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Globe and Mail
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Hidden in plain sight
Ontario artist Derek Sullivan has no special affection for the minimalist sculpture of the 1960s and 1970s, with its unadorned surfaces and abstract geometries. And he detects some hubris in the American land art movement of the period, which inserted modernism right into the earth, producing such renowned installations as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Donald Judd's desert sculptures at Marfa, Texas, and Richard Serra's monumental site-specific works. 'I'm not actually a huge fan of Serra; the grandness is not how I like to work: I prefer scrappy pencil drawings,' Sullivan said. And yet here he is, on a spring morning, standing in a fallow field about 50 kilometres north of Toronto, contemplating what is probably the most celebrated but least seen example of Serra's land art. Shift, a series of six low concrete walls following the line of the rolling moraine, was erected in 1972 on private farmland owned by the Toronto developer and art collector Roger Davidson. He had invited Serra to build on his country property in King City, Ont., and the American artist came to Canada accompanied by his then-partner and collaborator, artist Joan Jonas, to build Shift. Serra, who died in 2024, was one of America's most important modernist sculptors and Shift is considered a seminal work from his early career: Sullivan was introduced to photographs of the piece as an art student at York University. Yet it is also little known and seldom seen because no one is really responsible for it. While other land art pieces are carefully preserved by art foundations or museums, Shift has been left to the elements, partly overgrown with grasses and dogwood, and occasionally dinged by a farmer's passing tractor. 'What I like about the Serra is its roughness, the fact that it's cracked, that it's scraped, that it's been allowed to age with the space. It's not maintained as a precious thing that has to be intact,' Sullivan said. 'I call this one a feral artwork. No one cares for it.' It's the relationship between the art and its changing site that really interests Sullivan, who has created a body of work about the sculpture and its unlikely setting now showing at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in nearby Kleinburg. His project extends his interest in the context in which art is made and seen: A previous piece reimagined a tall column sculpture by the Romanian modernist Constantin Brancusi, which suggested infinite height as a Toronto telephone pole covered in flyers with the potential for infinite girth. He is always interested in how art is distributed and has printed many of his own artist's books. Davidson, who died in 2005, sold his property a few years after Shift was erected and it now stands on land that belongs to Great Gulf, the builder of several local subdivisions. It's all private property, but local dog walkers and dirt bikers use the forest that leads to the field, and someone recently built a bonfire up against Shift. Meanwhile, a local farmer rotates crops, including wheat and soybean, in the field. Great Gulf has no plans to build on the site because it is a protected cultural landscape under the Ontario Heritage Act, said Kathleen Schofield, the developer's president of low-rise residential. And the surrounding land is part of the protected Oak Ridges Moraine. 'The site will remain as is for the foreseeable future,' she said in a statement provided to The Globe. When Sullivan first decided to investigate in 2021, he wasn't sure he would be able to reach Shift, thinking he would find it surrounded by subdivisions. He grew up in suburban Richmond Hill, Ont., and figured his work based on Shift would be about encroaching suburbia or blocked access to the site. Using wayfinding skills he perfected playing video games as a boy, he found the right path and emerged from the forest on a hot July day. Foliage eclipsed any sign of nearby housing while a flock of herons sat in a row on one of Shift's handy walls. It was nature not development that was in charge. His pencil and mixed media drawings, entitled Field Notes, reflect that, with images of the herons and of his own shadow looming over the ground as he photographs the site or bends down to pick up stones. Illustrative and narrative, they are far removed from grand minimalist sculpture. 'I find it eye-watering the resources that go into that kind of work, for the vision of a singular person. I often respond more strongly to the poetics of a scrappy piece of material. Or that an idea in an artist's book can be equally profound and grand and huge. The sense of mass and scale is only achieved by actually making it that mass,' he said, referring to Shift. 'So, I recognize that it does need to be this way, but it's the antithesis of how I would want to work.' Sullivan's work is moving on now; he teaches at Toronto's Ontario College of Art & Design University and works out of a weekend studio east of the city, near Tamworth, Ont., where he is cutting out the modernist middleman and erecting his own dry-stone wall. Meanwhile, the future of Shift remains foggy. Municipal preservation efforts in the early 2000s did lead to designating the field a protected cultural landscape but in 2010-12 the Art Gallery of Ontario abandoned discussions about acquiring Shift when it became clear there wouldn't be public access. Sullivan, who is cautious about revealing the field's exact location, thinks that if it were turned into a public park Serra's walls would soon be targeted with graffiti. Today Shift is famous yet hidden, safe in its state of neglect. Derek Sullivan: Field Notes continues at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., until June 29.
CBC
13-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
AI-grown lettuce could help ease the U.S. trade war pain
For the first time, a King City, Ont., greenhouse has harvested thousands of pounds of lettuce grown entirely by automation with AI monitoring temperature, light and humidity. The grower hopes the model can help Canada be less reliant on the American market.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
/R E P E A T -- Media Advisory - CAA & OPP team up on National Slow Down Move Over Day/
THORNHILL, ON, May 12, 2025 /CNW/ - What: CAA South Central Ontario (CAA SCO) and Ontario Provincial Police are teaming up to raise awareness of the National Slow Down Move Over Day (SDMO).The OPP will conduct a ride-along with the media to highlight enforcement efforts. Who: Michael Stewart, Community Relations Consultant, CAA SCOSgt. Kerry Schmidt, Highway Safety Division, OPP When: Tuesday, May 13, 2018 – 6:30 – 9:30 a.m. Where: ONroute King City - 12001 ON-400, King City, ON L7B 1A5 About CAA South Central OntarioAs a leader and advocate for road safety and mobility, CAA South Central Ontario is a not-for-profit auto club which represents the interests of over 2.5 million Members. For over a century, CAA has collaborated with communities, police services and governments to help keep drivers and their families safe while travelling on our roads. SOURCE CAA South Central Ontario View original content to download multimedia: Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CTV News
12-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Ontario lettuce farm using AI to grow greens
AI technology is used to farm greens at Haven Greens in King City Township. (CTV News/Luke Simard)
CBC
10-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Can machine-grown lettuce help cut Canada's reliance on U.S. greens? This farmer is betting on it
As Canada's reliance on U.S. produce hits the spotlight, one Ontario farmer has a pitch: locally grown, year-round produce, grown by artificial intelligence and automation. In a sprawling two-hectare greenhouse, tucked inside a wooden red barn in King City, Ont., an animated Jay Willmot, farmer and entrepreneur, shared his vision. "From sowing and seeding, all the way through to harvest and packing, no one touches this crop," he said in front of rows and rows of lettuce shoots. Instead, multimillion-dollar AI and machinery does the work; the whirring and clicking of conveyor belts, hooks and levers, fills the space that was once part of his family's horse farm. Willmot built his business, Haven Greens, to tackle the Canadian winter and a laundry list of obstacles that farmers face — from high labour costs to unpredictable weather. He's not alone; federal and provincial governments have offered incentives to encourage automation. Some experts do urge caution though — saying widespread adoption could have unintended consequences. Lettuce close to home Even without AI, a traditional greenhouse, or a vertical farm, would have addressed the issue of year-round growth. It's a route many are choosing to take; Canadian greenhouse lettuce production alone has quadrupled over the last decade, according to Statistics Canada. Willmot said automation and artificial intelligence allows him to maximize the amount of lettuce he can grow, while cutting labour costs, typically a greenhouse grower's biggest operating expense. The company also uses solar power, rainwater and other "energy-efficient systems" to keep costs down, he said. And he says the AI cuts out a lot of the waste that comes with guesswork. WATCH | See how this Ontario farm produces hands-off greens: "We have sensors that measure temperature, light intensity, humidity levels, and pressure levels. Everything within this greenhouse is automated by that central computer to achieve optimal growth conditions." he added. The company says the greenhouse produces more than 4,000 kilograms of lettuce per day. It's being sold through the Ontario food terminal and directly to a number of independent grocery stores. For Willmot, the goal is a reliable product that doesn't need to travel across a continent to hit store shelves. "I was sick and tired of old, slimy, smelly lettuce," he said. When California, where most of Ontario's lettuce comes from, was hit by drought and disease in 2022, lettuce prices hit a record high. "We need this all across the country so that we can build these local food systems that have inherent food sovereignty within them, that fight food insecurity, that can feed our local communities," he argued. Even with the "tens of millions of dollars" in start-up costs for the custom machinery and AI tech, Willmot calculates he can turn a profit on this model, while keeping the retail price "competitive." Less reliance on farm labour It's a business case provincial and federal governments are counting on. Even before trade tensions pushed Canada's dependence on U.S. produce back into the spotlight, there was a push to incentivize agricultural technology, to make Canada more self-sufficient. In Ontario, for example, the government dished out $547,720 in 2021 to Great Lakes Greenhouses Inc, an operation in the heart of Leamington, Ont. — dubbed North America's greenhouse capital for having the highest density of greenhouses on the continent. The cash was to help the company pilot an artificial intelligence system that would "allow greenhouse operators to remotely grow cucumbers and eggplant crops, reducing in-person contact," a provincial press release reads. B.C. also has an On-Farm Technology Adoption Program, offering cost-sharing funding for labour-saving tech like autonomous weeders, harvesters and sorters. The country is heavily reliant on temporary foreign workers for farm labour. Nearly half of the people working in Canada's agriculture sector were employed on a seasonal basis in 2022, according to Statistics Canada. It is a gap that Willmot believes automation can fill. But Canada's Research Chair in Science and Society, Kelly Bronson says, the impact on migrant workers need to be considered carefully. "There's all sorts of ethical issues presented by that labour supply solution in that these workers tend to be very precariously paid, precariously employed in terms of having no legal infrastructure to support them," said Bronson, who has done research consulting migrant farmers. "Many of them really depend on this income. We have to think about the consequences of displacing already the most marginalized actors." Willmot, however, believes Canada's reliance on foreign workers is part of the problem. "For us, we really like supporting people that are here," he said. "I'll take giving local people that live in our own backyard good-paying jobs 10 out 10 times." The company says it has hired 35 full-time staff. A call for a closer look Bronson, who has specifically studied the growth and impact of agricultural technology, acknowledges the excitement around food sovereignty amidst a "geopolitical tariff warfare." But she urges caution — even with the company's solar PV's, rainwater usage, recaptured emissions, and wider net-zero promise. "If you think about the energy costs of sustaining an indoor farming environment, they're pretty huge. And even if you take a fuller view of AI, we know now the environmental costs in terms of data storage, the energy costs, the impact on climate in terms of data, storage facilities." She calls for detailed, independent research into the use and impact of the automation and AI model in Canada's food systems, to test the claims its proponents make. Cambridge University researchers have also warned about potential risks from rapid deployment of AI in agriculture, in a 2022 Nature Machine Intelligence paper, including accidental failure and unintended consequences. "I think it is the future," said Rozita Dara, director of the Artificial Intelligence for Food initiative at the University of Guelph. But she too urges the sector, and governments, to think about who can benefit from this often costly, technology. "We have to keep smaller businesses in mind because we want them to operate and thrive in this situation." Back in King City, Willmot is confident in his vision. The third-generation farmer, and lawyer, i s keenly aware that Canada's farmers are aging out, and the new generation isn't keen to take up the mantle. By 2033, 40 per cent of Canadian farm operators are expected to retire, and Statistics Canada numbers find that 66 per cent don't have a succession plan. We want "to show young people there's exciting stuff happening in agriculture. And we need more people to come in and grow food for Canada," he pitched.
