Hamilton public board decides against severing Ancaster land

But one day in June 2018, he read a short piece in the local newspaper that the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board was preparing to sever the green space at Ancaster High School.

In the interview, the board chair at the time, Todd White, stated HWDSB was going to sever the 42-acre property into three parcels and use the extra funds to repair existing schools.

“I said, ‘no you are not.’”

The board’s application proposed to split the green space into three parcels, retaining 25 acres for the high school and track and field. The remainder, including 10 soccer fields, would be divided into a six-acre lot for a potential future elementary school and a 12-acre parcel the board would offer to the city.

Bader’s defiance against the school board’s proposal launched a nearly four-and-a-half-year-long fight against the severance application to protect the field where he, along with other Ancaster residents, walked, played and enjoyed their time underneath the summer stars.

When the committee of adjustment in 2019 reviewed for the first time the board’s application, the small boardroom on the ground floor of city hall was packed with parents and their children. Bader had brought a bound copy of the 2,500 signatures of people voicing their opposition to the application. The fields have been home to the Ancaster Soccer Club since 1985.

When chair Mark Dudzic saw the number of signatures, Bader said, “he turned to me and said, ‘I have never seen anything like this before in 30 years.’”

Those signatures would grow to 12,000 and include letters of support from businessperson Ron Foxcroft and Hamilton Tiger-Cats owner Bob Young.

Bader said Ancaster residents and even people across the city were passionate about preserving the land. He said people sent heartfelt messages of how much “they loved the green space. The stories are fascinating.”

Young’s letter to council stated the green space remains “important” to the community’s “healthy, active lifestyles.”

“I lost a lot of sleep over what could happen,” said Bader, who has lived in the Ancaster neighbourhood on Norma Crescent since 2000, in a house that backs onto the green space. “There would have been trucks rumbling along roads in the area, townhouses built and the expansion of the Meadowbrook Drive. That’s what scared the hell out of me.”

He and his wife, Gayle, who was also involved in the campaign, moved to Ancaster from Burlington seeking a quiet neighbourhood with good neighbours. “We were not disappointed.”

But those four-plus years of organizing, researching, rallying Ancaster and Hamilton residents, creating a website, and meeting with officials had taken a toll.

“It has been a long time,” said Bader. “This has totally consumed me.”

Since the 2022 municipal election, and after he talked to each trustee about the need to preserve the property, he didn’t hear where the application stood. Then in September, Ancaster trustee Amanda Fehrman, who had campaigned to preserve the green space, contacted Bader to tell him the board wasn’t going to pursue the severance.

Bader wanted that assurance in writing.

He and Ancaster families received it in a surprise update Nov. 22 when the public school board sent out a message explaining it was “no longer pursuing the severance application with the city.”

In the note, the board stated the 18 acres of property behind Ancaster High School on Jerseyville Road will “remain green space and part of the HWDSB ownership and available for any future HWDSB accommodation pressures, should they arise.”

Fehrman said the board allowed its application to sever six acres of land at the committee of adjustment to expire.

“It’s great news for the Ancaster residents and the soccer community,” said Fehrman. “It is important to keep the land.”

She also praised the community support and Bader’s efforts to keep the green space available to residents.

School board officials had repeatedly said, when pressed about the application, they were looking to preserve the Ancaster High School lands as green space.

Bader praises former Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson for requesting at that 2019 committee of adjustment meeting to defer a decision until the application could be discussed at the heritage committee. Ferguson was attempting to get the committee to designate the green space as an area of cultural landscape significance, similar to what the Town of Oakville did to protect the Glen Abbey Golf Course from potential development.

“We owe so much to Lloyd,” said Bader. “That application (to the heritage committee) stopped everything. It allowed us to launch our campaign. If it wasn’t for him, (the application) might have gone through.”

In a June 2022 decision, councillors agreed in a 11-3 vote to identify the 43-acre property as a “cultural heritage landscape.”

The public school board, led by Lloyd Ferguson’s father Walter in 1957, purchased 21 acres of property from an area farmer to build a school for $1. A decade later, the board purchased another 21 acres from the same farmer to be used for the community at the same price, but the board paid a $54,550 land transfer tax.

Bader said the years of work and sleepless nights have been worthwhile after the decision by the board. He is planning to help organize an outdoor community party next summer to help celebrate the residents’ success.

“I feel like our job is done,” he said. “Now I can get some sleep.”