The Lake Ontario Greenway and nature: Reflections on relationship

The Lake Ontario Greenway includes all lands which have a direct ecological, cultural or economic connection to the waterfront. While the Greenway offers the possibility of an improved relationship with nature, there is another context within which it must be placed if its relationship with nature is to be more accurately represented and evaluated. Rather than being an objective assessment of an external world, the term "nature" is a reflection of what society needs nature to be in order to Justify its internal relations---economic and social---as being in harmony with the workings of the cosmos, and hence, "natural."; From this insight I argue that the concept of nature on the Lake Ontario Greenway can similarly be seen to be a reflection of society's current requirements of nature, and while many of these requirements provide opportunities for nature through requiring the restoration and protection of natural processes and habitats, they also impose limits by simultaneously restricting the meanings of nature to a collection of objects for human use and by configuring nature as symbolic capital. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...