[All] thanks to GREN

Mon Jan 4 17:17:29 EST 2010

                Thanks to the tremendous support from GREN, at a critical time, this group has continued to bring this issue forward in spite of the lack of municipal concern to change an environmentally poor plan.  We now seem to have a welcome shift in media coverage. The municipal backlash has so harmed our other groups that we have been impotent to support this group publicly. Thank you so much for your valuable support and lets have a great New Year for all of our environmental concerns.. Norah

Lead editorial Jan 4th 2010 on Matt and HCBP 

                Softspoken crusader
                     GuelphMercury.com - Editorials - Softspoken crusader

             Matt Soltys was a key player in one of the biggest news stories of 2009 in Guelph. His character is what attracted us. 
 There
were certainly others among his cohorts in the environmental movement
who stood out as leaders of the Hanlon Creek Business Park
Occupation—who were articulate, sincere, vocal and prominent in the
cause, just as our Male Newsmaker of the Year was. 
 While
Soltys, a fifth-generation Guelphite, didn’t particularly want to stand
out from the crowd of activists, he did. Among a subculture noted for
bombast, tirades and confrontational tactics, the 27-year-old stood out
for his calm, peaceful demeanour, his careful, soft-spoken articulation
of his beliefs, and for his genuine nature. 
 The humble, shy
qualities one might think would keep the glare of the spotlight off
Soltys, were actually the qualities that attracted the light to him. In
an atmosphere of tension and anger, his peacefulness and friendliness
were noticeable. 
 “I want to be someone who future generations
can be proud of having as an ancestor,” Soltys said. He wants to be
remembered as someone who lived wholeheartedly and uncompromisingly
according to his principles, as one who acted to make the world a
better place, instead of paying lip-service to the idea. 
 The
fact Soltys actually lives in a forest in a “tipi-like” structure, even
during the winter months, is further evidence of the young man’s
commitment to live an alternative life, and makes him a more intriguing
personality. 
 While it’s fair to assume most men his age are
dreaming about owning their dream car and a house in the suburbs,
Soltys is taking a step back in time, back to when struggling to
survive off the land was the means of livelihood and when understanding
how the land could nourish and heal was essential to survival. His
credibility as a defender of the land is no doubt heightened through
his back-to-the-land lifestyle. 
 In 2009, Soltys proved to be a
man willing to put his beliefs into action, even if doing so led to his
arrest. He proved himself worthy of being singled out as a central
figure in Guelph’s 2009.

Front page of the Guelph Mercury on Dec 31/09 .. as newsmaker man of the year. 

Rob O’Flanagan  Dec 31/09

            roflanagan at guelphmercury.com

             GUELPH—Matt
Soltys does not want to be the public face of the Hanlon Creek Business
Park occupation, nor does he want to be singled out as a figurehead of
environmental activism in Guelph. 
 The shy and slight young
man, with a scruffy beard and a whispery voice, is part of a group of
environmental activists who disdain hierarchical leadership structures.
Instead, they embrace consensus decision-making models and the power of
collectivism. 
 The group made many headlines in 2009 after
occupying the proposed Hanlon Creek Business Park site for 18 days,
beginning in late July. They halted construction of a project that was
first conceived in the early 1990s, long before the fear of global
warming became widespread, and well before Ontario initiated policies
to curb urban sprawl. 
 While he doesn’t want to be in the
spotlight, spotlights have followed Soltys in recent years, and
journalists have tended to quote him, mainly because his voice is an
articulate and knowledgeable one when it comes to environmental issues
and the causes he champions.
 His was often the voice behind the
megaphone during Hanlon Creek occupation rallies in 2009, which makes
Soltys the Guelph Mercury’s Male Newsmaker of the Year.
 One of
the most confrontational and relentless anti-development protests in
recent Guelph memory, the occupation involved a fluctuating number of
30 to 60 activists who set up an encampment on a patch of raw land
slated to become an industrial park in the city’s southwest end. 
 Even
after the occupation was halted by the courts, the protest continued.
And there is every indication the pressure will stay on in 2010. 
 “Those
kinds of experiences, where a piece of land is liberated from
development, and from authority, are very unique experiences,” said
Soltys, 27, who expressed a reluctance to be interviewed for this story
because of his belief in the collective voice as opposed to the
individual one. He would only consent if other voices among his cohorts
were included.
 “To be a part of occupying land like that is an
altogether different feeling than anything else in society,” he said,
softly and without haste. “It feels the way life should be all the
time, where we kind of live by creating the rules that govern our
communities; where we can collectively draw up groundrules, work
together and challenge each other to abide by them.
 “It’s one of those experiences where we see the best of humanity, I think,” he added. 
 A
fifth-generation Guelphite, Soltys is used to roughing it. He currently
calls home a borrowed “tipi-like tent,” set up on a friend’s forested
land “upriver of Guelph.” He earns a living through “temporary seasonal
work,” but most of the work he does is unpaid, he indicated. 
 Ann
Soltys, Matt’s mother, said her son is determined to live according to
his principles. Tom and Ann Soltys, who live in Listowel, have one
other son who is studying to be a chartered accountant. 
 “He’s
always been very committed to living what he believes in, which is
staying close to the earth and not being a part of the usual society,”
Ann Soltys said of Matt. “That is what he believes in, and he really
lives his beliefs. He’s quite happy living that lifestyle. We don’t
really have a problem with it.”
 She said she sometimes worries about her son’s lifestyle, especially when he is living on the land in the winter. 
 “But
really when you see how happy he is with his life, and how peaceful,
you can’t really question that too much,” she said. “He seems perfectly
happy living without having what we think he should have.”
 Her
son, she added, began taking part in political/environmental activism
when he was in high school, and was part of the Canada World Youth
program in 2002, traveling to Indonesia. That experience had a major
influence on him. 
 Matt had a normal upbringing, she said, and was “never in any real trouble.” 
 Soltys
said he was influenced by his grandfather, an avid outdoorsman who
introduced him to the complex ecosystems of nature when he was a boy.
Interacting with the natural world, he said, continues to inspire a
sense of wonder, love and spirituality within him. 
 Being the victim of bullying made him the champion of the underdog.
 “I
was often the kid, the little one, who would get picked on,” he said.
“So, I developed a natural affinity for the underdog. In the case of
the business park, the earth is the underdog in this whole industrial
system. I have a sense of empathy and compassion for it.” 
 Maintaining
the “best of humanity” is difficult because of the nature of the
society we live in, he said. A capitalist system is structured in such
a way that “it’s very effective at draining us, draining our spirits.” 
 It
is essential to fight against those draining forces—to act on one’s
principles and try to change the world, even if it seems like a losing
battle. 
 “I think we need to be huge sources of inspiration for
those who come after us,” he said. “I want to be someone who future
generations can be proud of having as an ancestor.” 
 Like
Soltys, Shabina Lafleur-Gangji, 20, is part of the group LIMITS—Land Is
More Important Than Sprawl. The Guelph-based organization is dedicated
to protecting environmentally significant land from development. 
 “I
was just seeing the same result that I was seeing a lot of the time,”
Lafleur-Gangji said, explaining why protesters felt it was necessary to
occupy the Hanlon Creek land in order to protect it. “I would see
people work really hard against a development and the developer would
still push it through. I found that personally pretty heartbreaking.”
 LIMITS
members formed an attachment to Hanlon Creek lands a few years before
the occupation, both through the study of the property’s forests and
through regular explorations of the land’s natural features. 
 Lafleur-Gangji
said she wanted to show her community that there were alternative,
peaceful ways to fight the development. “I couldn’t watch that land be
torn apart,” she said. 
 Soltys said he and his confederates in
the anti-business park movement had watched for many years as a
succession of concerned citizens formulated convincing arguments that
warned against going ahead with the project. But they were consistently
ignored, he said—rejected by a dubious rationale that the business park
is necessary if Guelph is to comply with the province’s Places to Grow
legislation, or that the project has already been approved by council
and can not be reversed. 
 “A lot of people . . . feel that in
this time of climate change and social unrest in different places, we
can’t just let those arguments be justifications for further sprawl,”
Soltys said. 
 Despite his wishes to subordinate himself to the
group, Soltys has garnered much attention in earth-activist circles and
in the media.
 In 2005, he was among a handful of Canadian young
people invited to address the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
The next year, at the age of 24, he was arrested and charged with
mischief for spray-painting activist graffiti on downtown Guelph
locations. He pleaded guilty and received an absolute discharge. 
 He
hosts Healing the Earth, a weekly program on the University of Guelph’s
CFRU radio station, and has written several guest columns for the
Mercury. 
 Soltys started the group Groundwork, dedicated to the
creation of community gardens and the preservation of greenspaces in
Guelph, and was an organizer of the Apple Seed Collective, which
gathered fruit from local trees and donated it to a drop-in centre for
the poor. 
 He was also a lead spokesperson for a group of young
squatters who, in 2008, took up residence on city property near the
intersection of Stone Road and Victoria Road North, until they were
evicted. The action was a kind of social experiment in alternative
living. 
 The occupation of the Hanlon Creek land began on July
27. A dramatic court injunction process ensued, involving a $5-million
lawsuit launched by the city and one of its partner developers, Belmont
Equity Holdings, against the occupiers. It was later reduced to
$150,000. There was also a $30,000 lawsuit filed by two activists
against the Guelph Police for alleged defamation and breach of charter
rights. 
 At the heart of the Hanlon Creek issue is an
endangered species that may or may not reside on the business park
lands. The protest spurred the Ministry of Natural Resources to demand
more thorough studies to determine if the land is a Jefferson
salamander habitat. 
 “People were always a little tense because
you never knew when you were going to get arrested,” Lafleur-Gangji
said. “We still had our whole, entire life going on. People had to go
to work or school. We had to deal with the lawsuit and everything. It
was very overwhelming.” 
 Soltys said it is only when people
come together as community that controversial development can be
stopped. Broad-based community activism brought a stop to the proposed
Site 41 landfill in Simcoe County, and has halted business park
development in Brantford, he said. 
 “My hope lies in more
people recognizing the need for that,” he said. “I think a lot of
people know very well the futility of always playing by the rules that
are set out for us.”

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