This picture was taken in 1986 and published in Harrowsmith, Canadian Geographic and Time Magazines during a period when acid rain was at the top of Canada's national political agenda. It made it believable that coal-burning in the Ohio River Valley could be dousing Canadian forests with tons of sulphuric acid.

Since 1982 I had dedicated my freelance journalism efforts to this issue. As a rural Quebec resident and a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I had a unique 2-sided perspective on this trans-boundary pollution issue.

Factories in the Steel City created sulphuric and nitric acid in the clouds which some scientists claimed dropped rain 600 miles away that was killing lakes and forests. Of course, industry had its own scientists who refuted such claims and it was hard for people to imagine a few smokestacks affecting vast regions like the Adirondack Mountains and eastern Canada.

Newly immigrated to Quebec and learning French, I had come across a tiny item in a French newspaper about a mysterious dieback of sugar maples in Quebec's Appalachian Mountain region. Harrowsmith Magazine supported my initiative to find out more and my ensuing article won a National Magazine Award and created fear that Canada's national symbol was at risk of dying.

Two years later, Harrowsmith assigned me to do a follow-up article and that cover story clearly pointed a finger of blame at acid rain and also won a National Magazine Award. I had calls from every political party as well as some concerned citizens from Ontario who paid my way to Germany where a similar plight was being studied.

Together we formed "TreeWatch" and put on the

"Forest Decline Conference" in Toronto in 1988 which was opened by the Ontario Environment Minister and featured leading researchers from around the world. Public outcry was putting pressure on the Canadian Government to lobby the Americans for acid rain reductions.

Reagan and Mulroney met often, and in 1989, a renewed US Clean Air Act put cap-and-trade legislation into place and its goals were achieved a decade later.

The next challenge: Documenting climate change and global warming

Photography copyright by Phil Norton

phil@philnorton.com