These Ontario farmers are losing the land they own to industry. But that’s all anyone will tell them

In Wilmot Township, Ont., family histories and futures are closely intertwined with the land and what governments decide to do with it. 

Adam van Bergeijk moved to the southern Ontario farming region 28 years ago with his wife and two sons after development encroached on the lands surrounding his dairy farm in the Netherlands.  

He figured that would never happen in Ontario, where farmland was fertile and protected. 

But in March, van Bergeijk was approached by Canacre, a private-sector land consultant, with an offer to buy his family’s land for industrial use on behalf of the Region of Waterloo and the Township of Wilmot. 

The township is on the traditional territories of the Neutral, Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee and Mississauga peoples. It is made up of a dozen towns and villages that rely heavily on farming, lies southwest of Kitchener and the city of Waterloo. The land the region is looking to expropriate is just south of New Hamburg, one of the township’s larger centres.

Van Bergeijk has been making cheese for 43 years, most of them here on a farm adjacent to the land the region is eyeing. Over the past few years, his family bought additional land right in the middle of that site to expand their operations. His two sons and their children planned for a future on Mountainoak Farm. Selling the new land was not in the plans, so they turned down Canacre’s offer and started asking questions.