History
FODE was created in 1993 in the pre-amalgamation borough of East York. The group's original name was "Friends of the Don East York". The name was shortened in 1998 after amalgamation eliminated East York as a separate municipality. The group was modelled after the Task Force to Bring Back the Don, which at the time was limited to the area within the borders of the old city of Toronto.
As a non-governmental organization, they lobbied East York Council to be more environmentally aware, especially with respect to the East York Official Plan and other planning issues. On environmental issues, they opposed the building of the Leslie Street extension. During this time, they persuaded the TRCA to designate Crothers' Woods, which lay directly in the path of the planned extension, as an Environmentally Significant Area (ESA). The plan was to extend Redway Road, and is now part of a plan to build a bus-only road as part of the Don Valley Transportation Master Plan.
In 2004, FODE attained charitable status. While this limits their ability to perform advocacy work—Canadian charities are not supposed to be politically active—it does allow the organization to raise funds more easily.
Read more about this topic: Friends Of The Don East
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)