Meet the OFT Board: Marsha Paley

With one foot in her prairie farm heritage and one foot in the “Garden of Canada”, colonially known as Burlington, Marsha’s path inevitably came to include the Ontario Farmland Trust (OFT). Her parents’ values, from the early bird gets the worm to soil is not dirt, are deeply instilled in her. Their respective knowledge and skills in livestock, crops, and produce formed Marsha’s early life experiences. 

Two stories stand out as watershed moments. At two years old, Marsha sat on her father’s shoulders picking apples, then a couple of years later, she witnessed a mall being built in place of that neighbour’s multi-generation orchard. At eight years old, she sat in a tree watching a subdivision go up in a former rye field of another neighbour’s farm. The family spoke about these losses at the dinner table. They noticed not only the loss of soil for food production, but also the loss of habitat for wildlife and pollinators. Fewer birds, bats, and butterflies were visiting their gardens and nearby fruit trees. No wonder, years later, this same woman notices deceased turtles on roadsides and calls the municipality seeking to donate money to have turtle crossing signs put up. With this culmination of events, it’s clear why Marsha chose an education and career that allowed her to bring sensitivity, ethics, and protective insight to create frameworks and policies aimed at facilitating wise resource management.