The Woodstock-like anti-development festival near Shelburne that was held Sunday, called Foodstock, magnified how rural Ontario has become a battleground for diverse ideologies, extreme self-interests, and total misunderstandings. They directly involve — or ignore — agriculture in ways it’s never known before.
Foodstock promotions drew unabashedly from 1969’s iconic Woodstock Music and Art Fair, from its name, to its logo, which borrows heavily from the stylized peace dove perched on the equally stylized guitar neck.
But heading into the weekend, it was clear that bird had flown. Organizers said funds raised for Foodstock “will be used in the fight against the proposed destruction of thousands of acres of Ontario farmland.†However, I think the funds will be used to try keeping a quarry out of someone’s backyard. Foodstock would have had much more credibility if it was clear the farmland defence angle was based on the threat to agriculture, rather than on transplanted Torontonians’ distaste for gravel trucks clogging highways leading to weekend getaways.
I write about this in my Urban Cowboy column in the Guelph Mercury.
