December 2023
Are you like me, in that you have mixed feelings about December? Joy and peace can be hard to find in this over-hyped time of year, whatever your tradition. That's especially true in this moment in history.
This is when I know I need to bundle up and embrace that bracing cold. I go outside, breathe deep, and fill my lungs with that icy air. I always feel better for it.
You may also want to check out the hikes calendar to schedule in some respite from shopping madness. There's some good ones.
Here's what you'll find in our newsletter this month:
- Holiday Message: Greetings from our President, David Royle, to members and friends of the TBTC
- Corporate Volunteers at Speyside: There's a lot less buckthorn now at Speyside, thanks to employees of Bank BNP Paribas (and, we suspect and hope, the BTC may have acquired some lasting new friends).
- How many volunteer hours go into maintaining our Trail? You'll need to click on the link to find out. You'll also learn what an impressive range of activities are involved.
- Nominations for Volunteer Awards: Speaking of volunteers, here's your chance to honour someone. Who will you nominate?
- Indigenous Past on Scotsdale Farm property: You'll enjoy this fascinating story by John Mark Rowe about an Indigenous village on the Scotsdale Farm property.
- Humans of the Bruce Trail: This month we meet Eppie Alvarez Rodriguez, who says she will never forget hiking in snow for the very first time in her life.
- Mark your Calendars: There's a Boxing Day hike for families, as well as urban hikes on Boxing Day and New Year's Day to help restore your spirits after the holidays. Also, don't miss our first (?) international urban hike on Dec 16 - bring your passports!
Happy December, everyone.
One final thing: See that little icon below? How often have you said to yourself, yes, I really should renew my membership? Well, this is a great month to do so. The full value of your membership fee will qualify for a 2023 charitable tax receipt. And by the way, there's excellent donor impact. The Conservancy is rated as one of Canada's top 100 charities by Charity Intelligence Canada.
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A Holiday Message from President David Royle
 Like you, we’re on a journey. Along the trail, we experience breathtaking views, gentle curves and unexpected roadblocks, such as fallen trees. Sometimes the effort to navigate wears us down. Our trail maintenance crew make every attempt to push all the hazards out of our way. Our hike leaders give us direction and encouragement to keep us going. In community with other travelers, we welcome everyone into the hiking community.
The Toronto Bruce Trail Club cultivates community in a unique way. Through our commitment to share our talents and passions, we embrace the neigbourhood outside our doors in creative and life-changing ways.
As a relevant and dynamic Club, we cherish our diversity as an asset and a gift. We recognize the need for our Club to honour everyone’s history and identities, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender identity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, age and ability. Whether you are young or old, a lifelong hiker or a novice,
you will find the Toronto Bruce Trail Club a welcoming and stimulating environment.
My warmest regards.
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Corporate team helps pull Buckthorn with us at Speyside
 A corporate volunteer group from Bank BNP Paribas were out on the Bruce Trail Conservancy Speyside Sanctuary property at the 4th Line Nov. 1 pulling out more of that nasty invasive buckthorn.
The buckthorn pull was organized by the BTC, through a corporate volunteering program that allows employees to donate a day of their time to non-profits. Member Engagement Coordinator Ryan Mickeloff from the Conservancy organized the event and talked to the 10 PNC corporate team members about the BTC’s history, mission, and goals.
Afterwards, Restoration Project Specialist Lyndsey Wilkerson led the team on a hike and talked about how the BTC is protecting and enhancing its trail lands and nature reserves. The corporate team, along with Toronto Club members Angelika Sommer and David Rowney, spent the next few hours pulling buckthorn with a special tool that can get at the buckthorn roots.
This is the second corporate team event pulling buckthorn at the Speyside site. Corporate volunteer teams have partnered with the BTC on other sites along the trail, including a site at Fisher’s Pond in the Iroquoia Section.
“This corporate volunteering program provides a chance for employees to understand the work that non-profits, such as the BTC, are providing to the community. It is also a great way to introduce the Bruce Trail to those who may have no prior knowledge of its rich history and importance to our ecosystem,” says Ryan. Adds Lyndsey, “We really appreciate the enthusiasm and dedication of the corporate teams – Bank PNC Paribas employees were great to work with – and the volunteer hours they provide enable us to expand our invasive species removal program.”
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- advertisement -
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Caring for our Bruce Trail lands takes lots of dedicated volunteers
 If you have ever wondered how our trails and adjacent Bruce Trail -owned lands are so well cared for, you only have to look at the work of our amazing volunteers.
Care of Bruce Trail Conservancy-owned lands in the Toronto section is managed by volunteer Land Stewardship Director Rose-Mary Mitter. Trails you walk on are cared for by Trail Maintenance Director Laurent Thibault. Biodiversity projects are led by its Leader Lynn McFerran. These groups fall under the responsibility of the Land Management Committee, chaired by Neal Stein.
Working together, these leaders recruit dedicated team members who are ready to tackle any project. The fall was a busy time for land stewardship and biodiversity work parties. On October 7 and 14, volunteers removed a colony of Scots Pine (an invasive species) at the Speyside Woods property. Then on October 28, a work crew went to the Springle property (north of Limehouse), checked on wildflower plots planted in 2021, removed Monarch watering stations for the winter and cleaned up around boot brush stations. The team also checked on the University of Guelph disease resistant Elm trees (yes, they are doing well!) and American chestnut trees that were planted last year. The University of Guelph has been crossbreeding chestnut trees from among the elusive few remaining trees that appear to have genetic resistance to fungus blight.
Meanwhile, biodiversity leaders have been introducing ecology themed and Indigenous hikes as well as two new badges. One badge is meant to support invasive species projects and the other encourages awareness of flora and fauna along the Toronto Section of the trail. Club member John McCuaig and his Rovers and Scouts continue to add new bird boxes. They do repairs and inventory as well as cleaning out the boxes in the spring and fall.
Since January, it is estimated that 560 cumulative volunteer hours have been spent on trail maintenance activities on our 115 kilometres of trails in the Toronto Section. These including clearing overgrown weeds, repairing/building various boardwalks, steps, and bridges, and refreshing blazes. With our other ecological activities, total volunteer hours would total over 1,000!
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Call for TBTC Volunteer Award Nominations
The Toronto Bruce Trail Club is inviting nominations for outstanding TBTC volunteers for the Nina Carlisle Award and the Todd Bardes Award (during the 2023 calendar year).
The Nina Carlisle Award is given to longstanding volunteers who are actively involved in the activities of the TBTC for at least five years. Such volunteering could be in the areas of trail maintenance, hike leading, social event planning, communications, administrative tasks, fund-raising and Board service.
Previous Recipients of the Nina Carlisle Volunteer Award:
2008 Nina Carlisle. 2009 Frances Walker. 2010 Malcolm Sanderson. 2011 Stephen Kamnitzer. 2012 Larry Haigh. 2013 Paul Vanhanen. 2014 Peter Leeney. 2015 Grant Leigh. 2016 Teresa Karolewski. 2017 David Paape. 2018 Wayne Crockett. 2019 Barbara Euler. 2020 Vlad Bosnar. 2021 Alina Lin. 2022 Rose-Mary Mitter. 2023 John Cunningham.
The Todd Bardes Volunteer Award is given to outstanding persons in recognition of significant volunteer contributions to the TBTC made during the past year or two.
Previous recipients of the Todd Bardes Award:
2017 Deb Brander. 2018 Martina Furrer. 2019 Thomas Swales. 2020 not awarded. 2021 Jacqueline Van Dyke. 2022 David Rowney. 2023 Margaret Corner.
Our nomination form and instructions are available on the TBTC’s website at https://torontobrucetrailclub.org/get-involved/volunteer-awards. Nominations must be submitted by February 15, 2024. The awards will be presented at the Club’s 2024 Annual General Meeting in April.
For more information about the awards, please email tbtc.volunteers@gmail.com
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-- advertisement --
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Unveiling an Indigenous past on the Scotsdale Farm property
In the autumn issue of Niagara Escarpment Views Magazine, historian John Mark Rowe wrote about an Indigenous village uncovered on the Scotsdale Farm property. Archeological digs were performed on the property from 1984 to 2004. The Halton Hills resident has written several books about local history and we are very pleased he has excerpted the magazine’s story for the Toronto Bruce Trail Club. The site at Scotsdale, is estimated to range from 1550-1580. He writes, “All these archeological findings paint a picture of a thriving village of Attiwonderonk peoples living in community on the edge of the escarpment. They obviously travelled and traded with the neighbouring villages and nations. This site at Scotsdale Farm in Halton Hills gives a satisfactory glimpse of daily life before European contact.” His excerpted version is provided below and also on our website here.
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EXPLORING ONE INDIGENOUS VILLAGE ON THE ESCARPMENT
By John Mark Rowe
 We can travel back to the Halton Hills part of Turtle Island about 460 years, thanks to a number of archeological digs. One site on the Niagara Escarpment has been located within Scotsdale Farm, an Ontario Heritage Trust property. The six studies from 1984 to 2004 were carried out by the Ontario Heritage Foundation, University of Toronto and Laurentian University. They revealed a village perched on a promontory overlooking Owl Creek, a tributary of the Credit River.
Dating the site was greatly helped by reference to the 1973-74 work at Crawford Lake in Milton. The archeological digs that led to the reconstructed longhouses at Crawford Lake, along with pollen deposits, placed villages there in the 1370s, 1400s and finally 1622-1652. The site at Scotsdale, labelled Emmerson Springs by William Fox, is estimated to range from 1550-1580.
The suggestion has been that these residents may have been Neutral peoples correctly known as Attiwonderonk. If so, this is about the farthest east they have been located. The Neutral lived in the Hamilton-Niagara region and western New York, controlling the flint (chert) to make arrowheads for war and trading it with the Wendat and Haudenosaunee who were at war with each other.
The 2004 Laurentian University report incorporates findings from previous studies to deliver a detailed report on the escarpment’s local inhabitants 460 years ago. The village of longhouses sat on a terraced plateau, surrounded by a defensive palisade. South of the wall, the ground drops steeply to Owl Creek below, providing further defense. This area is in a transition zone from the Carolinian forest of maples, oak, hickory, beech and black walnut to the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Forest of red pine, eastern white pine, eastern hemlock, yellow birch, maple and oak. The site has a maple and beech dominant uplands to the north with an oak dominant forest to the south and a cedar swamp at the base of the slope. Cedar swamps provide winter yarding habitats for white-tailed deer.
White-tailed deer were the most common bones found at this site, being the principal source of food. But meals were varied with proteins like black bear, wapiti, raccoon, and grey squirrel. The ubiquitous passenger pigeon (now extinct), turkey, and box turtle were common meals along with whitefish, salmon, trout and suckers.
Smoking tobacco was a common pastime among these people evidenced by the large number of ceramic pipe fragments discovered.
A few small flat or tubular pieces of copper suggest these were decorative items traded with northern tribes. Quite a number of worked bone beads also point to decorative items worn by the inhabitants. Worked and drilled deer phalanges also suggest a type of wind chime.
The Neutral, Wendat and Petun peoples, all being Iroquoian-speaking also hunted, fished and grew the three sisters – beans, corn and squash throughout this area. The Petun may have supplied the tobacco.
All these archeological findings paint a picture of a thriving village of Attiwonderonk peoples living in community on the edge of the escarpment. They obviously travelled and traded with the neighbouring villages and nations. This site at Scotsdale Farm in Halton Hills gives a satisfactory glimpse of daily life before European contact.
Salmon and trout are once again plentiful in the Credit River. The forest cover protects an increasing population of animals, rodents, birds and the odd Ursus americanus along the escarpment in Halton Hills. While a vast amount of history separates us from the people who once lived above Owl Creek, we are still able to get a sense of their world hiking along the Niagara Escarpment today.
-excerpts from “Tracing People of the Past, John Mark Rowe, Niagara Escarpment Views, Autumn 2023.
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Humans of the Bruce Trail, featuring Eppie Alvarez Rodriguez
 1. Where do you live?
I live in Thornhill Woods, Vaughan, ON
2. Why did you join the Toronto Bruce Trail Club?
I joined the TBTC when I met a member on my first CN Tower Climb 2018 and he found out that I'm a hiker way back in Hongkong before coming to Canada in 2018. He invited me and my friend to hike the Bruce Trail (9 months of no hiking prior to this invitation.) And I can't forget that it was May 26, 2019, with very hot weather in Hockley Valley, and we hiked 21k. I experienced leg cramps and had run out of water. What an initiation rite!
3. Most memorable outdoor experience?
My most memorable outdoor experience is hiking in the snow for the very first time in my life. I was born in a tropical country (Philippines) without snow. I can't remember how many times I say the word WOW! Hiking in canopy of pines covered with a fresh snowfall in Kelso Conservation Area is truly unforgettable.
4. Favourite words to live by?
Make your heart the most beautiful thing about you. "Kindness is free."
5. Hobbies and interest?
Hobbies- cooking, baking, stone art painting, Indoor planting, basic videography
Interests- I love to learn more about different species of butterflies and flowers
I have much more to learn about healthy cooking.
6. Most admired person and why?
Most admired person is my late Dad. I admired him as a very kind-hearted, hard-working person. Looking back how he instilled in us the values of being kind to people, no matter how bad the people treat you.
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Mark your calendars
Selected car hikes
Dec 1: Glasgow Village Whitchurch-Stouffville
Dec 26: Short and Sweet family hike at City View Park in Burlington
Selected Urban Walks
Dec 16: Niagara Falls International Hike to Goat Island
Dec 26: Annual TBTC Boxing Day Hike
Jan 1: Leslie Spit (Tommy Thompson Park)
Winter Coach Program:
Jan 6: Arrow Head Provincial Park
Jan 13: Highlands-Nordic (Duntroon)
We don't want you to be disappointed - some of our hikes fill up fast. Here's a tip - if registration is not yet open, mark the registration date in your calendar.
For the latest in all our hikes (bus hikes, car hikes, urban hikes and coach hikes), check the Hiking Calendar.
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