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From Oak Ridges to Empty Fields
Conscription in World War One, as well as the great depression several years later, resulted in the mass abandonment of farms everywhere, including on the ORM. Having been stripped of its trees years before, much of the land became a dustbowl and watercourses became clogged with silt and sand. Some witnesses to this devastation recognized the need for conservation and began speaking-out.
Biologist A. H. Richardson, wrote of the ORM in 1941, "A great part of the headwaters today is a barren waste. Its prosperous days of lumbering, settlement and substantial contribution to Canada's wealth are merely history, although history that is all too recent in terms of the exploitation and exhaustion of resources."
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