It was the Nazi way of waging war – destroy anything that's symbolic of creativity or Mother Russia.
The fire was supposed to torch his manuscripts, his 22,000 books, and the candle-lit table where the great author spun out such masterpieces as War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
But a wonderful thing happened. A bucket brigade of local peasants – some who couldn't read or write and others who had never even heard of Tolstoy – rushed forward and put out the blaze, thereby preserving Yasnaya Polyana for them and us.
They saved it, they said, because "a great soul" had once lived there.
This is what happened in Mississauga last month.
A bucket brigade of citizens, the Lakeview Ratepayers Association, rushed forward and poured cold water on the idea that building another power plant in the heart of an urbanized area is a good idea.
In the process, they saved the soul of this city, our magnificent waterfront.
Sure, others will take some credit for stopping the replacement of the Lakeview Generating Station with a gas-fired power plant, and so they should.
But it was the residents who carried the heaviest buckets of water over the past few years. They held meetings and drew up plans for revitalization of the lands in the southeastern section of our city, and they called on the governments at Queen's Park and City Hall to do the right thing.
They were sick of having short-sighted planning shoved up their you-know-whats for who-knows-how-long.
Ironically, the Lakeview that was best known as home to Ontario's dirtiest coal-fired "power" plant might now be more famous as the place where people "power" triumphed.
This landmark victory might even redefine the word progress. Was it following the unguided rules of the industrial age and building something that poured sooty pollutants on the citizens of this community for half a century?
Was it putting the thirsty power demands of a province ahead of the health concerns of the locals?
Was it erecting a leviathan of a plant that kept residents separated from the beauty of their waterfront?
Was it about ignoring other alternative power sources – wind, solar, etc. – and replacing one evil (coal) with another (gas)?
Progress is about installing a strict policy of energy conservation in this province.
It's about researching alternative power sources and committing to use them.
It's about linking communities to their natural environs.
It's about giving citizens a say in how their lives and their children’s lives should be lived.
The Lakeview Ratepayers Association didn't try and change the course of history in Mississauga by their actions, but that's exactly what they did.
The compelling narrative of our time is how we continue to do business without further bruising our earth.
The Lakeview residents have created a new standard when it comes to political involvement.
They didn't protest, wave banners, go on the talk shows, or bad-mouth the politicians, the bureaucrats, or the process. They saw a wrong and helped right it. They believed the time had come to shake off the rusted remnants of the industrial age.
Our waterfronts should be sacred ground, and treated thusly. Those environs where nature and community could come together shouldn’t be bulldozed away to add a few more megawatts to our power grid.
Mississauga is trying to alter its image as a sprawling suburban mess with monochromatic housing developments, plugged-up highways, and a sterile downtown core. Place-making principles are now part of the planning process. City Hall is doing a giant re-think.
There’s even more irony in all this: there might never have been a need to redo our core if it was situated in its natural setting in the first place – on the lands once occupied by the Lakeview Generating Station.
Last month, the political bigwigs at Queen's Park and City Hall gathered on our waterfront to announce that the province would not put a gas-fired power plant on the old Lakeview site.
It opens the door to the possibility of a "city-developed waterfront plan," even the one hatched by the Lakeview Ratepayers Association and partially endorsed by city hall in February.
"A great day for lakefront," sang the Toronto Star in a 72-point headline last month.
Jim Tovey, president of the Lakeview Ratepayers Association, echoed those thoughts.
John Danahy, a University of Toronto professor, and the landscape architect who formulated the ratepayers' plan, calls the decision "the poster child for smart growth" in this province.
The newly minted Energy Minister George Smitherman was on hand to pay homage to the ratepayers' group, and "officially" eliminate the chances of the community – which has been industrialized since the late 19th century – having to support any kind of power plant ever again.
The 800-member strong Lakeview group hopes to see this area (more than two and a half times the size of Exhibition Place in Toronto) become a mixed-use community of medium-rise buildings, residential, employment and educational sites. The potential is enormous. The chances for an unbroken network of public parks, walkable beaches, public skating rinks, entertainment complexes, and even a freshwater aquarium that would rival any in the world, are very real. It will all be linked to light rail transit.
But first, some perspective.
I grew up under the smokestacks and breathed in the toxic refuse from the "Four Sisters" for years. It was the industrial age. We were schooled in the need for power. Cheap and plentiful, was the mantra. It would help drive our industrial machine, and light our homes. It would give Ontario a leg-up on the competition when it came to industrial growth.
What if the crackle of commerce produced canker-tainted fish, or eliminated swimming in Lake Ontario as part of a child's summer pastime?
What if NO TRESPASSING signs and barbwire fences stopped our route to the lake?
We were told that business interests and those of the environment could never live in sync.
A little eco pain meant financial gain.
There were suspicions, however, that something was wrong. Were the spoils of cheap power worth it?
The community of Lakeview was choking in coal dust.
Some shrugged it off. Lakeview was Palookaville – the mistake by the lake.
It’s where welfare recipients lived in tarpaper shacks from the old army barracks days and where roving bands of toughs ran the streets. They populated places called the "Bucket of Blood" or "The Gallows."
Heck, the citizens burned the welfare minister in effigy at the corner of Cawthra and Lakeshore during the depths of the Great Depression. Lakeview was the setting for a Faulkner novel – unkempt people living on useless land. The old rifle range was the perfect place to locate a power plant.
It spewed its filth for 50 years until the present Liberal government under Premier Dalton McGuinty said it was time to eliminate coal-fired plants.
Both the new and old generation of Lakeview residents cast a cynical eye and said, "sure, show us.”
They did. In 2005, the plant was closed. Two years later, the walls (and the Four Sisters) came tumbling down.
But talk soon turned to a replacement plant – gas-fired. The Lakeview residents reeled, ready to take another one on the chin for the good of the power-mad populace.
Tovey and others said enough. They built up the local residents' association, adding key players like Danahy, who put his technological wizardry to work to create a master plan for development – minus a power plant.
It wasn't a wild-eyed plan, but practical, and do-able. Behind the scenes, councillors Carmen Corbasson and Carolyn Parrish worked to help it succeed. Mayor McCallion saw its practical side, and its glorious vision for the future. Still, she was old school, raised in the industrial age. Liberal MPP for Mississauga South Charles Sousa wasn’t, and became the catalyst for change. He took the ratepayers’ plan to Queen's Park and found a government smitten by “smart growth.”
McGuinty was ready to right a wrong, and suddenly the smart growth initiative had its poster child.
The rest, as the old cliché goes, is history – as in changing the history of Mississauga.
Lakeview has its lake back. Mississauga's official plan can now offer a playground for our children and our children's children.
The anchor line that kept us rooted to our industrial past had been lifted.
It’s not exactly clear sailing ahead, however.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) still owns a big chunk of the land. Queen’s Park still wants to locate a gas plant somewhere along the Oakville to Etobicoke corridor. The government is still reluctant to give incentives to homeowners who want to convert to solar power. Wind power is still in the experimental stage. Maybe it’s time to legislate power conservation, just like they’ve legislated the use of seat belts?
Let's stop this merry dance to disaster.
One thing is clear – after the coal dust has finally cleared from the old Lakeview Generating Station site: these neighbourhood activists who once lived under the belching stacks have helped douse the dying embers of a past era, a delusional era.
Tolstoy was a big believer in people power.
Sitting at his writing table in Yasnaya Polyana, he once wrote: “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you. One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.”
Thanks to the Lakeview Ratepayers Association, that link is strong.
