Hundreds of hectares of Crown land in northern Ontario sprayed every summer

For Gerry Vautour it started with complaints from his customers.

“I had bear hunters up here at the time and these helicopters flew over top of them and were spraying on them,” remembers the owner of East Bull Lake Wilderness Resort north of Massey.

“I felt it was my responsibility to find out exactly what it was they were spraying and they said ‘Oh, it’s just Roundup. There’s no problem with Roundup.”

In the decade since Vautour has learned that many people have a problem with Roundup and its active herbicide glyphosate.

The makers of Roundup have been sued successfully by Americans who claim it gave them cancer and several U.S. states have banned the herbicide.

Nova Scotia and Quebec have also stopped spraying it from helicopters on clear cuts so newly planted trees can grow.

Several counties in southern Ontario have banned farmers from treating their fields with glyphosate.