Credit Valley Conservation Authority: Nature/Culture/Nature

The Credit River flows from its headwaters outside Orangeville at the Niagara Escarpment into Lake Ontario, and the river’s entire watershed drains close to a thousand square kilometres. The area—with the river as a main artery—contains unique landscapes, from farms to moraines, and nourishes a vast array of biodiversity, from individual species like the rainbow trout, to larger ecosystems, like the community of Streetsville in Mississauga. The river and its watershed also sustain a rich history that reaches back thousands of years to the Huron-Wendat and Seneca peoples, and more recently to the Mississauga, an Anishinaabe-speaking peoples who inhabited the region when French fur traders set up a trading post at Port Credit. When Great Britain decided to colonize the area now known as southern Ontario in the late eighteenth century, they purchased land from the Mississauga, including the Credit River watershed region. Today, the watershed remains part of the traditional land of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, a nation that continues to practice stewardship of the waters, and in 2016 filed an Aboriginal Title Claim to the Waters within the Traditional Lands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit.11Joan Holmes & Associates Inc. for the Mississauga of the New Credit, Aboriginal Title Claim to the Waters within the Traditional Lands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, March 2015, http://mncfn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MNC-Aboriginal-Title-Report.pdf.

In the 1940s, Ontario was experiencing the impacts of environmental mismanagement by the early (re)settlers who deforested, drained, irrigated, and cleared land. With the Mississaugas of the New Credit formally relocated outside of their traditional territory and provincial and municipal governments looking to establish new modes of stewardship, the Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) Authority was established in 1954 to protect and manage the watershed. Today, Ontario has thirty-six Conservation Authorities across the province (thirty-one in the south and five in the north), which were legally established under the 1946 Conservation Authorities Act (CAA). Conservation Authorities (CAs) are semi-autonomous non-profit organizations. They are tied to Ontario’s government structure by way of the CAA and a funding scheme that levies about half of their funding from municipalities. CAs are run by a board of directors, and work closely with municipalities, landowners, environmental and other non-government organizations, and the province.

Conservation Authorities, like the CVC, now seek to balance human needs with a flourishing natural environment. All thirty-six CAs share the same four objectives: to safeguard rivers, lakes, and streams; to protect woodlands, wetlands, and natural habitats; to protect life and property from natural hazards like flooding; and to provide opportunities for the public to enjoy nature. They meet these objectives through a variety of land-management tools like erosion control, reforestation, and groundwater monitoring, as well as by creating windbreaks, drainage areas, wildlife habitats, and wetlands. These programs are undertaken in collaboration with different partners, and by self-initiated grants, in addition to municipal levies. CAs vary in size and funding depending on their population base and their ability to secure partnership funding. In 2017, the province updated the CAA to strengthen protection of the watersheds, and to embolden CAs to work on climate change adaptation. These legislative changes also included updates to funding mechanisms by allowing CAs to alter and adapt their own fee system.

Today the Credit River watershed is home to 1,420 plant species, 264 bird species, seventy-nine fish species, fifty-five mammal species, seventeen amphibian species, five turtle species. With about one million human beings living in the area, it is also one of the most densely populated areas of Canada. As a consequence, the CVC is one of the largest CAs in the province in terms of staff and resources. This enables them to run numerous programs, and to conduct research on the local flora and fauna. They also monitor air and water quality at about 175 forest, wetland, and stream sites across their land base.

Beyond land management, the CVC also prioritizes the links between nature and culture. It owns and oversees nine cultural heritage sites and six archaeological sites. For example, hikers can walk through the ruins of Ontario’s limestone industry at the Limehouse Conservation Area or walk down an old railway line on the Elora Cataract Trailway. Similarly, visitors to CVC lands can stroll along river trails that were significant trade routes, visit sacred sites of Indigenous peoples, and also visit areas where early European (re)settlement is still visible in the form of old mills and farm ruins. These areas thus double as nature conservation sites and culture preservation sites, grafting together a unique landscape experience.

Stewarding culture as part of the natural landscape is not an objective laid out in the 1946 CAA. In fact, the legislation does not make a single mention of culture or heritage. The CAs’ work in this area is not through any specific legislated mandate, but through their work as protectors and stewards of the land. However, it is not always easy to preserve heritage when it belongs to so many people and its pieces are split among different municipalities: the Credit River Watershed includes nine of them. Importantly, the nine municipalities are all members of the CVC, and councillors from each are appointed to the CVC’s Board of Directors. By bringing together all the people and resources of the watershed, the CVC is then able to identify priority areas for protecting the landscape—including its history—although as of yet, the governing structure of the CVC does not include representation of the watershed’s Indigenous stewards.

Since 1956, the CVC has been envisioning a trail along the entirety of the Credit River that would bolster local tourism and emphasize the cultural significance of the river. To bring this 113-kilometre trail into existence, the CVC has formally partnered with Credit Valley Heritage Society (CVHS), a non-governmental organization under the Ontario Historical Act, whose primary mission is to promote conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the Credit River watershed. Together the CVC, CVHS, and roughly fifty other collaborators are working to establish a cultural heritage trail. This footpath is significant for the CVC because it aims to fulfill the CAA’s mandate of protecting and restoring land by preserving nature with culture. Land’s memory stretches across time, carrying the past into the present. This is why the mission of the CVC states: “It’s our nature to conserve and our future to shape.”