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UER Forum > Archived Canada: Ontario > Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites (Viewed 438 times) Ground State  Location: Ontario, Canada Gender: Male  |  Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites < on 9/15/2012 7:07 PM >   No guarantees that these are abandoned... just look like they might be based on drive-way overgrowth and topo condition. Hopefully a nice Sunday recon-drive for someone. N 43 54.856 W 79 15.208 N 43 55.241 W 79 14.918 N 43 56.258 W 79 13.688 N 43 55.165 W 79 13.888 This was just a Google Earth troll. I didn't check if any of these have been posted before. [last edit 9/15/2012 7:18 PM by Ground State - edited 2 times] If you're seeing this here on UER, please let me 'Follow' your work on Flickr: https://www.flickr...otos/91808861@N04/ paulpa  This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. Location: Canuckistan Gender: Male Part-time troll  |  Re: Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites <Reply # 1 on 9/15/2012 9:06 PM >   I've been there a few times, nothing too interesting, they are Ontarioite farmsteads. They are now owned by transport canada who patrols there frequently. I have privileges in that area as I know many of the families around there (Wideman, Reesor, Burkholder, Grove, Stouffer and Hoover) and I have gained their trust in order to go onto their relatives old properties. They WILL call the police on anybody else though, and that is if you are lucky. At worst, if they don't see you, they would shoot at you and claim that they thought you were a varmint. Edit -- I have a friend who did her residency and MSH, and she said that one of her operations which she assisted in was somebody who had wood splinters imbedded deep into his abdomen from a shot gun blast, she said that the guy was lucky not to have got any buckshot itself stuck in him. Edit 2 -- The first house is active, I actually talked to the owners last Tuesday about the bridge construction on Major Mac, it should take a couple more weeks according to them. They also really want for the food belt to collapse in order for them to sell to developers. Their neighbour's house just got bulldozed to make way for a Donald Cousins Parkway extension which should snake its way up to 19th avenue. What you are seeing there is a covered driveway. The second house is also still active, it is no longer a residence, it is now the offices for a commercial farm. But right across the street from that house is a house that is boarded up, it is a white clapboard house now owned by transport Canada. Just a little to the north is an old tractor that is for sale, it is a good photo op. The third house is also active, it is a horse ranch. I talked to the owner about having a ride. She says that I am a bit too heavy still. Mongolia is a tight nit community and does not take as kindly to outsiders as other small towns. I don't know about the fourth house, it is too far back on the property. IIRC it is an ailing elderly couple (maybe even a widow now) who cannot tend to their driveway. All I know is that the fields around there are tended (besides the one field a year with nitrogen fixing plants to restore the soil). [last edit 9/15/2012 9:35 PM by paulpa - edited 2 times] Ground State  Location: Ontario, Canada Gender: Male  |  Re: Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites <Reply # 2 on 9/15/2012 9:55 PM >   Wow Paulpa! That was one hell of an educated post! Very interesting to get some fine-tuned regional knowledge from someone who knows the area so well! I would say from your message alone that this thread should be considered closed! If you're seeing this here on UER, please let me 'Follow' your work on Flickr: https://www.flickr...otos/91808861@N04/ paulpa  This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. Location: Canuckistan Gender: Male Part-time troll  |  Re: Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites <Reply # 3 on 9/15/2012 10:18 PM >   I biked that area practically every morning in the summer. I greeted many of the farmers just as they were going out to start their days tending the fields. Rural exploration is a whole lot more different than urban exploration in the way that most of your preparation work is building relationships with the neighbours. It goes down to Ownership vs. Occupancy. These properties is where these people both live and work, and besides going to church on Sundays or visiting neighbors, they could easily spend their entire lives on 100 acres of land. So you can understand why the get a little bit possessive. One of my explores started when I found one of the neighbors sitting on the porch watching traffic. I asked if there were still barn raisings in the area (as it is a mostly Mennonite community), he replied not in a long time. I then asked if I could take a look at their carpentry -- he showed me personally and had several stories to tell about it to. This is an aging community, the average age for farmers in Ontario is about 50 years old. Many of them think that the profession is dying out to machines and mega-corporations and love it when young people take an interest in their work, especially when they are grateful. I even show them some of my photos, they are nostalgic about things like a tea pot that their neighbour always used to serve them tea out of or a wooden toy that was personally carved by another neighbour (they don't make them like that any more). The key is to first develop good relationships with the people all around the areas you want to explore. They know not to be so worried when they see my little blue bike leaning beside their old neighbour and best friend's house. One time I couldn't find my bike and I got worried, I didn't lock it. One of the farmers came to me and told me that he moved it out of the rain. edit-- I might as well add that there is a strong sense of community in the country which seems to be forgotten elsewhere. People are dependent on their neighbours for everything. If you need a building built, then you will call the entire block to do a barn raising. You get a keg of beer and erect the building entirely by hand. Nail by painstaking nail. You would pull up the skeletal walls with ropes as people would pound them into position. It would take a day or the weekend in the hot sun, but everybody helps, with the expectation that you returned the favour for whoever else needed to have a building erected. Need some time saving equipment? Not a lot of money to be made in farming, so you can't afford everything. Farmers stagger their sowing and harvests so that they can share EVERYTHING. Every piece of equipment belongs to everybody on that side of the concession. One person buys a front end loader, another buys the fork lift, a third buys the tractor and so forth, and they are all shared. Need someone to talk to? If you are an atheist farmer, you are going to have a bad time. Not that you are shafted or anything, but the community centers on church. It is where everyone goes on that one day a week of rest. All your neighbours are there and will check up on you if you are not in the pews one Sunday. If you are sick out there, expect warm meals every day. If you cannot get out of bed, these people will go the extra mile in helping you harvest your crops. (You would do the same for them). The other people on their street mean everything to farmers. Being close friends with the people who live around you is the difference between life and death in the country. There is a bond between them that goes beyond sharing a few beers together once in a while. As I said, there is a very strong connection between person and place when you are away from the city and suburbs. Especially if the owner didn't move away but died in that house. To disrespect the property is to disrespect everything that the person lived and died for. But if you treat people the right way, you can lose them in nostalgia and be invited back. It is easy to become a friend, and it is easy to become an enemy, but it is really hard to move between the two. [last edit 9/15/2012 10:58 PM by paulpa - edited 1 times] Ground State  Location: Ontario, Canada Gender: Male  |  Re: Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites <Reply # 4 on 9/15/2012 11:16 PM >   That's a great post. You have given me much to consider about farmland exploration, and hopefully a few suggestions I can use to my advantage! Your post makes me feel like this idiot ha ha.... Yes, I spent the entire summer having day after day of successful rurex explorations and great photos sure, but I was creeping through fields to take places from behind and hiding in the shadows waiting for neighbours to go to work. Perhaps it is time for me to employ a change of approach and see what it brings next summer. [last edit 9/15/2012 11:16 PM by Ground State - edited 1 times] If you're seeing this here on UER, please let me 'Follow' your work on Flickr: https://www.flickr...otos/91808861@N04/ paulpa  This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information. Location: Canuckistan Gender: Male Part-time troll  |  Re: Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites <Reply # 5 on 9/16/2012 12:04 AM >   All I had to do was walk up and ask. If you want to use the stealth method. Go during church, everyone goes to church. see which times the local chapel has services. They like to head out early so that they can chat to each other. Church is a social event, even if a farmer isn't pious. You could start a few minutes before the service begins. Just make sure you are out by the time the church service ends. Be careful about active houses, sometimes, doors are still unlocked. You can get into a lot of trouble if you are caught in an active house. -- The best time to try and find people to talk to is midday, farmers rest when the sun is the hottest as to prevent heat sickness. UER Forum > Archived Canada: Ontario > Markham: Major Mack & Elgin Mills area tentative rurex sites (Viewed 438 times) All content and images copyright © 2002-2024 UER.CA and respective creators. Graphical Design by Crossfire. To contact webmaster, or click to email with problems or other questions about this site: UER CONTACT View Terms of Service | View Privacy Policy | Server colocation provided by Beanfield This page was generated for you in 156 milliseconds. Since June 23, 2002, a total of 740169262 pages have been generated.