My Personal Environmental History

October 5, 2022 By: Keith Gracey

My Grandmother and Grandfather were born in 1936 & 38, respectively; they were both born in the town where they currently live; this includes my Grandfather, who is still living in the house where he was born. They live on the same 50-acre farm my family has owned since 1848. My Grandfather purchased the family farm from his father in 1956. As farmers, the environment has always played a prominent role in their life. However, it is not the natural environment; most of where the farm is located would have been forested when colonists first arrived. Since the land had already been cleared when they began farming, their environmental impact wouldn’t have been as significant as those who initially cleared it. However, they were using industrial equipment to farm their land, which is an added environmental impact beyond previous methods. For the last 25 years, they have rented their land to a local farmer. During his career, my Grandfather also worked in construction for the government, primarily on highway construction and as a private dump truck operator.

My parents both grew up in the Niagara region. My father’s early life is represented in the paragraph above. My mother was the first generation of her family born in Canada; her parents were both born in the Netherlands and moved to Canada in 1954. My mother grew up in Wainfleet, ON, where her family owned and operated greenhouses; the creation and heating of greenhouses are generally very energy intensive. When my parents first married, my father worked in highway construction for the provincial government, and my mother worked labour and clerical jobs; after this initial period, my parents decided to build their own greenhouses. In 1989 they began building a 1-acre greenhouse and a home on a 16-acre plot of land. Building and heating the greenhouse was once again very energy intensive. It also required the creation of two new ponds for irrigation, the larger of which was approximately 30 feet by 400 feet and a depth of roughly 20 feet. They also decided that the rest of the 16 acres should be flat and turned into a grass lawn because they thought it looked better; this limits the biodiversity in the area and is generally an inefficient use of land. They operated the greenhouse until 2002, when bankruptcy caused us to move; at this time, we moved into a smaller single-family home on half an acre, reducing our environmental impact considerably.

My personal environmental history has seen less large-scale impact than the previous two generations of my family, the reasons for this being that I’ve never cleared the land of natural resources such as trees, and I have never started or operated a company which requires a significant environmental impact. However, through some changes in our society, I have made a more substantial impact through things such as personal travel. For instance, my Grandfather has never been on an airplane, whereas I usually am a few times a year. Since this is a very energy-intensive activity, my environmental impact is higher. I’ve also served for over ten years in the Royal Canadian Navy. While I do not bear responsibility for all pollution created while I was on board, my contribution to it and my overall support of the institution carry an environmental impact.