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Despite my personal preference of returning this column to one of discussing natural wonders, I am once again propelled to wax political about the proposed Bill 23: The More Houses Built Faster Act. Sorry, but there is a need to further explore this bizarre proposal.

As most of you now know, there is growing push-back to this omnibus Bill 23 that has openly declared war on environmental restrictions to developments; but you must realize that there are other ‘secret’ changes within it. One is the complete gutting of the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES).

The hand-cuffing and muzzling of conservation authorities from commenting or opposing proposed developments in wetlands or flood plains is bad enough, but to ensure they have no regulations to back them up, OWES is being ‘updated’ by the Ford Conservatives. To truly understand the impact of this, allow me to provide some background.

Prior to 1983, developers could, with enough money and silver-tongued lawyers, get permissions to alter or even destroy wetlands in order to facilitate their dreams of a strip mall on every corner. However, about the same time conservation organizations were raising red flags about the loss of wetlands in southern Ontario (so far over 85 per cent of all the wet areas left behind from the retreat of the Wisconsin glacier have now been destroyed).

The arguments put forth in favour of protecting wetlands were tenfold:

1. Wetlands (swamps, marshes, bogs and fens) are home to many species of wildlife, some quite rare and unique to the area;
2. Every food chain or food pyramid has a link to a wetland dependent species;
3. Wetlands provide flood control by absorbing the vast volume of water that can be suddenly released from rainfall or snowmelt;
4. Wetlands prevent erosion of streambanks and roadsides by slowing down the velocity of this flash flood rainfall;
5. Wetlands filter out just about everything from chunky debris to excess nutrients that flow in with dirty water from parking lots and hard surfaces… the outflow water is remarkably clean;
6. Wetlands cool the water as it seeps underground before being released downstream, and cool water supports life better than warm water (high oxygen levels and no algae);
7. Wetlands recharge groundwater supply, thus ensuring wells don’t have to be drilled deeper and deeper;
8. The production of biomass (every living thing considered as one lump) within a wetland equals a rainforest: a lot of plants means lots of oxygen released to the air, and equally a lot of carbon sequestered from the air;
9. Wetlands attract human users, who pay good money to go hunting, fishing, birdwatching, paddling and to do nature photography (not just in their gear, but buying gas, staying at resorts and hotels, and picking up food). No wetland means no visitors which means no money added to local economy.
10. Wetlands are recognized for their aesthetic value to our society. They are fun places to visit, they provide a boost to both our physical and spiritual needs. They are pleasing to look at and appreciate. Viewing a sunset over a sea of residential rooftops just isn’t the same as that sun viewed setting over acres of cattails.

One might think that with all of these proven values that wetlands would be revered. Unfortunately, just the opposite. “Too wet to build on, too shallow to boat on.” So wetlands sold for much less money than solid soil as “it was good for nothing.”

However, this cheaply acquired land soon became the sprawling grounds of poorly approved building plans. “Drain ‘em, fill ‘em in, put a little drainage ditch along the roadside, and shazam, we got ourselves a profitable little subdivision.” And within the following years there was a high demand for basement sump pumps, and occasionally a few homes were floated away in spring floods.

Land use planners needed a way to determine if a particular wetland was expendable or not. Along comes OWES, an evaluation and scoring system to level and equalize the field of comparing one wet area to another.

The provincial government put the Ministry of Natural Resources in charge of doing the evaluations, and the conservation authorities used the resultant reports to assist with permit approvals, or not.

OWES assigned a score to four main categories: social history and impacts; biological species present (plants and animals to prove biodiversity); hydrology and size; and to record any special features (such as rarity of wetland type and/or if any endangered or threatened species were there): 250 points max for each category. If the combined score broke 750 points, it was declared to be a Provincially Significant Wetland and ‘hands off everybody’ plus a 100-metre buffer zone around the wetland border.

Land developers were not pleased, not at all. And despite their lands being recognized as special and thereby receiving a break on their taxes, some landowners were not pleased to realize their property resale value has plummeted. But conservationists and environmentalists were very pleased to finally have a process of proving the values of retaining these wet areas.

Back to this proposed Bill 23. As part of the current government’s plan to build poor quality homes really fast on unsuitable lands, this interfering OWES and its Provincially Significant Wetland offspring had to be removed. And therefore hidden within Bill 23 is the plan to gut the evaluation system to the point it is meaningless.

By example, rather than allowing several associated wet areas be lumped together as a wetland complex, there will be a separate evaluation down on each mini-wetland. Oh look, it scores really low when all by itself, so fill it in … quickly!

Also, if an endangered species had been found in a wetland under the original OWES scoring, the area was almost automatically elevated to being Provincially Significant. The new ‘upgrade’ removes the recording of any endangered species. “Shh… I see nothing….”.

So by rendering the OWES program down to be a joke, conservation authorities and local planners have nothing to work with in determining permit issuing. Oh, and the proposed ‘upgrade’ takes the whole program out of MNR&F and allows private consultants hired by developers to do their own evaluations. Can you say fox guarding the hen house?

The sitting Members of Provincial Parliament need to get an education about a lot of things, especially about natural environmental functions. Wetlands provide many natural services for free … it you just leave them be.

 

 

 

Donald Johnson was there, camera in hand, as presidential candidate John F. Kennedy greeted a small boy during a campaign stop in Portland in 1960. A year later, he captured the crumbling Union Station clock tower as the ornate granite building was razed in the name of urban renewal. And in 1965, he was in the arena as Muhammad Ali knocked out Sonny Liston with his so-called “phantom punch” in the first round of their match in Lewiston.

During his time as a staff photographer for the Portland Press Herald, Johnson documented notable events in Maine history. But he also captured smaller moments that offer a compelling glimpse of life in Portland in the 1950s and 1960s.

Johnson, a self-taught photographer with a fondness for nature and the working waterfront, died Nov. 1. He was 92.

In September 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy campaigned in Maine before speaking at the Portland Stadium.

Union Station demolition

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During his career as a newspaper photographer, and later as a freelancer, Johnson had a knack for putting people at ease and making images that were timely and memorable, said John McCatherin, a former journalist and longtime friend who worked with Johnson on projects starting in the 1960s.

“He had a sense that I don’t think all photographers had, to know the moment,” McCatherin said.

Johnson was raised during the Depression in South Portland, where his father was a carpenter and his mother was a homemaker. He was the middle of seven children in a family with very little money. He developed an interest in photography when he was young and somehow saved up to buy a Kodak Brownie. He built a darkroom in his parents’ house so he could develop his own film.

“I don’t think he remembered a time when he wasn’t taking pictures,” said his son, Keith Johnson.

The 138-foot-tall clock tower at Portland’s Union Station crumbles to the ground as the station is demolished in 1961 to make way for a strip mall.

At the famous 1965 Lewiston fight, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston in the first round. It was the first time Muhammad Ali fought under this name, but local newspapers still referred to him as Cassius Clay.

The heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston in the first round of their title fight in Lewiston, on May 25, 1965.

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After graduating from South Portland High School in 1948, Johnson served in the Marine Corps for two years before returning to Maine to focus on his photography career.

In 1950, he was hired as a staff photographer at Guy Gannett Publishing, then the publisher of the Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram and Evening Express. He was just 20 years old. He worked at the newspaper until 1972, then did freelance work until his retirement at age 80. His family says he never stopped taking photos.

The 1966 Maine gubernatorial election pitted Kenneth M. Curtis against Republican Governor John Reed, who was seeking a second term. At a rally in October 1966, Curtis, left, with Sen. Edmund Muskie and Congressman William Hathaway listen to Sen. Robert Kennedy at a campaign rally in Portland.

Sen. Robert Kennedy in Portland in September 1966.

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During his career, Johnson documented the last steam engine to leave Maine, the state’s last log drive and the clearing of the site that would become the Cumberland County Civic Center. He photographed Mainers at work and at play, campaign events and boats on the waterfront. He made portraits of poet Carl Sandburg strumming a guitar in 1959, and of author E.B. White behind a typewriter in 1969.

Bette Davis, left, Carl Sandburg and Gary Merrill, Davis’s husband in 1959. Davis starred in “The World of Carl Sandburg,” a stage presentation of selections from Sandburg’s poetry and prose, and the show premiered in Portland.

Carl Sandburg, 1959

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Johnson received national attention and an award for a photo he took in February 1956 of a father and son embracing as their family farm burned down. He loved taking photos of nature and Portland after snowstorms.

He married in 1954 and he and his wife, Jane, raised their three children in Westbrook. After the couple divorced in 1980, he moved to Portland. He spent his last 40 years with his partner, Cheryl Cook. They lived together in Otisfield until Johnson moved to the veterans’ home in South Paris a year and a half ago.

When his children were young, Johnson would sometimes bring them along on assignments. Jill Detmer remembers her father waking her in what felt like the middle of the night to go down to the waterfront, where they would ride on tugboats. When she was around 10, she went with him and a reporter on the last passenger train trip from Maine to Montreal. They rode home in the caboose of a freight train.

Donald Johnson, 1962

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During those outings, Detmer saw how easily her father connected with people.

“When he was getting a photo together, he wasn’t demanding,” she said. “He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get people to do what he wanted.”

His son remembers tagging along with his father to the Press Herald building on Congress Street. Johnson was always on call and never hesitated to chase after a fire truck so he wouldn’t miss a shot, even if he had other plans.

“He lived photography first,” Keith Johnson said. “He had to document everything.”

Folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger plays before the launch of the sloop Clearwater in South Bristol in 1969. In 2004, the Clearwater was placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its groundbreaking role in the environmental movement.

In despair over the pollution of his beloved Hudson River,  folk music legend Pete Seeger came up with a plan to raise money and awareness by building a boat like the old 19th-century sloops that sailed the river. The sloop Clearwater, in the back center of photo, launched in South Bristol on May 17, 1969, making its maiden voyage from the Harvey Gamage Shipyard to the South Street Seaport in New York City – and eventually on to the Hudson River.

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, R-Maine, and Sen. Robert Dole, R-Kansas, praise the Nixon administration at a news conference in Portland on May 15, 1971. Dole, chairman of the Republican National Committee, was in Maine to speak at a fundraising dinner for Smith.

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McCatherin, who had been a reporter at the Kennebec Journal and Associated Press, hired Johnson for freelance assignments when he edited the company publication for New England Telephone. Johnson’s photos were always terrific, he said. McCatherin’s favorite – a spectacular color photograph of the sun rising over Cadillac Mountain taken from a plane – still hangs in his office.

During the holiday season, McCatherin and Johnson traveled the state by car as Johnson took photographs of people, places and equipment for the telephone company to use throughout the year. They would gab all the way from Portland to Madawaska and back, McCatherin said.

“It was always a treat when we’d finish up the trip and a few days later I’d get proof sheets from Don,” he said. “I would sit there and smile because it was always great stuff.”

After several of his close friends died suddenly in the 1970s, Johnston took up running. He loved running, even in winter, and kept it up until he was 80, his daughter said. When she lived in San Francisco, he visited each year so they could run the 7.4-mile Bay to Breakers race together.

President John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, in Orono, where he received an honorary degree.

President John F. Kennedy received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Maine, Orono on Oct. 19, 1963, a month before he was assassinated in Dallas.

Jill Detmer and her father, Donald Johnson, in 1995 at the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco.

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Johnson loved to be outside and would spend hours waiting for the perfect nature shot, unbothered by the weather conditions. He climbed Mount Katahdin, went to Gulf Hagas and traveled Down East, camera in hand. He and his son would go fishing, but Johnson was always more interested in taking photos than catching fish.

“He never went anywhere without a camera, ever,” Keith Johnson said.

Johnson bought a camp on Little Sebago in 1971 and loved spending time there with his family. He visited for the last time about 10 days before he died and he was happy to be back, his son said.

“The older he got, the more he valued time,” he said. “He didn’t want anyone to be unhappy. He was always looking on the bright side of life.”

One of Maine’s last log drives

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Throughout his life, Johnson was curious about the people and world around him. It wasn’t uncommon for him to wander off during a hike because he he had spotted something he wanted to photograph. When he and his daughter went to Iceland, Johnson insisted they get off the main roads to really explore the country.

He also was curious about the lives of his three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, Detmer said.

“He was very good at listening and asked incredible questions,” she said. “I felt very important to him.”

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When Johnson moved into the nursing home, he wasn’t allowed to have a camera with him. It drove him crazy to be without one, but his children made sure to have a camera ready to use on trips to camp or other outings.

“He had to be a photographer,” his son said. “That was just in his blood.”

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