Northern Ontario farmer worries flooding could take his property and nearby homes

A fourth-generation farmer in northeastern Ontario worries the nearby Goulais River will eventually destroy his family farm and several homes downstream from his property.

Every spring Matt McDonald says part of his property is flooded by the Goulais River as water levels rise.

McDonald says his land has gradually eroded for years, and it's because of blasting that occurred in 1931, when his great-grandfather owned the farm.

"I know we're in the floodplain and I get all that," he said.

"That's all part of where we live. But when the government does things, like when I do things, I've got to take ownership for it."

What was then Ontario's Department of Highways blasted a channel at the Goulais River's edge to protect Highway 552 West from flooding.

The plan worked, but it had unintended consequences.

That new channel redirected the river directly to the McDonald family farm.

Two years later, in 1933, the department built a stone barrier to protect the farm.

Glynn Rouse, who was a member of the Goulais and District Local Services Board, wrote a letter in 2006 to Mike Brown, the Liberal MPP for Algoma-Manitoulin at the time, in which he voiced his concerns about the McDonald farm property.

In his letter, Rouse said that stone barrier proved sufficient for more than 20 years. But by 1963 it had eroded, at which point the province lined the property with shale rock to prevent further erosion. 

That proved to be a short-term solution.

"At present it erodes 10 to 20 metres each year," Rouse wrote in 2006.

"It is the concern of Goulais residents that a breakthrough is no longer a matter of if, but when ... And the 'when' appears to be imminent."