A wedding in the hills north of Gatineau, Quebec, afforded our family the opportunity for a recent trip to the Ottawa region. By squeezing in visits to two other rural friends during our travels, as well as city experiences (along with decidedly urban friends) at the Museum of Civilization and a Rideau Canal restaurant, we literally lived out a Canadian version of the old joke about visiting Europe: that you can travel through three or four countries in the time that you can travel through three or four counties in southern Ontario.
Without exaggeration, it felt like we had traversed numerous international borders.
First stop was Glengarry County on the far eastern reaches of Ontario. Even though we were destined to curve north of the Ottawa River into Quebec two days later, the Wakefield region of La Belle Province – site of the wedding – is largely English speaking. Instead, it was in Glengarry – where fierce Scottish pride has mingled for generations with a dialect that seems far easier to understand than true Quebecois – that we encountered the most French being spoken.
For affirmation that the region is a stronghold for the Ontario Landowners Association, you need look no further than the numerous red-black-and-white signs at the end of rural laneways, warning governments to back off on regulations restricting farm practices and land uses.
Next stop was Wakefield. In 1983, fire destroyed a historic covered bridge over the Gatineau River linking the two sides of a village that had been on the wane since its heyday as part of the whitewater-sweat-and-blood-fuelled industry bringing logs from Quebec’s hills to the pulp mills of Hull. Against all odds, a community fundraising campaign led to the meticulous re-creation of the bridge in 1994, and to the awakening of a fiercely independent tourism sector. Now, the area’s many visitor-supported businesses rely in the winter on downhill and cross-country ski areas, in the summer on the outdoor attractions of Meech Lake and the surrounding Gatineau Park, and all year around on a thriving community of off-beat musicians who helped create an unlikely mecca of Canadian independent music centred around an often-packed downtown tavern named Le Mouton Noir (The Black Sheep).
Then, on our way back west, we visited Prince Edward County, a peninsula jutting out into Lake Ontario south of Belleville. Our hosts – the elder generation retired dairy farmers who remain active with the award-winning Black River Cheese co-op; the younger generation direct-market gardeners who have been featured in major Toronto newspapers – trace their Port Milford roots back a dozen generations to the arrival of United Empire Loyalists at the time of the American war of independence.
Successive generations have seen “The County” residents first eke out their livings from the thin soil they’d cleared of trees, to eventually supporting a thriving vegetable canning industry, to moving to small-scale dairy production thanks to the stability of supply management. Today, economies of scale have made dairy farms less and less viable, and they’re being replaced by land taken out of production, or by wineries and entrepreneurs aiming to capitalize on consumer preferences like local food and organic production.
In the finest Canadian tradition, the truest version of our travelogue was told by the beer.
In Glengarry, we swigged out of a jug reminiscent of the XXX illegal bootlegging days, except for the commercially-produced, Vankleek Hill-based “Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company” label – complete with antique tractor logo – and the quality of the ale. Conversation, meanwhile, flowed about trips by service clubs across the Ottawa River to the land of cheap beer in Quebec depanneaurs (convenience stores), to resell for fundraising purposes back in Ontario. It left an unmistakable taste of an agricultural region in which quality is important, but even more important is protecting the right to decide your own destiny, even at risk of upsetting the authorities.
In Prince Edward County, we were offered a choice between locally-brewed fare from a micro-brewery and imported European lager. The micro-brewery hinted at the reliance among many in The County’s local food community on Toronto-derived early retirement and tourism finances – both to kickstart and maintain small business viability. The imported fare, meanwhile, spoke to the increasing push among the region’s agri-culinary promoters to present a sophisticated image.
Many visitors from southwestern Ontario – having been exposed to micro-brewery labels like Wellington County, Stratford Pilsner, Neustadt and Formosa – could likely relate. At the Wakefield wedding, on the other hand, there seemed to be genuine bewilderment in the minds of a few southwestern Ontario visitors, when presented with the options available from the bar.
There, the entertainers – a local band that played a Hank Williams cover song but otherwise kept the dirt dancefloor packed with original country/punk – had recently performed at a “one-mile dinner” (as opposed to the more in-vogue “100-mile dinner” that you might see in Prince Edward County). At the dinner tables, the traditional champagne was replaced by a just-corked batch of bubbly honey mead. On tap from the keg – in a cash bar happily patronized by guests who could just as easily have brought some of that cheap Quebec depanneaur beer – were a honey lager and a honey ale. All were home-brewed.
Questions about Coors Lite went unanswered.
The wedding epitomized a region in which agricultural activities are so small-scale that they rely almost completely on neighbours and friends. By operating under the radar of health units and commodity groups (and liquor regulators), producers have essentially achieved the independence sought by Glengarry’s anti-government lobbyists.
The reality of farming here in southwestern Ontario – which is dominated by larger producers who rely on global or national markets and who have figured out how to capitalize on the government funding that often comes alongside increased regulations – is nothing like any of these regions.
Yet there are elements of all three types of agriculture in southwestern Ontario. All have value in a diverse agricultural economy, and government regulators would be wise to construct our infrastructure in such a way as to maintain a place for that diversity in the province’s future.