Taunton Rd.

Heber Down Conservation Area is a protected tract of land located in Whitby, Ontario. This is Mississauga and Iroquois land, this is an abandoned quarry, this is “protected, maintained, monitored and re-established” by the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority, this is a park. What does “endemic” mean in relation to non-human life and ecosystems when centuries of colonization have so deeply impacted the land? What is being protected and who decides what to protect? The distinction between the terms “introduced” and “invasive” seems slippery at best when thinking about violence. Small groves in between patches of trees harbour a sea of Dog Strangling Vine, choking out all sorts of other flora. A stagnant pond that was the quarry pit is empty of aquatic plant life – probably still too tannic, runs into a branch of Lynde creek nearby. But the viburnums are blooming, catbirds cry to one another in bushes and the air is sweet. Certain flowers only release their nectar when the temperature and sunlight is just right.

The story is that a group of teens set out into the woods to make a bonfire and drink without any adults around. It is dark and someone is using their cellphone to illuminate the dirt pathway. The teens notice a figure ahead coming towards them and soon realize that it is a man wearing a cape and holding a sword. The group gets skittish and stops to discuss what to do when you encounter a man with a sword in the woods at night, but he passes by with barely even a hello. The small group decides to laugh it off and keep heading on the path to get to the open field. The clearing is already occupied with a medieval Live Action Role Play Fair. There are canvas tents, and lit torches and adults dressed in costume, who promptly notice the teens clad in regular clothes. They all get kicked out and tell the rest of their friends what happened. The rentable field has now become filled with chest high grasses and shrubs transforming into something else.

That dirt path is now a paved walkway with ample benches alongside it so I can bike quickly through the dark. Arriving at the old road where my car is parked I load in my bike, thinking proudly to myself about how I am “not afraid of the woods”. What a hot take for a white passing woman to say who has had access to outdoor spaces for her whole life. I snap some last photos of the signs near the trailhead then decide to pee before I start my drive. There is no one around, it is just me and an empty car parked up ahead, so I decide to just squat on the edge of the road and look up at the stars letting a puddle form and run along the cracked pavement. I start the car and as I slowly drive by, the other car immediately turns on, there was someone who saw me this whole time. I continue to drive down the old road, but this person’s headlights flood my rear view and side mirrors making it hard to see. Maybe it’s years of justified paranoia, but I am convinced that this car is tailgating me on purpose as I drive down the unlit road. I take a left turn and begin to speed up and the car behind me follows at an unsafe closeness. This road is full of potholes and cracks and I keep accelerating to give myself space, but it doesn’t work. I think of the woman in another park nearby in Whitby who was found severely beaten a week ago and tell myself to stay steady and not speed. I know this area, I know these roads, and I know how to shake this person off if need be. I stay straight knowing that an intersection is coming up and I will no longer be alone. And suddenly the car turns down a road into one of those new suburban housing developments. I keep driving home not sure if I was making up my fear.

Abutting the conservation area, a woman takes her evening walk on the dusty pre-road, there are streetlights and fire hydrants already installed but no pavement, greenery, sidewalks or houses with yards yet. This place is an interstice, it’s a gap between one and the other and the other. It’s likely that on the main road nearby, a billboard or sandwich board advertises how starting at $600,000 one could purchase a home here, just steps away from nature.