About

Adam Conyers is a retired financial executive having had a 40 year career including over 25 years in senior executive roles. After moving to the Claremont area in 1989, Adam embraced living in the rural environment. He has been active with GDA and its predecessor, Durham Conservation Association, for close to 20 years as both Treasurer and a Director.

John moved with his wife Pat to the Uxbridge area in the early 1980’s. They placed an environmental easement on their lovely rural property. John has had a lifelong interest in the outdoors and is closely associated with the World Wildlife Fund. He is a director of the John and Pat McCutcheon Charitable Foundation and past Chair of the Uxbridge Town Trail Committee.

Bob Henderson taught Outdoor Education and Environmental Inquiry for 29 years at McMaster University. His latest book is More Trails, More Trails: Exploring Canada’s Travel Heritage. He is also the author of Every Trail Has a Story: Heritage Travel in Canada and co-editor of two other books on Canadian history and environmental issues. Bob is a keen trail user and active in a variety of environmental groups. Currently he is the editor of Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education and involved with the Schools and Colleges group of the Association for Experiential Education with whom in 2006 he was recipient of the Michael Stratton Practitioner of the Year award.

David Morley is a member of the Order of Canada.  His career has taken him to Latin America, Africa and Asia and led many humanitarian organizations, including UNICEF Canada and Medecins sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders Canada.  He first walked the hills and forests of the Oak Ridges Moraine when he was a toddler when Jim Walker first invited David’s parents to visit his cabin, and has been connected to this part of the world ever since.

Michael Tucker moved to his country property south of Uxbridge in 1985. After retiring from Civil Engineering, he became involved in local conservation issues. Michael served as President of Green Durham Association from 2000 to 2015, a productive time for GDA during which funds were raised to maintain trails, create parking lots, entrances and signage, and land was secured to create trail connections and new areas for public enjoyment.

Michael was involved with many other local committees, projects and initiatives related to trails. The efforts of Michael and others have resulted in a unique concentration of public lands and trails across the southern part of Uxbridge Township, and northwards into and throughout the town. Michael’s direct, fair-minded and practical approach, his perseverance and his attention to detail helped advance the vision he and others developed: of publicly accessible trails, of trails connecting communities, and of stewardship of these lands.

In October 2016, the Michael Tucker Trail was officially opened. This is a great trail for families – for most of the gently rolling trail you can walk side by side and talk. The route travels through several distinct forest areas, which are lovely in every season: in the summer it is deeply shaded most of the way, in the fall the leaves overhead are glorious, in the winter it is an easy ski or snowshoe trail, and in the early spring wildflowers such as trout lilies and trilliums are abundant.

On November 3, 2016, Michael was recognized by the Living City with the Charles Sauriol Leadership Award.

This is the video that was presented at the award ceremony.

Walker Woods is named after James Woods Walker and his wife Olwen. This property was his passion and, at one time, the best and largest private forest operation in southern Ontario. As a young Toronto lawyer, Jim discovered the area during the early 1930’s while skiing. In 1934, he convinced a farmer on the 6th Concession that he had an interest in a square log cabin that the farmer had earmarked for a pig pen. The initial purchase was 4 acres for $350.00 and mostly mortgaged. Jim and Olwen repaired and expanded the original structure, which still exists and is rented today from the TRCA by one of the Walker nieces.

Released from the military following WW2 Jim began to expand his land holdings. The lands were mostly barren and dry abandoned farms and often covered by creeping blowsands. The forest that existed had been “high graded’ meaning the best trees had been culled leaving poor quality scrub bush. Between 1947 and 1962 he acquired 15 such properties totaling 1,800 acres, often with structures included, for as low as $25/acre. By 1948, he had enough land to begin his forest operation and hired Victor Symes as manager. His first task was to make a forest. This required planting over 2 million trees including Scots and Red pine and a wide variety of hardwood trees including oak, maple, beech, ash, cherry and black walnut. He used seedlings mostly from the Orono nursery but later developed his own nursery for certain species. He was a true visionary, often developing techniques of planting and forest management well advanced of those of the Department of Lands and Forests as the Ministry of Natural Resources was then known. He began to operate it as profitable private forest and he had multiple ventures including Christmas trees, hardwood boards, pulpwood, cordwood from the pine plantation thinnings (turned into pressure treated lumber for landscaping) and firewood. The boards were milled at a still standing sawmill and the firewood split by an early homemade version of a log splitter.

In 1978 John Rose replaced Mr. Symes and continued to work for Mr. Walker until the property was sold in 1991. The TRCA purchased 1062 acres (about 570 acres had been sold off earlier and another 170 acres given to Ontario Heritage-now part of the Glen Major Forest). The price was close to 5 million dollars and although the price was significant Mr. Walker clearly wanted his land to be preserved as a whole and in public hands. Jim died in 1995 and Olwen survived until 2007. John Rose and his wife Chris continued to live on the property and maintain some of the 6 houses associated with the land holdings. Many of the wider trails are the remnants of the roads used by the logging crews and you may come across large open areas which were where the logs were stacked. You can still see lots of the old structures like the sawmill, the drying shed for boards, two implement barns, a windmill for power and several houses. The TRCA rents out several of the houses and uses a couple of the barns for storage.

Those of us who use the East Duffins Headwaters properties are deeply indebted to James Walker. The forest that covers these hills is directly his creation and although the TRCA holdings now are quadruple the piece purchased from Mr. Walker, his was the anchor piece and set the model for conservation in the Uxbridge area and beyond. We all should leave such a legacy. Thank you, Jim.

Lorne Almack, P. Eng. graduated as a Pilot Officer RCAF in 1944 and in Engineering from the University of Toronto in1949. Lorne and his wife Rhoda raised their four children on their Claremont farm. Lorne had a career in industrial management and consulting; he commuted to work in downtown Toronto on a train, which at that time operated daily service to and from Havelock to Union Station.

In 1972, Lorne and thousands of other residents of the 7530-hectare area of farms and villages near his home received a letter from the federal government advising them that their properties were to be expropriated to build a second major airport for Toronto. As Lorne said in a 2012 interview for Ontario Nature magazine, he was “already an ardent naturalist” and because of the expropriation “became a self-described radical environmentalist”. Lorne was a founding member of People or Planes; as chair of their technical committee, he was responsible for studying aviation forecasts and technical developments, land use alternatives and making presentations to municipal, provincial and federal officials, airport commissions and the media. These efforts played a major role in the organization’s successful fight to stop the building of an airport on the expropriated lands.

Lorne continued to be heavily involved on many environmental fronts, usually assuming a leadership role. Lorne was a director and president of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (now called Ontario Nature). Lorne founded the Green Door Alliance and was a catalyst in the formation of the Durham Conservation Association. He served as director of both these organizations, and when they merged, of Green Durham Association. He was a student and proponent of sustainable agriculture and believed the preservation of farmlands east of Toronto should be part of the vision to protect the natural heritage of the area. Throughout his life, Lorne prepared countless briefs, reports and presentations and gave generously of his time, money and expertise to the causes he supported. He was a passionate and skilled fly fisherman, and a multiple winner of his little fly-fishing club’s trophy for “most fish caught” in any given season. He planted over 80,000 trees and shrubs on his Claremont property and protected it with a conservation easement to create a nature preserve along the creek valley passing through his property.

Lorne received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Pickering, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal in 2012 as an acknowledgement of his many contributions to environmental causes.
Lorne passed away on December 8, 2013.