Niagara Escarpment Foundation

Rob Leverty, President

Rob Leverty is the former Executive Director of the Ontario Historical Society. Founded in 1888, the Society is a non-profit corporation and registered charity that brings together people of all cultural backgrounds who are interested in preserving and protecting Ontario’s history and built and natural heritage.

Rob has worked on environmental and rural development projects across Canada and overseas, including in France, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, in South America and at the United Nations in New York.

Since 1973, Rob and his partner Annie have owned a working farm in the Beaver Valley (in Grey County) which is designated Escarpment Natural and Escarpment Protection in the Niagara Escarpment Plan. The farm is certified organic and includes a heritage conservation easement securing a wildlife corridor and protecting environmentally significant groundwater and surface water resources. The Bruce Trail has been routed through their farm for 45 years.

Cecil Louis, Vice President

Cecil Louis is a retired member of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He was hired in 1965 by what today is the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

In 1974, he was seconded to the newly created Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) as Manager of Development Control. He prepared the first set of Development Control regulations and hired, trained and supervised a staff of planners and landscape architects.

In 1979, as Manager of Plan Preparation, he supervised a planning team responsible for preparing the proposed Niagara Escarpment Plan (NEP), defending it during two years of public hearings and preparing the NEC’s final submission to the Ontario Cabinet. After the NEP was approved by Cabinet in 1985, Cecil became the Manager of Plan Implementation and led a team responsible for preparing the first Five Year Review in 1990.

He retired from the NEC in 1996. A few years later, he was appointed as a public-at-large Commissioner on the NEC and subsequently as the NEC’s representative on the government’s Greenbelt Council and at the Canadian Biosphere Reserves Association, all until 2017.

Linda Pim, Secretary-Treasurer

Linda Pim is an environment biologist and a land use planner. In 2017-2019, she served as a public-at-large Commissioner on the Niagara Escarpment Commission and in 2018-2020, as the NEC’s representative on the Ontario government’s Greenbelt Council.

Over the past 40 years, Linda has held environmental and land use policy positions both in the Ontario government and in environmental/conservation non-profit charitable organizations including Pollution Probe and Ontario Nature (Federation of Ontario Naturalists). She has worked at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, the Minister’s Office at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and most recently, at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, from which she retired in 2016.

For the past 25 years, Linda has lived in the village of Inglewood, which is within the Niagara Escarpment Plan area in the Town of Caledon (Region of Peel). She maintains a section of the Bruce Trail in Grey County.