Our Executive

David has been involved in the fight against a Pickering airport since 1998, first with V.O.C.A.L. (Voters Organized to Cancel the Airport Lands) and then with Land Over Landings. He strongly believes there is no business case for an airport but that there is one for agriculture, research, and tourism. He is amazed by the local politicians’ belief in “Build it and they will come.” They have only to look at the experiences of Hamilton and Waterloo. David is a CPA and lives in Claremont.

When Gabrielle first stepped into the house that became her home on the Lands it was March 1985, and with the empty fields all around she was reminded of her childhood growing up on a farm on the edge of Exmoor in England. With her husband she quietly cared for the 1870s leased farmhouse and extensive property, riding the waves of the shifting political sands, keeping a low profile, planting trees, raising a son, growing vegetables…But by 2005 the future was looking increasingly precarious. With the birth of Land Over Landings, staying under the radar was no longer an option: the shy piano teacher had a steep learning curve but it was a small price to pay for the wonderful friendships made within the group and the incredible opportunity to contribute to a cause so absolutely, fundamentally right.

Alexis spent much of her childhood in the great outdoors where she developed a strong connection with the natural world. Her most significant early memories are of efforts to persuade others to see the world the way she did: a woodlot wasn’t just waiting for a highway to burst through it, but a habitat for native species; a pristine river system wasn’t a potential storm sewer for urban sprawl, but a vital source of clean water; silence and darkness weren’t a void awaiting development, but a space in which to breathe, listen, and imagine a world where the economic benefits of preservation would exceed those of development. Alexis is a graduate from the School of Hospitality & Tourism at the University of Guelph (B.Comm) and brings work experience in marketing, consulting and photography to her role with Land Over Landings.

Stephen Marshall has lived in the area for 38 years, raising a family in the provincial expropriation area in Markham. He became involved with Save the Rouge Valley System in 1987, resolved that the countryside his children grew up in would be there when they were adults. The house they grew up in is now in Rouge National Urban Park. Mission accomplished.

Well, not completely. Ensuring that the remaining Federal Lands become a diverse, vibrant, productive agricultural and natural area, and not just another industrial landscape, is of multigenerational importance. What Land Over Landings envisions is the way to survive and thrive in the future, an adaptive and resilient response to the formidable challenges unfolding here and around the world. This is very important for the whole GTHA, and by example and as a ‘seed’ source of examples, knowledge and experience, for all of Southern Ontario.

Jim Miller co-owns Thistle Ha’, a national historic farm adjacent to the Federal Lands near Claremont, ON.

In the mid-sixties, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring pulled Heather, an artist, straight into the environmental movement. In the late 1970s she leased a house on the Federal Lands for herself and her young son and soon learned about the airport fight and People or Planes. In 2005, when evictions and demolitions were again rampant on the Lands, she and a handful of like-minded individuals formed Land Over Landings, an extension of POP, to try to convince the federal government to re-establish a sustainable, profitable agricultural community on the Lands. Heather’s art includes land art: large-scale, three-dimensional installations, with food sovereignty as the central theme, leaving the public with a question to ponder: “How can we feed our expanding local population without harming the environment that sustains us?” Heather is currently preparing a new field drawing – A Field Guide for Honeybees – for an environmental/educational centre north of Toronto.

Gord, a teacher, and his wife Myrna, moved their young family to the lovely little hamlet of Brougham in 1967, only to have their world turned upside down by the 1972 expropriation of 18,600 acres of land, including Brougham, for an international airport. Gord and Myrna joined People or Planes, partly to save their home and partly to fight the ill-conceived plan to destroy the area’s high-quality farmland. After POP’s hard work got the airport shelved in 1975, Gord and Myrna chose to stay in Brougham, hoping that their property would be returned to them. They have wound up leasing their own home from Transport Canada for more than 40 years, and have joined or led protests whenever new airport threats periodically surfaced. In 2005, when the federal government began evicting long-term tenants, the newly formed group Land Over Landings, with Gord as chair, succeeded in getting the evictions stopped. Mary Delaney became chair in 2013 and Gord was named honorary chair in 2015 in recognition of more than four decades of tireless commitment to this cause.