From Waste Land to Canada's Tobacco Production Heartland: Landscape Change in Norfolk County, Ontario

Abstract

The cultural landscape of Norfolk County displays the remnants of numerous cycles of transformation. In the mid-19th century, the region was the hub of the Lake Erie timber trade and a major supplier to America's growing urban markets. By the start of the 20th century, much of the forest was gone, many farms were abandoned and the region was plagued by severe soil erosion. Within a few decades the problems of a degraded environment and depressed local economy were long forgotten: the Ontario government targeted the sandy 'waste lands' with a reforestation programme, and the introduction of flue-cured tobacco in 1922 marked the beginning of an era of unprecedented prosperity. Conceptualizing landscape change as a continuum rather than discrete episodes allows us to expose the multitude and complexity of human responses to perceived environmental problems and earlier interventions in the land. Taking a longer historical perspective also highlights how natural phenomena (i.e. storm events), economic choices, government decisions, and the unexpected outcomes of human intervention all played a role in the creation of waste land in the Norfolk Sand Plain and its subsequent transformation into Canada's tobacco production heartland.