Open hearts

Milford always offers a warm and gracious greeting whatever the season or event. On Saturday afternoon, under blue skies and caressed by a warm May breeze, Milford was the ideal host once again—this time to celebrate the County’s remaining glorious days free from industrial wind factories.

It was an event billed as a community rally against a provincial government and the plundering horde of developers intent on defacing the pristine skyline of Prince Edward County. Most were familiar with the facts and understand that intermittent energy is wasteful, needless and robs consumers to enrich developers. But Saturday in Milford provided an opportunity to meet the folks who have been doing the heavy lifting in terms of research, writing and spreading the message.

All the information was there.

The stories of families forced to leave their homes because they could no longer tolerate the never-ending hum, flicker and swoosh of nearby wind turbines was ably told by Dr. Roy McMurtry. The ruinous financial story of wind energy, on families and on provincial coffers, was explained by Parker Gallant, a former banker and director of Energy Probe.

The horror these massive whirling devices wreak upon wildlife was explained in patient detail by Myrna Wood of the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists. The impact on property value story. The destruction of endangered species habitat story. It was all there in clear and vivid detail.

The story of the sheer scale of the collective industrial impact of these looming factories was depicted, in part, by a seemingly endless run of yellow caution tape that began in the parking lot of Mt. Tabor, shot through The Shed, and on toward the back of the fairgrounds. Another run of yellow tape ran perpendicular, representing the blade sweep of an industrial wind turbine. The scale of these machines, even for those familiar with them, still has the power to overwhelm.

Then there was the music. Likely few of the hundreds who gathered in Milford expected the calibre of talent assembled to entertain them on Saturday. Sarah McDermott and Chris Brown live on Wolfe Island and have witnessed the destruction of lives, property value and friendships as a result of industrialization of their quiet rural community. Brown is a founding member of Bourbon Tabernacle Choir and has performed with the Barenaked Ladies, the Tragically Hip and the Rheostatics, among many others. He has battled actively, including mounting an Ontario Municipal Board appeal, against the turbines that now define his island home.

Eric Schenkman is co-founder of the Spin Doctors, whose album Pocketful of Kryptonite reached the top of the Billboard charts and was certified five-times platinum. Schenkman owns a farm in Prince Edward County and, like many, initially thought wind energy might be a good thing. But the more he learned the less sense it made to him that beautiful Ontario farmland and untouched nature preserves should be sacrificed in this way for an intermittent electricity source that is neither clean, nor does it displace a single electron of fossil-fuel generated electricity.

From a shared passion about their homes and environment Schenkman, Brown and McDermott formed Openhearts Society.

“This is the first group I’ve been in since then that has that same feeling, making music about our surroundings: things that make us happy, things that are frustrating,” said Schenkman in a statement on the band’s website. “This music comes from a place where I breathe, where I live. It’s a privilege to do work like this; it only happens a couple of times in a lifetime.”

Openhearts Society delivered a magical afternoon of music and stories in Milford—including special performances by Emily Fennell and Brian Barlow. The band performed songs mostly from their album Love in Time—a collection of music in response to the industrialization of rural countryside by industrial wind energy.

Many gathered around the Miller wagon were likely unaware that some of the best and hardest working musicians this country has to offer had come to Milford to perform for them.

That’s okay, according to Schenkman—he didn’t bring his band to Milford to impress his neighbours. He did it to share the same concerns they have, expressed in the best way he knows how.

“It’s is what I could do,” said Schenkman, in response to the question why he mounted this special concert. “Everyone here is doing what they can do to let more people know that industrial wind turbines are a mistake for this community and for any rural community. This is what I could do.”

rick@wellingtontimes.ca