Note: The images below show just a portion of each map. Click on them to see the maps and their legends in full.
Our thanks to Chris Brackley, of As the Crow Flies cARTography, for turning an avalanche of details and data into such a clear, compelling, and instructive set of visuals.
Map 1: The Pickering Federal Lands Today
Map 1 shows the situation since the federal government announced the airport cancellation on January 27, 2025. The Pickering Federal Lands are still protected from urban development. Our goal is to ensure that they stay that way.
Map 2: A Close-up of the Lands Today
This map depicts the terrain of the Lands and also highlights the striking number of historic buildings in the Village of Brougham.
Map 3: Proposed Pickering Airport Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF), 2024
Map 3 shows, as visualized in Durham Region’s latest Official Plan, those areas that would find themselves within the noise exposure zones of a Pickering international airport. The noise exposure zones of Oshawa’s municipal airport provide a notable comparison.
Map 4: Pickering Federal Lands, 2024
It’s 52 years after expropriation. On the Federal Lands, most fields are still actively farmed, and areas not farmed have become a de facto wildlife sanctuary.
Beyond the Lands’ borders, there have been environmental successes: To the north, the Greenbelt and Oak Ridges Moraine are now provincially protected areas, as is the new Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park. Rouge National Urban Park (partly on the Federal Lands) and the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve (to the south and part of the Greenbelt) are off-limits to urban development.
The rest is another story. Urban expansion has destroyed vast areas of productive farmland (compare with Map 5). The once-isolated towns and villages (see Maps 5 and 6) are now subsumed into a broad, unbroken stretch of urban sprawl. The build-out of Pickering’s new community of Seaton will eliminate all the prime farmland immediately south of the Lands. And a northeast Pickering plan, if approved, will destroy another large tract of Class 1 farmland and put nearby watersheds at risk.
To this map have been added (a) the footprint of the runways if the airport were built, (b) the approach surfaces, and (c) the boundary of the Wildlife Hazard Zone that protects aircraft and passenger safety. The Zone’s restrictions would apply in part or in full to every area mentioned above and would unquestionably pose an existential threat to the national park.
Map 5: Soil Classes and Natural Habitat, 1972
Map 5 is identical to Map 6 but shows the range of soil types. It reveals a stunning preponderance of Class 1 soil – our planet’s most productive (and rarest). It was this fertility and abundance that had attracted Indigenous peoples, and then European settlers, to the area.
Map 6: Airport Lands Expropriation, 1972
Map 6 shows the almost entirely rural area within which the federal government chose to expropriate a large tract of land – 18,600 acres of farmland – for an international airport. Towns and villages at that time were small and isolated and mostly hugged the shoreline of Lake Ontario.
2019
Where’s My House?
Runway Approaches of Proposed Pickering Airport
This map, developed in 2019, presents the proposed runway layouts and approaches, calculated from Part 4 of Transport Canada’s draft Pickering Airport Site Zoning Regulations, as published in the Canada Gazette on July 25, 2015. The map locates points 10 and 20 nautical miles from the ends of runways (thresholds). Click to enlarge the map to 200 m to see streets as well as public and private facilities that would be under the runway approaches. Find out more here.
The Runway Approaches map was contributed by a local area resident and retired test pilot. During his aviation career, he worked for 7 years on airport flight paths for Transport Canada (now NAV CANADA). He explains the normal landing approach:
“Stabilized approach” landing: For aviation safety, large and heavy aircraft are required to follow a stabilized approach landing. Pilots typically start their stabilized approach no less than 10 nautical miles (1 nautical mile = 6,076 feet = 1.85 km) from the end of the runway, and no more than 3,000 feet above ground level, then descend on a 3-degree downward slope (glideslope) until touchdown.
Altitude decrease during a stabilized approach landing: When an aircraft follows a 3-degree glideslope, it descends at an approximate rate of just over 300 feet per nautical mile.
Ground noise during a stabilized approach landing: Beyond or within the 10 nautical mile distance from the runway, pilots lower flaps and landing gear and increase engine thrust as required to balance increased drag. These changes increase the noise heard at ground level.