OVED o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-09 published
Activist established blue box program
Radical became known for putting pressure on government, corporations
By Martin MITTELSTAEDT
Wednesday,
July 9, 2003 - Page R7
Toronto -- One of Canada's most influential environmental activists,
Gary GALLON, died Thursday in Montreal after a long battle with
cancer.
Although Mr.
GALLON may not have been a household name, Canadians
almost everywhere will recognize one of his major achievements,
the setting up of the country's first blue box recycling program
in Ontario during the late 1980s.
He also had a hand during the 1970s in establishing Greenpeace,
and maintained a lifelong passion for environmental causes evident
in his series of twice-monthly newsletters, called the
GALLON
Environmental Letter.
"I've always been bothered by excess consumption and wanton destruction
of habitat. Human ethics must allow space for other creatures,"
he said recently.
Born in the United States in 1945, Mr.
GALLON moved to Canada
in the late 1960s to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war.
He settled in Vancouver and began working by writing newsletters
promoting mining stocks listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.
After work, he turned to his true passion, the environment, joining
the nighttime meetings of the Society for the Promotion of Environmental
Conservation, a group that at the time opposed the use of the
British Columbia coast for supertanker routes.
"He became concerned that what he was doing [by selling stocks]
was causing environmental damage," said David
OVED, a Toronto
environmental consultant who worked with him in the Ontario government.
Mr. GALLON's biggest impact on the country's conservation movement
occurred when he was senior policy adviser for Jim
BRADLEY,
Ontario's
Liberal environment minister from 1985-90, one of Mr.
BRADLEY's
surprise hires.
It was a risky move for the new Liberal government to employ
one of Canada's leading environmental radicals for such a post.
Mr. GALLON instantly became known as one of "
BRADLEY's brats,"
the moniker given the group of dedicated environmentalists assembled
by Mr. BRADLEY within the Ontario government who helped originate
such programs as the blue box and the province's acid rain reduction
program.
In the mid-1980s, municipal recycling had been an experimental
effort in a few communities.
Mr. GALLON worked to establish the blue box across the province.
Mr. OVED said Mr.
GALLON could often influence opponents within
the government through his use of the inventive turn of phase
or image.
In one particularly bitter debate, cabinet was discussing preservation
of Ontario's Temagami forest region, an area containing some
of Canada's last remaining stands of towering old growth red
and white pines.
Mr. OVED said some politicians were questioning why environmentalists
in Toronto and elsewhere in Southern Ontario were arguing to
preserve a forest in the north that they might never see.
Mr. GALLON said forest preservation was part of the ideal that
Canadians held of the society they would like to be part of.
"Gary's comment was 'People here may never see those forests,
but they value green spaces in their minds,' Mr.
OVED said.
Mr. OVED said the turn of phase impressed then-premier David
PETERSON, who began to affectionately call Mr.
GALLON and Mr.
BRADLEY's other environmental activists "space cadets."
Some of the biggest run-ins that Mr.
GALLON had during the 1980s
were with Inco, one of Ontario's major emitter of chemicals that
cause acid rain.
At one testy meeting, Mr.
GALLON, dressed in a pink shirt, had
exchanges with Inco's former chairman, Chuck
BAIRD, who was later
so annoyed at being pressed on the company's pollutants, that
an Inco official called Mr.
BRADLEY to complain.
"I got a call the next day asking who where those young radicals
in pink polo shirts asking those impertinent questions," Mr.
BRADLEY said.
Television broadcaster and Greenpeace founder Robert
HUNTER said
that Mr. GALLON related to him that the Inco chairman "had never
run into such serious sass from mere political minions."
Of his experience in government, Mr.
GALLON once said "you have
less room to rail but more power to get things done."
Mr. GALLON suffered from colon cancer, which had spread to his
lungs and liver.
Despite the pain of the disease and its treatments, he kept up
his hobby of competitive swimming, winning in his age group in
a Quebec swim meet last year, according to Mr.
OVED.
Last month, the Royal Canadian Geographic Society's magazine
gave Mr. GALLON its national environmental award for lifetime
achievement.
Mr. GALLON was picked in 1977 to be executive director of the
Nairobi-based Environment Liaison Centre International, where
he met his wife-to-be, another prominent Canadian environmental
activist, Janine
FERRETTI.
Ms. FERRETTI was executive director of the North American Free
Trade Agreement Commission for Environmental Cooperation and
now holds a senior position with the Inter-American Development
Bank in Washington. Mr.
GALLON is survived by his two children,
Kalifi and Jenika.
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OVERDUIN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-01-03 published
Virtuoso possessed 'nerves of steel'
Ontario trumpeter and music professor renowned for his recordings
and his mentoring
By Sol CHROM
Friday,
January 3, 2003, Page R11
He could make his trumpet sing like an angel, but he was not
above taking a hacksaw to it. When Erik
SCHULTZ died of cancer
last month at the age of 50, Canadian music lost a virtuoso player,
a teacher and mentor, a prolific recording and performing artist,
and a man renowned among colleagues as a consummate professional.
A member of the music faculty at the University of Western Ontario,
Prof. SCHULTZ also made several concert tours of Europe and founded
an independent recording label for Canadian musicians. He held
positions with Canadian orchestras in Calgary, Hamilton, London,
Ontario, Toronto, and Windsor, Ontario He also established an
international reputation with an extensive repertoire of recordings
of his own, specializing in music of the Baroque period.
Prof. SCHULTZ's musicianship and professionalism were noted by
numerous colleagues, both in academia and in the performing arts.
Canadian
Broadcasting
Corporation broadcaster Keith
HORNER, who
worked on several recordings and radio programs with him, recalled
his "bright, clear, ringing tone." Mr.
HORNER praised Prof.
SCHULTZ
for his expertise with the piccolo trumpet, which he described
as a very difficult instrument to master.
"It requires nerves of steel," he said. "With Erik, you didn't
hear the work in it. He made it sound effortless -- and that
was all smoke and mirrors, because it takes a great deal of physical
effort."
Prof. SCHULTZ may have been known best for a series of albums
he recorded with organist Jan
OVERDUIN.
The recordings were made
in Kitchener, Ontario, and
in Germany, and were issued both on
vinyl and on compact disc. The two musicians first teamed up
in Europe, where they were both touring in the mid-1980s, setting
the stage for a collaboration that lasted until Prof.
SCHULTZ's
death.
In an interview from Waterloo, Ontario, Prof.
OVERDUIN recalled
his colleague as an enthusiastic participant in all kinds of
musical events, both amateur and professional. "He would just
transform the whole experience," Prof.
OVERDUIN said. "There
were times when I just stood in awe -- he'd be communicating
with the audience on a level that was just beyond us."
Prof. OVERDUIN also cited his friend's commitment to musicianship,
often displayed under rather trying circumstances. On one European
tour, a delayed flight to Portugal saw them arrive in Lisbon
with very little time to prepare for a concert. The difficulty
was heightened by the fact that both musicians had gotten quite
sick and had to find a doctor in Lisbon who could prescribe antibiotics.
And many performances in Europe, Prof.
OVERDUIN said, were staged
in old churches wherein the temperature or tuning of the organ
posed their own special challenges. Since the organs couldn't
be moved or modified, Prof.
SCHULTZ would have to make adjustments
to the pitch of his trumpet. Frequently this would require him
to carry extra mouthpieces or lengths of tubing, but even that
wasn't always enough.
"One day he had to get a hacksaw and physically saw out a piece
of the trumpet," Prof.
OVERDUIN recalled. "These were historic
organs -- I would have a wonderful time, but it could be difficult
too. [Sometimes] they would have weird historical temperaments,
but he would adjust immediately."
Prof. SCHULTZ's commitment to music extended beyond his own career,
however. In 1993, he and his father started
IBS
Recordings, a
label for independent Canadian artists, eventually releasing
more than three dozen titles. Flutist Fiona
WILKINSON, one of
Prof. SCHULTZ's colleagues at University of Western Ontario,
recorded for the label as a member of the Aeolian Winds, and
praised him for his generosity. Having established his own international
recording career with the German label
EBS, she said, he used
IBS to support and nurture the initial careers of Canadian musicians.
"He would interview and audition artists and take on projects
that he felt deserved to be known."
"He positioned it as a discovery label," Mr.
HORNER said. "He
was ambitious -- he was looking for a recording studio so that
he could have some control over sound quality."
Prof. WILKINSON also praised Prof.
SCHULTZ for his collegiality.
He raised the bar for the people he worked with, she said, acting
as a role model for students and colleagues. "He had incredibly
high standards. Everything he touched had to meet them."
But Prof. WILKINSON also remembered Prof.
SCHULTZ for his sense
of humour, and the real-world experience he brought to his teaching
and academic work. "He knew what it was like to be 'out there,'
" she said, "and he brought that back to the students."
Even with his illness, Prof.
SCHULTZ never lost his enthusiasm
for performing.
"He lost his voice, and couldn't talk on the phone, but he could
still play," Prof.
OVERDUIN recalled, noting that Prof.
SCHULTZ
still played at convocations last June. "It hurts me to think
we'll never play again."
Erik SCHULTZ leaves his wife
Kelly, his children Daniel, David
and Nicole, and two sisters.
Erik SCHULTZ, musician and teacher; born in Hamilton, Ontario,
August 29, 1952; died in London, Ontario, December 1, 2002.
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