Post Closure Disrespect and Community Action
After the farms closure much of the earlier promised preservation and respect of the property failed to materialize, the property, buildings, and graves left instead to fall into a state of decay and disrepair. Pictures began to appear of the gravesites of world famous Northern Dancer and other notable Windfields horses with 4 foot tall weeds surrounding them, as well as the historical structures falling prey to vandals, the elements, and time. Negative media attention in the fall of 2011 spurred the current owners of the "Core" property (Durham College and/or The University Of Ontario Institute of Technology) to step up maintenance of the gravesite areas and pledge to better respect the property, although no other commitments were made towards the future of the property at that point in time.
Supporters far and wide who wish a better ending for the iconic farm have banded together and are making their voices heard in the media, as well as in Social Media at the Friends Of Windfields Farm Facebook page.
As of the fall of 2012 the City Of Oshawa has become an ally to the cause for proper respect for the Windfields property, and at the behest of the city, UOIT has agreed to form a "Community Advisory Group" to allow all interested parties to discuss the future of the farm in detail. Parties who have requested to be privy to this group include a small number of core supporters of the aforementioned Friends of Windfields Farm supporters group, representatives from the Ontario Equestrian Federation, board members from Heritage Oshawa, as well as select City Of Oshawa staffers.
Read more about this topic: Windfields Farm
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“To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a “home” might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.”
—Emily Post (1873–1960)
“Less than five hundred souls inhabit the three quaint streets and the few narrow by-lanes and scattered farmsteads that constitute this small, decaying watering-place which may, indeed, be called a “backwater of life” without disrespect to its natives who possess, to this day, a salty individuality of their own.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 17:14,15.
“If, from the very first, the action of the play is absurd, it is because this is the way mad Waltz—before the play starts—imagines it is going to be....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)