Canada: Composting is part of Upper Canada College History

“I had noticed in Toronto how people put their grass clippings and old plants in heaps outside their houses on the streets of Forest Hill. We warmly invited the garbage men to save themselves the trouble and dump all green waste near our compost heaps, in a secluded part of the UCC grounds by Tom’s garden.”
—13th Principal, Cedric Sowby 1948-1964

By Cedric W Sowby
A Family Writ Large
Longman Canada
1971

Excerpt:

Sowby writes:

Soon after our arrival in Canada, the Ontario Deputy Minister of Education, Dr. Althouse, invited me to go to see him, and told me that a mutual friend, the Director of Education for Northern Ireland, had written to tell him about the agricultural work done at St. Columba’s. Dr. Althouse invited me to spend a day with one of the Department’s inspectors who visited schools that had agricultural programmes. I had some very interesting days, but found that most of them were in country districts, and the work they were doing was not suitable for Upper Canada College in the city.

Alan Stephen also had heard about the farm at St. Columba’s, largely run by the boys. We had many talks about Norval, but soon saw that it would be quite impossible to run a similar farm at Norval. In the first place, much of the Ontario farming takes place either in the short spring term or during the long summer holiday. It is almost essential that a school farm be joined to the school buildings, so that boys can take their turn to get up early to feed the animals, or milk the cows and do other odd jobs at odd moments during the day. Norval is over thirty miles from the College.

Also there is a full programme of sports and extracurricular activities at U.C.C., and there is very little time for anything else. Many school games are played on Saturdays throughout the year.

I got the impression that, while many of the city boys enjoyed the country during the summer and during the skiing season, and some worked on their fathers’ hobby farms, practically none of them thought of agriculture as a future for themselves. Unfortunately the farmer seemed to many of them to be a backward creature who was content to wallow ankle-deep in mud, when he was not singing hillbilly songs on the porch. He would be much smarter to live in the city and be a middleman or better still, run a supermarket. There seemed to be very little appreciation of agriculture as the basis of our civilization. It appeared to me to be a most unrealistic attitude to life.

It was quite obvious to us that agriculture, forestry and kindred subjects would never be a major activity at U.C.C., but Steve and I felt that it was most important to heed the warnings of Lord Boyd-Orr and others about the growing dangers of a world food shortage and our duty to conserve the natural resources of the soil, the forest, the water, the ocean bed – the basic things of life which are forgotten by many city dwellers.

It had been related how Louis Bromfield lectured at the College, and held almost the whole of the Upper School spell-bound with his account of the farm in Ohio which he saved by conservation, after it had been nearly ruined by the unintelligent use of chemical fertilizers and by cutting all the trees, which in turn caused the springs to dry up.

We started a Young Farmers’ Club, which did not begin to flourish until it changed its name to the Lands and Forests Club, when it became one of the most popular of the clubs.

One way of bringing city-bred boys into touch with the rhythm of nature presented itself soon after I arrived. After all the conservation we had done with interest and enthusiasm in Ireland, I was shaken when almost everyone I met in October, 1949 said to me, “Don’t you love the smell of burning leaves?” and added proudly, “It is typical of the Canadian fall.” It seemed to me to be symbolic of the superficiality of our urban civilization which has destroyed so much of the earth’s soil, and its natural food.

I asked Tom Aikman not to burn any more leaves and suggested that we should start composting them, if only as an object lesson. He was interested to read in various books and magazines about the St. Columba’s farm, run successfully on organic lines during the war. I had to admit, of course, that there we were able to use all green weeds on a large scale, because of willing boy labour, and also the manure from the farm animals as well as some kitchen waste.

I had noticed in Toronto how people put their grass clippings and old plants in heaps outside their houses in the streets of Forest Hill. We warmly invited the garbage men to save them selves trouble and dump all green waste near to our compost heaps in a secluded part of the U.C.C. grounds by Tom’s garden. This they were pleased to do, as it saved them many journeys to the dump. They obviously thought us kind, but slightly mad. They were very careful to dump only garden waste, except that some broken glass got into it and necessitated careful screening later.

The Canadian climate of dry summers and frozen winters slows down the compost maturing process. In the warm, damp climate of Ireland, everything is apt to turn to compost. One Rector there had the problem of fungus growing on the walls in his living-room. Not being able to achieve anything of this kind, we were advised by local conservationists to introduce some red wiggler worms into the compost. They were natives of Texas, and were twice as big, twice as prolific and many times more active than the Canadian worms, which are discouraged from exercising their natural functions by the large numbers of fishermen. The red wigglers made a good start, but did not survive either the Canadian winter or the local fishermen. The race soon died out.

We then discovered that a group of men were making a comfortable income out of invading our grounds during the night, collecting all the dew worms to sell to fishermen for live bait. We hired a night watchman.

However, in due course the compost heap matured and Tom’s men spread the finished compost on the games fields and many people were kind enough to say that the turf was much improved. over time

In addition to the beneficial result to the soil, the compost making was of good educational value. I was able to use it each year as an illustration in religious knowledge classes, when the question of science and religion came up. We used to consider the wisdom and the perfect efficiency of nature, and the way it gradually develops and changes, all of which suggested careful planning and an all-wise Planner. We thought of the rhythm of nature, and of the seasons, considering the life of a tree – the birth in spring, maturity, the seeding and the many ingenious methods of spreading the seed, death in the winter and again, after winter, the rebirth – resurrection with new life in the spring. We also reflected that in nature, the waste products, not only of animals, but of vegetation, were used for other purposes and became the very good which the soil required to maintain its fertility.

Source: https://cityfarmer.info/canada-composting-is-part-of-upper-canada-college-history/