Standing tall at 100: York Regional Forest rose from a southern Ontario ecological disaster

Photo contest, plantings some of the events taking place

Yorkregion.com
Feb. 16, 2024
Mike Adler

Forest. Wastelands of blowing sand. Forest again.

The startling story of the York Regional Forest -- and how vast parts of the region and southern Ontario recovered from ecological disaster -- is one to celebrate.

York Region will do this in 2024, marking a century since the first pines were planted on the first of what would be its 24 regional forest tracts.

Contests and events will spread the word about the forest and the physical and mental health benefits people get from it.

Visitors can learn the little-known history of the area and what it was like 100 years ago, decades after logging and farming practices stripped the land bare.

“It was actually deserts,” James Lane, York’s natural heritage and forestry services manager, said this month at the Hollidge Tract in Stouffville.

“You hear stories of how they then used to plow the roads here to push the sand dunes back in summer.”

Wastelands in Whitchurch Township, York County in 1909 are seen in this image from Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources' photo library. Areas of blow sands, created by deforestation, were once found across the Oak Ridges Moraine and in other parts of southern Ontario. Starting in the 1920s, many were replanted as “agreement forests,” including in what is now York Region.

Loss of forest cover was so extensive in the 19th century that large territories in Ontario were covered by “blow sands” where nothing grew.

In what was then York County and elsewhere across the Oak Ridges Moraine, red pines were planted in rows to keep the sands in place, a “nurse crop” to bring the vanished forests back.

After nearly 100 years, the region’s 2,500 hectares are halfway to the natural forests they once were. In Hollidge, off Highway 48, the century-old pines stand tall, but the rows are gone.

Pines are removed as other species grow up under their shade.

Lane, on a path, pointed out this slow change back to a forest with a natural mix of trees: “There’s birch, a sugar maple, a black cherry there, some beech back there,” he said.

The region sells wood from hazardous trees and from periodic thinning of the pines, a harvesting Lane said is done carefully.

“We look at the forest and we look at what the forest tells us,” he said.

Today, the tracts are connected to the moraine trail system and popular with hikers, dog walkers and equestrians, with 6.7 kilometres in the North, Hollidge, Hall and Nobleton tracts designed for people of all abilities.

The year’s first celebration event, a monthly photo contest, is underway already.

Winners will receive a place in the 2025 York Region Forest100 Calendar and a Forest100 Jenga game, made from harvested wood and with each piece inscribed with the name of a tract.

Anyone over 18, with the exception of York Region employees, can enter.

Lane said he expects the submitted photos to reflect not only the beauty of the forest or animals that call it home, but “portray how people enjoy the forest as well.”

The region will also bring the regional forest story to a forest-themed Family Day event, set to run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Feb. 17, at the Whitchurch-Stouffville Museum,

This spring, an adventure challenge is set to be launched to encourage people to visit more of the tracts, collecting a crest or patch designed for each one.

There will be a spring planting on what will be called the Centennial Tract, new land to be added to forest system at Queensville Sideroad and McCowan Road.

A larger celebration is planned for this fall, tied to National Forest Week, Sept. 22 to 28, at Hollidge (once called Headquarters Tract) and its Bill Fisch Forest Stewardship and Education Centre.

Bill Fisch Forest Stewardship and Education Centre at the York Regional Forest Hollidge Tract in Stouffville.

The Hollidge family fared better than many others who settled on the moraine. After York County purchased the approximately 80-hectare farm property in 1924, sons Clifford and Kenneth worked for the province’s Department of Lands and Forests as local managers.

Clifford and Kenneth Hollidge at the York Regional Forest Hollidge Tract, formerly called the Headquarters Tract, in 2004. Sons of a family who sold their land to York County, the Hollidge brothers helped manage the forest tract for the provincial government.

Under an agreement, the province cared for what became the regional forest system until the 1990s when the program wound down.

In 1998, the region began its own forest management program and assumed management officially in 2000.